Why user-created video is so popular

In reading the press release on the Motionbox story below, I read a quote from the company’s CEO that is worth highlighting. “For 99% of people, online video is about sharing moments, not creating professional video presentations,” said Chris O’Brien. This is a very simple point that eludes many mainstream media people who still don’t understand why user video sites have devoured the online video market with a bunch of “stupid videos.” YouTube and MySpace and Google Video and the like are popular because they empower people to easily share their best video moments with their friends and family for free. Take YouTube, for example, which receives 65,000 videos a day. That’s 1,950,000 a month. Only a few of those clips “pop” on a mass media scale and see a ton of traffic. The rest are viewed just a handful of times by friends and family and other interested parties, which as an aggregate is a ton of traffic. The long tail of video. And these “stupid videos,” if they involve your friends and family, are a hell of a lot more relevant than 99% of the stuff on TV these days. So while mainstream media still shakes its head and can’t understand why people would think user-created video is more relevant than the high art they produce, well, they’re destined to fail in the long run. All in all, I think this is the greatest missed opportunity for television companies in recent memory.