VIDEO FOR BRAND COMMUNITIES

In case you haven't been paying attention, there are currently 60+ video sharing sites out there. Some are YouTube clones, some were concieved specifically to enable IPTV plays (and create a market for producers, affiliates/syndicators, and advertisers), some started out as video editing web apps. Recently I've been watching for players that have tools in place for managing video in brand communities, and while I've mentioned them before, in just the last week or so Vitrue and Jumpcut have really ramped it up with new sites and product offerings. Vitrue has launched two seperate things: Branded Video Communities (BVC) and AdMixer. BVC is a customizeable video page that allows users to upload, share, etc. and (as an option) allows rating and comment features, among others. It's geared to running contests. AdMixer lets brands provide video assets to users for remixing (remember Chevy Tahoe?? Yeah, like that). For some reason it looks like the two offerings can't be used together--they're certainly not presented that way. From a user perspective, the offerings come off a bit heavy handed. Sample text from the homepage: "ViTrue is a safe place for Brands... At ViTrue, we give consumers the tools to create authentic, engaging advertising experiences that never compromise the integrity of your brand." Hmm. Sounds a bit controlling, no? Two way conversation? or "unprecedented results at a fraction of the usual cost of production." (Also from homepage). More interesting to me is Jumpcut's B2B page. They're going after the video contest crowd too, but also offer BrandSpace and InLine. The two are similar, but BrandSpace is a Jumpcut interface and Inline is an API built into the client website. Both allow all the social media video tools we've come to expect, plus a video editing web app. The unknown here is what kind of sorting/management tools they offer. CGM video ad contests and other outward facing programs get all the attention, but there are many brand communities operating behind firewalls. Video in these communities will be about market research as much as (or more than ) group communication, and community managers will need tools to both pull video into presentations (to clients/boardmembers) and to create external (outward facing) marketing campaigns. They'll need good search/sorting functions too, beyong tags and keywords. How will these video tools integrate with existing community management systems? It's hard to say at this point which these two providers has the better toolset, and how they'd work patched into an existing platform...but if you're starting from scratch I've also found a couple of platforms in the works for broader (video/blog/photo/voip/IM/etc) off-the-shelf community management tools: see CrowdFactory and this announcement from StreetAttack/YFon Global. Long story short: This stuff changes every week. Yikes! How exciting.