Livelocker is best described as a del.icio.us for rich media content with rating aspects from digg (and a similar interface). It allows users to bookmark, categorize and share links to videos, audio content and photos. The clean interface makes it easy for visitors to explore and find popular content online as well as to attach ratings to content and add them in their own locker.
The content itself is hosted on other sites and your own ‘locker’ and Livelocker itself only stores the link to the content. They have built it like this on purpose so that they can palm off copyright responsibility to the site holders while at the same time providing a community to find and share the latest videos and rich media. This does mean though that they are sending users to other sites and are missing out on long-term advertising potential
The process of adding a bookmark is simple and Livelocker provides a bookmarklet for your browser. The taxonomy of the site is a hybrid approach with categories (the type of content), sub-categories as well as tags. Once submitted other users will be able to see the bookmark and comment on it etc.
Livelocker is based in Los Angeles and was founded by CEO David McClusky, a 26 year old University of California ComSci graduate. It has been in development for 3 months and in private beta for a month prior to recently launching. There will be a broader launch campaign next month and the site is still in very early days with only a small number of users and small amount of links but I am sure this will grow.
Livelocker can serve a purpose as a place to find the latest funny video’s or any meme’s that you have missed out on, as well as a way to bookmark those that you find interesting. What Livelocker provides over using del.icio.us for the same purpose is the focus on rich media, the ratings and a digg-style ranking system where bookmarking a link counts towards it appearing on the front page. I spent most of my review laughing my ass off at some of the top-rated videos and got some fun out of it so you might as well.
Is it me or does it seem that there have been some tightness growing in the video/multimedia space? And also a trend towards the del.icio.us/digg - anization of many sites. Maybe it’s just me.
not so bad, having a filter for video type would be nice.
streaming flash
wmv
mov
Finally! Another viral video site. I was really growing sick of collegehumor.com, break.com, myspace video, atomfilms.com, google video, ebaumsworld.com, and the thousands more.
Call me cynical, but creating another video site and making it “web 2.0″ doesn’t get me going. Besides, viedobomb.com is 10 times better as a web 2.0 video/digg site.
“They have built it like this on purpose so that they can palm off copyright responsibility to the site holders”
Bzzt. Sorry, IANAL but I don’t think this is protection. Napster didn’t store the music, they only had the indexes (locations) on their servers, but that was more than enough to drown them in legal trouble; Kazaa tried to get out from under by hiding the corporation in Vanuatu but failed because, after all, you can’t really spend your big bucks on Vanuatu.
One of the key differentiators pointed to by the Bit Torrent crowd is the system’s decentralization but even so Bit Torrent the company is taking pains to distance itself from activity with which the RIAA can pin them down.
Again, IANAL and I’m sure the Livelocker team got good legal advice before launching but unless some explains better than this how their service differs legally from Napster I’ll stay in the skeptics room.
BillSaysThis: they can be ordered to take a link down under the DMCA (the same for Google and other search engines) but they can not be held for damages if they co-operate with these requests or are seen to co-operate.
The Napster finding was that they were building a business and profiting *mostly* from pirated material, they knew it, and they did nothing to stop it. Same result of the Kazaa case in Sydney