The growth of user generated multimedia doesn’t appear set to slow down any time soon and new company launches in this space don’t either. For those interested in combining photos, video, audio and text in one community the newest entry to the space is today’s launch of Seattle, Washington’s Treemo. Revenue sharing, Creative Commons licensing and a hardware recycling program are the key points of differentiation so far. People unhappy with the corporate influence on other sites and who are heavy mobile users are liable to like Treemo.
The company, known prior to launch as HyperMob, is made up of executives with extensive experience in mobile technology. Much of the site will be cemented if and when it builds up a critical mass of users, but there are some basic qualities that make it stand out now.
Treemo has all the standard content sharing community features but will differentiate itself with revenue sharing and a socially responsible twist. The site enables both desktop and mobile uploading and Oliver over at MobileCrunch has a review of the mobile angle today. Mobile is particularly important at Treemo as the site offers a mobile browsing application in xHTML and converts videos to 3GP mobile format.
Users can chose whether to allow advertising on video and audio pages and receive part of the revenue derived therein or decide to keep ads off their video pages. Company founder Brent Brookler told me that revenue sharing will start once a critical mass is reached and that the split will probably be 50/50. Beyond advertising revenue, some sort of premium service level (as yet unannounced) will be made available.
There’s also drag and drop file management, flash embedding and public or friends network permission levels.
While Flickr has a 20MB monthly upload limit on free accounts, and YouTube has a single video file limit of 100MB, Tremeo’s monthly limit is 200MB and 20MB for a video file. Good for photographers and very short video suitable for mobiles. There’s a 1 GB total storage maximum.
The biggest way that Treemo is likely to draw users is through the social responsibility angle. It’s based in the Pacific Northwest, hotbed of liberal geeks. There’s full support for Creative Commons licensing. Cameras can be donated through Treemo to a variety of 501c3 organizations for aspiring student photographers and thus be written off at tax time. Treemo gives three months of premium service in exchange for the donations and puts an icon next to user names of people who have donated. Mobile phones can be donated through Treemo via Ripmobile in exchange for coupons at a variety of electronics stores. Treemo will also launch a series of contests targeting “socially conscious” multimedia content producers soon.
There’s not yet a way to export your files from Treemo, but I urged the company’s founder to make it as easy as possible and he assured me that there would be at least some way to do so soon.
As an increasing number of users from the dominant media sharing communities grow dissatisfied with the corporate influence on those sites, and as user generated multimedia proliferates, I think that some number of people are liable to like Treemo’s approach of enabling them to turn off ads or share in revenue, apply CC licenses to their work and participate in a community dealing with the huge issue of e-waste.
User generated multimedia is that core of Web 2.0.
We also have to make those apps. user friendly.
Anything is mobile enable is bound to become successful.
It might take some time but the net was not built overnight.
WELCOME TO Web 2.0
It belongs to YOU!
“Treemo is a digital destination designed to inspire your inner artist with an evolving gallery of artistic expression”
my inner artist…
I think that the fact that you can share revenue is a great business model. It will make users want to keep the ads there because they know that no matter what they will be getting something back for their time spent watching the ad. I think that most people would agree with me and keep the ads turned on while they watch their favorite videos. I know that occasionally some people will get sick of the ads and turn them off but I doubt anyone would keep them off forever knowing that they could be making some money for doing almost nothing.
I checked a few of pages of content quickly and left unimpressed.
Maybe they are just filling the space right now?
My first impression
Serge
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I just tried and it looks like a strong flickr compitition. I am FlickrPro but this is in two ways better than flickr it has revenur model for professionals and audio video support for regular just for fun users. If flickr dont think about adding audio video by end of the year I may think about moving to this
They need batch uploading of photos.
I’ve been involved in the closed beta of Treemo (nee Hypermob) for a few months. I know one of the key developers and have got to know a few of the other guys making it happen.
What I really like is that they really are open to suggestions for improvements. The name Hypermob was ditched in favour of Treemo after a bunch of us active beta testers got together and came up with something a little nicer. The Flash player for videos has been my focus, seeing as I’m a Flash developer by day, and that’s become much better over the past month.
Whilst I can’t claim to be an expert in what’s going to come next, I know a few things that have been knocked around. Some really neat things are in the pipeline.
@Mike: The batch uploading will happen.
@Serge: The site’s only been open to the public for a few days, give it a chance!
Well they look pretty cool to me.
A few things I simply cannot compromise on: my data plan running out every few days is not acceptable and the photo/video quality I send should be good. And where a model based on MMS/email comes in, that’s not possible.
I use PixSense. My public page is http://beta.pix...nse.com/Hussain
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