hmmm, i don’t know - now we have the bandwidth (ironically) look at the utter dis-interest in telephone/video calls - similarly mobile handsets have had video call features for some while now yet once again it’s greeted somewhat apathetically be even its target ‘yoof’ demographic … am sure people will use this as a novelty for a while (even an old fart like myself will probably have a play) but as the basis for a revenue stream ….?

good luck to them.

I agree.

Building to be acquired is not smart.

Are any of these add-on companies profitable? Im guessing no. Their only hope is to be bought or for a VC to keep them afloat.

I can see creating something like this in a hobby type way, but not for a sustainable business. Good luck to them…

I really like this. Very slick, and takes commenting to a new level.

I would think video comments on this blog would be a very difficult thing to manage considering you would not be able to automatically moderate it.

I had a look at the demo, and I am sure I saw a ‘micro ad’ © pop up just for a few frames,

basically there was a short (static image) ad before the video comment played,

this might be how they intend to make money

I like the idea..I have a few myself

I just saw this, and some online voicemail product, crop up on dozens of MySpace pages within the past week. Both look REALLY cool, I’d use them if I had any time to create a MySpace page (or if I wasn’t worried about what teenage boys would be doing with my pictures).

Anita

with these myspace addons, the massive customisation sites such as skize, bigoo, myspacesupport, doobix, freeweblayouts etc are all run by teenagers from home. they dont have teams of people, nor do they have venture capital.

i was once one of these people and was actually making some decent money until i was bought out, the reason the site was purchased was to slowly funnel traffic from the myspace site to one of his other huge sites, non myspace related.

i think when you see a site like flikzor, yeh it could get pretty viral, and they probably have a team of people running the place, but wheres the revenue come from, myspace customisation sites are a very hard site to monetize.

I dont see many of these huge myspace parasites being a long term business, they might just be out to make a quick buck and move on. too bad that quick buck is harder to make with myspace.

Doesn’t Abazab http://abazab.com/ do something similar? Abazab has been around for at least 18 month, IIRC.

This looks cool and positioning it as a audio/video commenting widget thingy is probably a good way to drive that viral growth, ie. users actually asking their visitors and friends to participate (who in turn…).

I’m still amazed that Hellodeo.com hasn’t taken off with the same demographic…it’s equally simple and doesn’t even require a login, but they havn’t positioned it in the same way so it’s use doesn’t necessarily lead to that viral growth.

Even if Flikzor doesn’t build a destination site off of the base of Myspace traffic, there are other possibilities for business models. Frankly, I think its unlikely that video comments on other peoples myspace pages will be all that compelling a browser experience, unlike Youtube. But there are other possibilities including sponsorship, micropayments/freemium models etc.

I posted on this at the Lightspeed blog (”Whither widgets?”) a few days ago in response to the rumors on Slide’s funding (Lightspeed funded Rockyou). If you’re interested, click on my name in this comment to see the post.

Jeremy - if you invest, I get a kickback or something.

I think there are several limiting factors here one of which is penetration of webcams. It looks like most of the beta users created their videos with a webcam and I don’t have definite numbers on webcam penetration, but I’m relatively confident that it’s less than broadband penetration. So adoption will be constrained to begin with.

Given that, if they do create a significant user base I think the bandwidth and storage costs will pose a significant challenge even with the low quality video which itself is a turn off.

Hey I found a site that seems to be built off the backbone of myspace one of my associates are working on … http://www.rankmyblog.net

Ah, the flikzor logo (above) is lo-res, pixelated.

Interesting find…

I don’t know there’s something about riding myspaces back for your business model that just bothers me. I’m not saying it’s not smart, or savvy to pay attention to myspace’s huge user base and over all monopoly on, well, itself.

I just don’t think I’ll ever use any of these sites. I wish someone would make something crazy cool that like, lets you punch people that are ON myspace VIA myspace by a “punch me now” button. I don’t know, maybe someone could engineer a USB “Everlast boxing glove” kit? I’d buy it.

Point being, they might make money, it might be a worth while product, but i’ll never use it, nor would I want to be involved in that company, but all the best to them!

I don’t think video comments will ever work in the internet. People are just too lazy to start posting themselves talking alone in front of a webcam. I wouldn’t use that service and I don’t see how that can get viral. Plus, there are a lot of other websites that do the samething that came out before this site.

http://Filmator.net an online Flash based mashup presentation tool can create high impact online Flash presentations without the use of Flash, which can then be embeded into Myspace etc. Whats a Filmation? It is described as blend between podcasting, Flickr and Youtube.

Very interesting in a certain world.

Yet, it is the output of a “web 2.0″ in apnea (already).

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I would share an unrelated observation, if appreciated.

An opportunity for a stream of delicious-strong innovations can be perceived right now by scanning the web of information architects and related (many) fields.

A surprising new approach to “social” software and web interfaces is beginning to materialize in these last few weeks.

The existing web 2.0 bit closest to what I am referring to is the visualization table that recently got some visibility on some blogs (guy kawasaki’s one at least). Slightly related.

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The above is just a view based on casual browsing. I am not explicitely into that, my job is programming.

“If someone builds a stable plugin that does that, we’ll be integrating it across all the TechCrunch network blogs.”

We’re working on it.