5min: Life Videopedia
Duncan Riley
14 comments »
The semi-finals of the European focused Startup 2.0 contest were held in Madrid on the weekend, an event with 15 of the best/ most promising Web 2.0 startups out of an initial 300 nominees presenting.
5 startups were chosen as finalists with the final to be held in 2 weeks time.
Amongst the final five was 5min, billed as a “Life Videopedia”.
We’ve covered similar start ups previously, most recently SuTree, which like 5min hails from Israel. English company VideoJug also operates in the space and took $30 million in funding last week.
5min sits between the two in terms of function. SuTree is an index of external how-to content, VideoJug creates their own how-to content. 5min is more like YouTube, content is hosted on the site and is user submitted.
5min have created a video system specifically for instructional content. Video creators can add a storyboard to uploaded videos to help others better understand the content. The need to focus on particular skills in uploaded videos has not been forgotten. Video on 5min can be played in slow motion or frame by frame, and the inline player supports zooming in and out for a more up close experience.
Given the interest and money in this particular niche there’s definitely something in the water. 5min presents a familiar setup to any person who has used YouTube style video sites whilst applying a number of unique features that are sure to win the hearts and minds of the DIY minion army.
It seems that the ‘instructional content’ element of the site could be the most interesting. Definite monetizing opportunity there down the road.
Why would anyone want to compete against google?
- Mash them up; I would prefer sutree - any day over this one,
I think these ideas are all very good, but it’s all going to depend on how well they roll it out, to who and when. I think the idea of instructional videos created by users is a cool idea, but whether or not it really flies depends on how well the people running the start up understand the web.
There are many of these type of sites. But I still preffer Youtube.
I find this site very helpfull, well designed and friendly. I can’t even compare it with YouTube. Not any video streaming site is YouTube… The Smart Player is awesome !!
A site called http://www.instructables.com/ has succeeded in creating an active community of content creators and readers. The material on the site tends towards the scientific, tinkerer, and gearhead communities. They originally started at the MIT Media Lab.
Also Make Magazine (http://www.makezine.com/) and CraftZine are very popular with this crowd.
All of the aforementioned have incredibly passionate and targeted user bases. Without the same passionate content creators these sites won’t get very far. However, because this company seems to have a broader scope of content, they might have more opportunities for attracting a wide user base. They could also look into partnering with existing content creators (for example: DIY or cookbook publishers), digitzing their content, and selling them “sponsored” placement.
We have published a review about it on the 23 April…
http://www.businesshackers.com.....t-of-life/
A grat site with a very clear concept! They are not aggregating (which is the easiest way to go), but are going for the IV league. I think the design is unique and not a ME2, which gives them points.
It’s a nice marketing tool and I think it has huge potential…
This is a great site. You can’t compare it to all the ME2 sites that copy youtube. This site is refreshing in the design and the smart player feature.
It would be nice if 5min offered a point or challenge with the video learning experience. Like votobooth.com but for educational videos. Brainplugg.com is hosting a video challenge for users who love to find or produce educational videos. The highest rated videos each week can receive a 100 dollar Electronic Gift Certificate from amazon.com Check it out at http://www.brainplugg.com/video