March 8, 2007
Cellphones' Coming Attraction: You
On See Me TV, a service offered by European cellphone provider 3, users can watch goofy homemade video clips of a man crashing off his backyard trampoline, a dirt biker jumping over a deep ditch or a blond girl belting out a creepy pop song. The WSJ reports.
"But it may offer something else more serious: a glimpse into how the user-generated content that has transformed the Internet -- blogs, videos and photos -- could also change the mobile-phone business, perhaps at the expense of some of the Web's biggest players.
See Me TV allows users to shoot video on their mobile phones, bypass Web giants like YouTube or Yahoo Inc. and post it to a gallery where it can be watched by others on their phones.
Users downloaded 12 million video clips for between 20 cents to $1.35 a pop in the first 12 months See Me TV launched in 2005.
To spur usage, people who contribute video clips actually get paid for it: 3 says it shelled out about half a million dollars to users over the same period. Contributors get paid 10% of the revenue generated when people download their clip, and are paid in cash via PayPal accounts.
... Because See Me TV's content is user-generated, it requires a lot of adult supervision to ensure it doesn't cross lines of good taste or legality. A dozen people at YoSpace's offices in London watch every video that is submitted and screen out those deemed too raunchy, too boring or in violation of copyright. Some 80% of videos submitted never make it onto See Me TV."
[via The X-Series Blog]
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2007/03/015243.htm