Experts agree that the Internet has undergone a massive shift over the past two years. In what's been called Web 2.0, user-generated content rules cyberspace. The blogosphere has exploded, and millions of people are sharing their opinions, product reviews, political rants, and even humdrum daily activities on their personal blogs. Traditional media outlets had to play catch-up, but even the most staid newspapers and magazines have recognized that ever-changing, real-time content is critical to capturing and sustaining readers' attention.
But text is perhaps the least important component of Web 2.0. Indeed, multimedia rules. Websites depend upon flash, sound, and - most striking of all - videos to grab viewers' attention. When YouTube hit the scene, users flocked to the site to both share their own online videos and to search for videos that were unique or especially entertaining. Indeed, the phenomena became so pervasive that webcams became standard with new computers and even some digital cameras and cell phones came with special YouTube settings so that users could easily capture and upload their online videos.
The next step in the natural evolution of multimedia and the Web is video search portal. Using both traditional and innovative search techniques, video searches conducted through a video portal enable the user to search across the Web using keywords or tags. But the search parameters and returned results employ much more flexible sorting methods than traditional search engines. For example, users can rank videos (using what is called a vrank), and can sort search results by vrank, most recent, most relevant, top favorites, highest rated, title, or random.
In addition, users can view online videos in order of their popularity. By continuously refreshing the search page, a video portal can show the videos that are most popular right now, this hour, today, this week, this month, or all time. Users can also sort videos by length (short, medium, long, or all), by quality (fair, good, excellent, all), or by format (win, real, flash, qt, hi-q, or all).
A good video portal also enables users to browse videos by topic, such as top news videos, top sports videos, top music videos, and so forth. Likewise, users can refine by category (such as comedy, animation, pets, stunts, or news), by channel (such as YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, and so forth), by tag, and by user.
Typically, video portals also enable users to enjoy videos offline as well. For example, users can search for DVDs, music CDs, and home entertainment systems.
There's little doubt that online videos are here to stay. Individuals have begun to incorporate video into their blogs, and news organizations have fully integrated video feeds into their websites. As access to high-speed Internet access continues to spread, an increasing number of people will flock to view online videos. What's more, they will jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and begin to upload their own videos, thus reinforcing the need for video portals.
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