Neothoughts

For a while now, Netscape Anchors have been producing video casts that report on all types of events such as movie reviews, ComicCon and IFA. Today, with very little fanfare, Netscape rolled out support for a proprietary syndicated online video format. The video below is an example:

If you watch through to the end of the video, you’ll see that the embed code pops up. You can also access the embed code by right-clicking on the player and selecting “Syndicate This…” This is a great feature that you could imagine would help these videos spread virally as people watch them on websites other than Netscape. It means one less click between you and being able to share the video.

You can see how these videos are displayed on a Netscape submission here. Notice the “Video” icon, which will identify all video submissions. Notice also that the submission links to a an article with more info on the report. This could blur the lines between content creation and social bookmarking similar to the way Newsvine has.

Currently, only Netscape Anchors can contribute videos, so the big question in my mind is: will they open it up so that users can contribute videos as well? I had the chance to speak to Jason Calacanis about this and he confirmed that “Yes, of course” users will be able to contribute videos “very soon.”

This is a bold move for Netscape. We’ve seen the popularity of YouTube and we’ve also heard the speculation on how much it costs them to run. Will Netscape be able to capitalize on the online video sector? Jason’s take on it is that “watching videos, and syndicating videos, is becoming a huge consumer behavior online. We looked at social news and syndicated video and thought…these things would work great together.”

One also has to wonder if Netscape intends to compete with YouTube for marketshare. On that topic, Jason was quick to point out that “syndicated video is NOT a business. It is a feature. YouTube is not yet a business, it’s just a feature. As they start to do content deals with right holders, or build out their community, they will have a business. Flash video existed long before YouTube, they just did it better than anyone.”

So what will be next for Netscape? As Jason says “who knows what we’ll do next. It’s really up to the users.”

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