Given the rumored Microsoft buyout of Ustream.tv, I started thinking about the really interesting (and crowded) online video market. Below, I’ve listed the the big (or interesting) sites, by category. I’m measuring participatory video vs. broadcast, and live video vs. on demand:

Participatory and On Demand

YouTube is, obviously, the big kid on the block. Google paid $1.65 billion for the video sharing site, and with good cause. It completely dominates the online video market, accounting for 31% of the total videos watched in the US on the Internet. However, despite the tons of great, original content, there’s also an ocean of crap. There’s also an argument that YouTube is fueled by lots and lots of copyrighted material, which is a pretty lousy business model. MySpaceTV, Yahoo Video, Metacafe, and DailyMotion are similar video destinations. If you’re trying to make your video go viral, these are the sites to use.

Something different and really interesting in this field is Vimeo. It’s clean, it supports HD, and it has interesting privacy and sharing options. And unlike the sites mentioned above, nothing can be uploaded to Vimeo that isn’t created by the user. There are no music videos or Family Guy clips. Instead, there are just loads of cool, original clips. Even better, the comments on Vimeo are great. Vitrolic homophobia is disturbingly common on YouTube, but a glance at the comments on Vimeo shows some intelligent and friendly insight. It seems like a real community.

Similarly interesting is Blip.tv, which specializes in vlogs. Wallstrip and Rocketboom are good examples of the high quality vlogs that use the Blip platform. Last August, PC World rated Blip as their favorite video sharing site. TechCrunch did likewise in October. This week, I posted my first vlog using Blip. I wanted to use Vimeo, but I was little intimidated by the outrageous level of quality in videos across that site. Blip, however, is also excellent platform, and probably better suited for the casual vlogger.

Brightcove is another video player, though it seems to focus on carrying content for big, established media doing web video. Sites like The Atlantic, Time Magazine, and Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive use Brightcove. It’s also the web player of choice for Barack Obama.

Participatory and Live

In March 2007, Justin Kan decided to start “lifecasting.” That doesn’t mean he was taking molds of people. It means he started carrying around a camera and broadcasting his life on the Internet, live. Justin followed up this personal project with Justin.tv, which lets anyone create a lifecasting channel. Joining Justin.tv shortly thereafter was Ustream.tv, which I tend to visit if only because they have so much good political content. They’ve been picked to stream the Republican National Convention, and they also covered the Virginia Democratic Party’s JJ Dinner, at which Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Mark Warner spoke. Stickam is another lifecasting site, and it probably has more traffic than Justin and Ustream, but it seems the least fashionable of the three. Seesmic is a French startup that is, essentially, Video Twitter. You record short video clips and they get integrated into a public timeline. You can also to choose to only view your friends’ timeline.

Kyte.tv is even savvier. Kyte lets you upload video to a player that has really neat built in chat. But it’s also more than just a video player. It lets you create channels, where people can upload a video response. In that sense, it’s kind of similar to Splashcast. Some call this “social broadcasting.” It’s very close to two-way video. Again, it’s like Twitter Video, except with channels. So it’s more like Jaiku Video.

Qik.com is just ridiculous, letting you broadcast live video from your cellphone to the Internet. It also lets you chat with people watching your video. So while you’re shooting a clip, someone watching on the Internet can type, “tilt the camera to the left,” and you’ll see it on your phone. You need the super cool Nokia N90 to use Qik, but it’s still wild stuff.

Broadcast and On Demand

Joost, Hulu, and Veoh are the major offerings in this space. They take familiar broadcast content, and put it on the Internet. Joost was the first major offering in this field. But it doesn’t really count as a website. You have to download the Joost software, and it turns your computer into a television, complete with channels and everything. But it’s also got a social element, with widgets and chat and all that fun Web2.0 stuff. However — and I haven’t checked this in a while — I was always left a bit underwhelmed by Joost’s programming options. Look at their most popular channels to see what I mean.

Hulu is a joint effort from Fox and NBC, and I’ve got to say, I use it constantly. The writer’s strike means new episodes have come at a slow pace, but the networks have been pretty good about uploading older shows. Just this week, it seems every single episode of NewsRadio got put on the site. New episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy definitely keeps Hulu in my rotation.

Veoh sorta works like YouTube, in the sense that anyone can create and upload videos. But it’s real strength - and why I put it in this category - is its role as an aggregator of broadcast video. Not only does it have Hulu videos (Fox and NBC), but they also have CBS and Viacom. When you throw in affiliated networks - FX, Bravo, Comedy Central, USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel - you realize that Veoh has a ton of TV.

As a weird side note, I have this visceral negative impression of Veoh. It’s indescribable and definitely not fair. It’s probably because Hulu just looks better.

Broadcast and Live

This is actually a really tricky category. Zattoo is, supposedly, the best live broadcast (legal) Internet client out there, but it’s really more European focused. In my mind, news and sports are the only areas where you actually need live broadcast television on your computer. CNN has very good about live streaming, and all the various major sports leagues are figuring out computer broadcasting. I believe that Major League Baseball has had a live Internet package for the past few seasons. In fact, I actually remember, sophomore year, in Politics of Space Policy, sitting next to a Mets fan with the Internet package. He was constantly watching the Mets during lecture. I also know Setanta Sports has some packages that allow you to watch football matches on the computer. I imagine that a P2P live broadcast client could be successful if it aggregated a few news feeds and some sports feeds. I’d pay for a client that let me flip between CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and Setanta (Arsenal TV).

There are other ideas worth considering:

Broadcast and Participatory?

CurrentTV occupies a weird space where content is broadcast, but also user generated. And much of that content is available online, on demand. Perhaps it’s more On Demand and Participatory, but just so happens to also be broadcast.

“Floating” original content and Vodcasts:

My favorite Internet “show” is Bloggingheads. But Bloggingheads has its own unique video player and is only broadcast from its site. You can’t find it on YouTube, DailyMotion, or MetaCafe. Or you can download it as a vodcast. Is this completely unaggregatable content? Is it just floating in cyberspace, never to be folded into a YouTube or Vimeo? I can only watch it as a download, a vodcast, or on the Bloggingheads site? Bloggingheads does provide RSS, but does that really help me? Perhaps it does, but in truth I either want all the videos I need aggregated in one space, or I want an RSS feed for every video creator I follow. Update: YouTube, unfortunately, doesn’t offer RSS for its videos. How the hell am I supposed to watch CommunityChannel or VlogBrothers? OK, so they do. Interesting…

iTunes & AppleTV, Netflix & Blockbuster, XBox & Wii, TiVo & Comcast:

Holy crap, what about the television in the living room? People love their plasma screen TVs. Anything you can’t get online, you can buy from the iTunes store, or rent from Netflix, or rent on your XBox, or tape on your TiVo. Netflix, interestingly enough, is going to shift towards distributing content through hardware. They’re developing a set top box with LG, and they’re planning on distributing movies through the XBox Live Marketplace. And did I mention DVDs?

Bringing it full circle: Web video, broadcast television, and the policy angle

For what one pays for a monthly cable package, it makes much more sense to buy your media à la carte. Why pay for thousands of hours of television you’re never going to watch, especially when there’s much better programming being created on Vimeo and YouTube?

A la carte is the increasingly logical conclusion. But, for obvious reasons, the large cable companies are totally against it. They argue that the current pricing model - where the consumer buys large tiers of channels - supports programming diversity. The super popular channels subsidize the less popular. Without this trickle down, they argue, new channels wouldn’t build audiences with enough speed, and selling advertising would be impossible. New channels would flounder. Smaller channels would fail. And in the end, so they argue, prices would go up for consumers, even if they only ordered a few channels.

Interestingly enough, one of the biggest constituencies in favor à la carte pricing is the universe of concerned parents groups that deplore TV indecency. Also - and this is an obvious red flag - the small cable operators are in favor of the a la carte pricing model. They say they’d be happy to provide a la carte pricing, but the big cable operators refuse them. I’d read this whole article to understand the legislative battle, but the conclusion seems to be that the best option would be the creation of a la carte options along side the current tier system. Seems reasonable enough to me.