<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Another video-sharing site gets funded: just as YouTube announces phenomenal growth, New York-based Blip.tv has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from private investors.  I tested the service earlier today, and I wasn't overly impressed.\nFor starters, Blip.tv's terminology is questionable - the focus is on creating a \"video blog\", and each video clip is referred to as a post.  I'm not sure how wise this is: video blogging implies some kind of dedication, while most users of online video sites are quite happy to upload the occasional clip.  What's more, it implies that you actually appear in the video - that's rarely the case with the most popular viral videos.  But it's also true that YouTube users refer to their webcam-based videos as \"video blogs\" (not vlogs or vidblogs), so perhaps it's an easy leap to make.\n\nYou can upload videos to Blip.tv on the web, via your phone, using the uploaders for Mac and Windows or via the plugin for Windows Media Player.  There's also an upload method I didn't expect to see: FTP.  Annoyingly, Blip.tv lets users choose whether to convert their videos to Flash or not.  As a result, many of the clips are in Windows Media or Quicktime format (although Flash is still the default).  The site also supports text blogging, and they're working on a recording feature.  Additionally, they're piloting an advertising system which shares 50% of the ad revenue with the content creator.\nIt goes without saying that Blip.tv also offers ways to distribute your videos - you can post them to your blog, the Internet Archive, iTunes, Slide, Flickr and a range of other services. In the case of Slide and Flickr, still images are sent.  \nTwo things strike me about Blip.tv.  First, that it's fairly geeky.  And second, that it feels unfinished somehow - lots of features are still being worked on, and the interface isn't exactly user-friendly.  But even if the service was superior to YouTube, it's unlikely that it could match the original - YouTube has the largest community, and hence the best experience.  You could build a better eBay, but it's useless if you don't have any buyers and sellers.  The biggest threat to YouTube doesn't come from the startups - it comes from existing players that have huge audiences they can leverage  - MySpace Video, for instance.\n\n\n[See also Metacafe, which announced a $15 million round at the start of July]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/07/17/bliptv-gets-funding-for-youtube-rival/>