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"SelfcastTV is a newcomer in the increasingly crowded video-sharing space.  It comes courtesy of the team behind Blinkx, a video search engine that I've never fully grasped (it seems to be more of a technology play than a consumer facing search engine, imho).  Having wasted countless hours on YouTube already (this guy is an amazing guitarist, btw), I'm not keen to add another one to my bookmarks.  Nonetheless, I've noticed that Selfcast is doing a few things right and a few things very, very wrong.\nWisely, the Selfcast team have pre-populated the site with car crashes, accidents and stunts - these make for some of the most addictive viewing on YouTube.  Case in point, a skydiver narrowly avoiding a plane (this won't be visible in my feed!):\nNot so smart: they've used the same naming scheme for all these self-made accounts (name followed by number), which makes the fakery fairly obvious.  But the really big problem here is that there's no commenting.  I'm always shocked to see video sharing sites making this mistake - when will they learn that the appeal is in the interactivity?  One of the most compelling aspects of YouTube is that it generates endless discussions around a video - even if most of those are flame-wars, there's still the sense that you're part of a community.  On a similar note, I've never understood why Revver, the only video sharing site with an actual business model, doesn't allow comments.  Frankly, a video-sharing site without comments isn't a video-sharing site at all - it's just on-demand TV.\nWhat I do like about Selfcast is the use of Flash instead of thumbnails for the previews.  Play around with the site for a few minutes and you'll find yourself instinctively clicking on every clip in  a neverending game of \"what happens next?\".  Annoying though they may be, I get the sense that these previews will drive up the pageviews pretty significantly.  \nSo will Selfcast make a dent in YouTube?  Nope.  Even if you built an ultra-slick, fully-featured YouTube rival, it still wouldn't beat the original.  As far as I'm concerned, it's all about network effect and first mover advantage, just like MySpace.  That's not to say that the rivals won't build decently sized communities - they will.  And maybe one day they'll figure out how to turn those pageviews into profits.\n[Hat tip to Steve Rubel]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/04/30/selfcasttv-another-youtube-rival/>