Futuríveis

Bob Davis, a partner at venture capital firm Highland Capital says: “The video revolution is in its infancy.

“We haven’t scratched the surface of online video. There will be niche sites that relate to certain types of video. There will be a slew of video advertising sites that specialise in inserting ads and there will be companies that focus on editing video online.”

Another leading VC firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, backed One True Media to the tune of $5m in first-round funding this summer. It allows users to upload video and photos, create montages, add soundtracks and copy video on to DVD.

“Most consumers find editing very hard. Our aim is to help them create something in a couple of clicks rather than a couple of hours,” says Mark Moore, chief executive and co-founder.

He sees the Google-YouTube deal as a catalyst for online video in all its forms as users move more towards watching the web than reading it.

The next revolution coming by later this year will be a kind of “fusion TV”, Mr Moore predicts, with broadband digital video recorders appearing and Internet Protocol television services that will feature YouTube-type user-generated content.

Al Gore’s Current TV channel is one example, while other online services and content owners allow users to “rip” movies and sports footage and remix them.

“We’re only about a year [out] from the explosion of online video,” says Brian Haven, analyst at Forrester Research. “That happened when Apple announced video in iTunes. There is still a lot more content to get out there and it’s not all user-generated either.”

VideoEgg won $12m in third-round funding last month and is becoming a leading infrastructure provider in online video. Its editing tools are used on 60 partner sites including AOL and social networking sites such as Bebo. It has just launched a network that allows ads to be inserted into user-generated content.

“YouTube has shown that a destination site is a compelling approach to short-form video content,” says Kevin Sladek, chief strategy officer.

“But we think there’s a better role for video to play and it’s broader than just one site.”

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