User-generated instructional platforms have really took off over the last couple of years. Instructables is one that I use and just have a browse around on a regular basis — some really cool and interesting stuff in there — and these sites have really started to appeal to people with the DIY ‘hacker’ mindsets, specifically teen kids. Now Life Videopedia from 5min enables the same thing but takes it to the next step: users can actually post their videos rather than a guide with pictures and text.
How It Works
Basically, 5min is a vertical YouTube. Exactly in the same way as YouTube, which is really the hub of all things, users can upload their video and have people watch it on the site. All major formats are accepted, and the only rule is that the video has to be short (<5 mins?). Once the video is uploaded, they can share the link with their friends and keep track of the views, etc. Since YouTube is so big and there’s a whole community of these instructional video makers, the folks at 5min simply want to seperate the two. It’s worth noting that they aren’t the first people to do this either. VideoJug, which has been around for a few months now does the same but has come to hosting, for whatever reason, an increasing amount of more professionally-created ones than the average user-generated video.
Opinion
While Life Videopedia is a fairly well executed attempt and is sure to get some traffic as more diet coke+mentos discoveries are made, it’s really not the holy grail of instructional videos. I think since YouTube, Metacafe and others already have large userbases, sites like this and VideoJug are going to have a tough time facing to such competition. After all, who wants to upload their ‘normal’ videos to one site and ‘instructional’ to another, when they can do both on the same one?
