Jumpcut video and its place in the highly competitive online video sector

Posted on November 23, 2007

There are lots of video re-mixing services out there these days. Every one of these companies is hoping that Video remixing will become the next big thing online. Well, video sharing and organizing has more potential than editing and remixing.

Think of all the millions of us out there. How many of us have the time to play around with remixing and editing. Sure, we will try it at some point, say when we produce a new video or some big event is happening on our lives, but for most part after a while we will wander away. The only folks who would pursue that are the ones who are passionate about videos and editing and filmmaking etc. The fact to the matter is there are not too many of us who belong in that category.

We keep seeing all these fancy marketing catch-phrases. “The easiest way to upload, edit, and share your videos and photos.” (Jumpcut); “Set your videos free” (motionbox); “Search, collect and organize your web videos” (dabble); “Make it personal. Mix, discover, interact..”(eyespot); “The easiest way to get your video online” (videoegg);

The bottom line is they are all similar to some extent. We see a pattern. There are three things one can do with video sites. 1.Upload, 2.Share and 3.Edit/Re-mix. YouTube the leader is not much into editing. Other uploaders like VideoEgg does have the social/network component to them, but not big in re-mixing (Though videoegg has evolved into a real nice video advertising platform. Not to mention they have a killer website).

What is special about Jumpcut? Yeah yahoo acquired them and now it is a yahoo service, but what makes jumpcut unique? Their site states: “If creating a video and publishing it to the web seems like a challenge, we think you’ll find that Jumpcut makes it easy and fun. If you’ve been wondering what to do with the video you shoot with your snazzy new camera (or your phone), Jumpcut is the perfect place for you to be creative. If video isn’t your thing just yet and you just want to make cool slideshows with your pictures, Jumpcut is still the best place. Finally, a free online location where you can use all your media, create great looking movies and publish to anyone you choose. There’s nothing else like it.”

We will have to disagree with the last line here! (for obvious reasons!) Few questions: why still have the “uploading photos” component? Flickr is there and you will never get huge traffic to jumpcut for photo uploading and sharing. So then how can you stand out among the rest with just video sharing. YouTube is already a winner in that space. If you want to make millions of users keep coming, you got to have something unique. Jumpcut business model depends entirely on this video-editing component. This is a big risk unless you market mainly with the “social” aspect of it. Like we discussed in the first paragraph of this article, amateurs are the ones who would need an online editing tool and they are not likely to use the service too often. All the serious hobbyists will have their own editing and re-mixing software on their macs and desktops. Videoegg has a better shot than jumpcut, since their business model is quite unique.

One thing we like about Jumpcut is the fact that there are plenty of supported file formats compared to other sites. Based on our understanding, there is a size limit of 100MB like YouTube. Viddler has 500MB and Blip.tv as no limit. We can go on and on by comparing with others, but we will probably end up with a doctorate thesis here, given the sheer number of available sites.

In summary the market is overcrowded and there are already dozens of other YouTube clones that we did not mention in this article. So, here is the million dollar question. Is Yahoo’s investment on Jumpcut paying off? or will it someday? or Is it only a matter of time before yahoo pulls the plug?