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Entrepreneurship
by tj on June 7, 2006

Youtube has taken the online video world by storm and is already a phenomenon on its own. It's happily burning millions to get the widest market share and exposure. But for users Youtube simply provides a superb video sharing experience.
As you would expect clones (good and bad ones) are coming up - I took a look at Germany's cloning factories:
1) Pictured above is MyVideo done by a Berlin based media agency and an outsourcer in Romania. The venerable Samwer brothers are rumored to be behind this project too. The site looks pretty active and has all the features you would expect from a Youtube clone.
2) LoadTV is still in stealth mode and has some unique ideas (which I can not disclose alas) on how to make a better Youtube customized for a German audience. The company is currently raising funds to get the business off the ground. While some ideas are rather exotic the team is certainly able to pull this off successfully.

3) Matblog gives his experiences on Sevenload. The community does not look super active - many videos were rather old - but hey it's free service anywayl. Basic Thinking has a (German) interview with the founders.
Please let me know if the list is missing on other new German Youtube clones.
### Update - Just posted now Kolja comments that Zeec is up and running. Zeec is a picture and movie sharing community with precious little German language - but the site looks nice, just started in the middle of May and may contribute to the Youtube competition in Germany as well.

Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/23791
Mr Wong
Vote for Youtube in Germany - Samwer brothers next deal?:
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Rating: 9.06 out of 17 vote(s) cast.
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Response from:
Kolja
(06/07/06 4:51pm)
There is also http://www.zeec.de/
Response from:
Roberto De Simone
(06/08/06 2:29am)
Hi DJs Weblog,
thanks for your intersting post about the german „YouTube-Clone“ scene here.
I work as a freelance project- and strategy-consultant for two well known
Web20 companies here in Germany.
I have to mention that if you wan’t to use the word YouTube-Clone regarding videocommunities, only "myVideo" will fall under that
dircribtion i think. I mean, they really cloned almost „frame-by-frame“ the whole YouTube structure. I’m a bit disappointed about this WebService. Don’t they have their own way to enrich the idea of providing videos into the internet? Also a bit dingy is the fact that myVideo is a „German“ Start-up, but the company is officially based in Romania. That looks weird to me. Are they affraid of any copyright related lawsuits in future? To me the whole story has a bit of that mp3-case (allofmp3.com) in russia.
sevenload is no doubt the best video- „and picture“ communiy in the german internet. You are totally right that sevenload is still small and don’t have that many users. But hey, they are officially online since bit more then a month. And within that time, they really caused a very positive buzz around them, check out Technorati for sevenload.
The reasons are clear, they provide their own ideas and creating new services. Sevenload was the first service combining videos and fotos into one community.
Since yesterday we have the first „Clone“ of sevenload here in Germany. Focus-Online opened their own video-„and“ foto-platform http://live.focus.msn.de,
huge Media-Corporation behind that project, Burda-Media.
loadTV is not officially online and you need personal access. Why can't they go online, I mean all other services are also still in BETA. Heard from quite reliable sources that this service looks quite close to sevenload too, colorwise and structurewise.
Zeec is still small and more a niche provider. They will have to do a hard job to compete with sevenload and others.
The future will show how many of these media-communities will survive. I think the german marked is more then saturated for such services. So my advice for the VCs: Concentrate on existing Media-Commnities and try to help them to become bigger insted of further fragmenting the market with new media-communitiy-start-ups.
Kind regards, Roberto De Simone
thanks for your intersting post about the german „YouTube-Clone“ scene here.
I work as a freelance project- and strategy-consultant for two well known
Web20 companies here in Germany.
I have to mention that if you wan’t to use the word YouTube-Clone regarding videocommunities, only "myVideo" will fall under that
dircribtion i think. I mean, they really cloned almost „frame-by-frame“ the whole YouTube structure. I’m a bit disappointed about this WebService. Don’t they have their own way to enrich the idea of providing videos into the internet? Also a bit dingy is the fact that myVideo is a „German“ Start-up, but the company is officially based in Romania. That looks weird to me. Are they affraid of any copyright related lawsuits in future? To me the whole story has a bit of that mp3-case (allofmp3.com) in russia.
sevenload is no doubt the best video- „and picture“ communiy in the german internet. You are totally right that sevenload is still small and don’t have that many users. But hey, they are officially online since bit more then a month. And within that time, they really caused a very positive buzz around them, check out Technorati for sevenload.
The reasons are clear, they provide their own ideas and creating new services. Sevenload was the first service combining videos and fotos into one community.
Since yesterday we have the first „Clone“ of sevenload here in Germany. Focus-Online opened their own video-„and“ foto-platform http://live.focus.msn.de,
huge Media-Corporation behind that project, Burda-Media.
loadTV is not officially online and you need personal access. Why can't they go online, I mean all other services are also still in BETA. Heard from quite reliable sources that this service looks quite close to sevenload too, colorwise and structurewise.
Zeec is still small and more a niche provider. They will have to do a hard job to compete with sevenload and others.
The future will show how many of these media-communities will survive. I think the german marked is more then saturated for such services. So my advice for the VCs: Concentrate on existing Media-Commnities and try to help them to become bigger insted of further fragmenting the market with new media-communitiy-start-ups.
Kind regards, Roberto De Simone
Response from:
TJ
(06/12/06 1:00pm)
Roberto,
thnaks a lot for your thoughtful comment. You are right time will tell who does the best job and provides the best service.
I'm not sure if Sevenload's picture addition is really such a big innovation - however there should be enough space for several of the mentioned companies to develop.
I'm looking forward to see that happening!
Best,
TJ
thnaks a lot for your thoughtful comment. You are right time will tell who does the best job and provides the best service.
I'm not sure if Sevenload's picture addition is really such a big innovation - however there should be enough space for several of the mentioned companies to develop.
I'm looking forward to see that happening!
Best,
TJ
Response from:
Werner
(06/19/06 5:02am)
Hi TJ, first of all: great article! I would like to add a few things on Roberto´s comments. It looks like the zeec team has a very strong mobile approach. No other service in any other country has all these mobile goodies embedded and I expect some more surprises from them in the near future. Still beeing 2 years+ ahead in mobile here in Europe - well: if you want to call mobile a niche market!? By the way: has someone here tried their international service at www.zeec.net? Traveling a lot, I did not find any international mobile operator rejecting a connection to zeec yet. Wasn´t it mobile, which made the Samwer brothers rich and famous? ;) In addition: I personally think that only zeec has it´s individual face to the customer. A strong and well designed UI and a strong and stylish brand which is easy to remember. Frankly, I am very bored these days from all those 100% UI-Copycats and I don´t think that Youtube is the mother of state-of-the-art UI-Architecture. Let´s see how all this develops: in any case, there´s variety - and that´s what the market really needs these days.
Response from:
Kasi-Blog
This is a summary of articles and blogs related to StudiVZ. Previously I have written various articles on StudiVZ on the following topics: StudiVZ and TakingITGlobal.org, Facebook, Unister and StudiVZ, 100 blonde friends on StudiVZ, StudiVZ and Penne...
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