Last week I met the lovely Cathy Brooks, Executive Producer of Seesmic. Cathy has generously given me a limited number of invites for Seesmic and I am giving them out to you guys. The first few people who comment “seesmic me” will receive them.

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of Seesmic, the service can best be described as the Twitter of video, however, Seesmic hopes to become much more than that in the future. The service aims to allow for constant user interaction around video content in an open environment. 

Users can record videos directly from a webcam and publish them to their profile page. Alternatively users can also add a URL from YouTube, and post it to their stream. Each user “follows” and has “followers”, much the same as relationships on Twitter. By the way, Seesmic can already be found on friendfeed. In the future Seesmic is said to integrate with sites such as Skype, Facebook, and delicious.

Recently the Company had acquired Twhirl. According to TechCrunch:

“Seesmic says they will continue development of the application and eventually integrate their own service into Twhirl, making it the official Seemsic desktop client.”

Seesmic is currently in alpha stage. The Company was founded in 2007 by the well known European entrepreneur and LeWeb conference organizer, Loic Le Meur.

I have written in the past about SuTree.com, a site which aggregates instructional “how to” videos. I really liked the concept of SuTree from the time it launched six months ago, as it offered users a one-stop-shop to find instructional videos on any topic of their choosing. SuTree aggregates videos from 5min, VideoJug, MetaCafe, and more. The only criticism I initially had regarding the site was its lack of community features. Users had no profile pages and could not connect with one another. Today SuTree has relaunched its site with all the needed community features and much much more.

Each member can now create his own profile detailing his interests (topics that he is interested in and wants to learn) with the use of tags. These tags can help other users find friends on the site based on common interests, talk to them, and ask them questions by leaving a message on their blackboard. Members can also list contact details, videos they liked, courses they joined, list of their friends on the site, and more.

Sutree has also add a “Courses” feature. A course on SuTree is a set of specific instructional videos teaching a certain topic. Every registered user can create a course. The creator of the course can decide the order of the videos, add his own personal comments and guidelines to each video, and manage a bulletin board for all the members of the course. This feature is intended for people who consider themselves experts in a certain field and who can’t or haven’t filmed videos of their own. For example, a mathematics teacher can create a course under the heading “preparation for the 10th grade” and integrate into it as many video segments as he likes from different sources. He can also add his own guidelines and comments to each segment and send it to all his students.

SuTree has also increased the number of video segments on the site by a 100% since it first launched. Today there are over 10,000 video segments on SuTree from 248 different sites. Yossi Maaravi, the CEO of SuTree, tells me: “SuTree’s vision is that any instructional video that is available online will be indexed in SuTree.” 

Every section on the site (videos, courses and people) now has tags. These tags help the users search and navigate the site between the different sections. SuTree has now improved its internal search mechanism and while navigating and searching the site, the user receives relevant results on any topic in regards to video segments, courses, and people. If you use FireFox or Internet Explorer 7, you can also add the SuTree search box to your browser.

In regards to the upload of content to the site, in addition to the upload of content from users and the SuTree team, the site currently supports automatic indexing of video segments from partner sites such as about.com, foodwishes.com, 5min.com (as mentioned before), viewdo.com and many more. Automatic indexing requires SuTree’s approval and is implemented using RSS feeds of partnering sites.

SuTree is also offering two great new widgets. Site owners or bloggers can now embed the widgets which enable their readers to easily search for instructional videos on SuTree directly from their site. You can check out the widget I added on my sidebar.

In addition, every visitor on SuTree can now subscribe to receive an RSS feed of all the latest videos posted on the site, videos relating to a specific category, or videos by tag.

A cool new social feature which SuTree added called ”Heroes”, allows registered users to receive points for various activities they do on the site. Users can then use these points to add icons of different famous figures that are recognized for their wisdom and unique way of thinking to their personal page. The different figures are given based on the number of points a user has. Users can also give each other icons as a token of appreciation. In the near future, leading users will be invited to join SuTree’s community as moderators.

Another great feature added is called “Wrap & Send”. This new feature allows any registered user to “wrap” a few of SuTree’s videos together and send them to his friends, family, or students as a package. For example, if your parents are going on a trip to India or if you’ve got a friend who you’re trying to help quit smoking, you can create a helpful video package for them.

SuTree has also added educational games to its site. There are tons of games on the Web which help develop your thought process and cognitive skills. SuTree’s team has gathered a bunch of such games that are suited for kids and adults alike and these can be found under the category: “Brain Games”.

Apart from all this, the SuTree site has also had a nice facelift. The site’s original design was very plain and simple. In the new version of the site, you’ll see a new “spiced up” version.  SuTree has also added its own blog written by Susu the bird who you’ll see throughout the site.

It is always nice to see a startup that actually listens to its users’ feedback and suggestions. Yossi tells me: “Our vision is that SuTree will become a live and active knowledge community where every person who wants to learn something can start his/her way on the Web.”  I definitely think that with all the added features, sense of community, and thousands of videos to choose from, SuTree is a great place to start learning everything you want to know.

Matt Danzico, a reporter, has recently announced that he is going to travel around America 2.0 style. He has created this website and is asking all the people watching his video to spread his message:

“Around the America in 2.0 is an Internet-based film project created to explore trust and connectivity. The primary objective of the project is to rely solely on users of video sharing websites, such as YouTube, for food, shelter, and transportation during a trip around the United States.”

On July 16th of 2007, a brief video clip was spread throughout the Internet community asking viewers to transport Matt Danzico from one online user to the next across the entire country within a period of 80 days. During the trip, which begins September 15th of 2007, Matt will create a weekly online television program documenting both his experiences as well as those of the volunteers participating in the experiment.

The purpose of this trip, as Matt says:

“We also hope to disprove the notion of a lack of trustworthiness amongst America’s Internet community. We here at Around America in 2.0 strongly feel that the news media’s insistent concentration on negative aspects of American society has had a substantial affect on Americans’ perceptions of each other, not to mention the rest of the world’s perception of Americans.”

This has got to be one of the most original 2.0 ideas I have heard in a while. It plays on extending online relationships to offline ones and seeing how much these online relationships are actually worth in reality and what online communities really mean to us, the users. 

I wish you much luck Matt!

Here’s Matt’s video:

SuTree, a new Israeli startup which aggregates instructional “how to” videos, will announce its launch today.

SuTree videos are submitted and rated by users, and come mainly from sites like VideoJug and Metacafe.

All videos are nicely organized and there are many different topics to choose from such as: Health, Food & Drink, Home & Garden, Languages. There’s a lot of good stuff there for students as well…wow, I wish I had these tools when I was back in high school. It’s much more fun learning algebra or studying for the SAT’s like this.

SuTree is targeting the same audience as 5min.com, but it has the advantage of containing videos from different communites. I also found SuTree to be clearer, better organized, and more pleasing to the eye in its design. However the big problem with SuTree is this: Even though the site calls itself a “knowledge community”, it is missing the community. Users don’t add profiles and don’t connect with one another. This is a huge advantage that 5min.com has over it. If SuTree is to compete effectively in the instructional videos sector, it should definitely add the social aspect to its platform.

Technorati tags: sutree, israeli, startup, video, user generated, content, videojug, metacafe, instructional, tutorials, 5min, community, social

YouTube is introducing a new functionality to its platform, allowing users to group clips around specific categories.

Up to now, clips have been saved in what often seemed a random process — usually arranged chronologically, but not always.

The new interface will allow users to organize clips according to specific categories. So, for example, music clips can be organized around artists or vacations can be organized around specific activities.

YouTube is becoming much more like Flickr– allowing the users to organize content on their own. This is a smart move on their part as putting related videos together leads to more views and a phenomenon known as “YouTube addiction” - serve up enough related content, and viewers will just keep clicking and clicking and clicking. It will be interesting to see how this new functionality will change the face of YouTube.

Technorati tags: youtube, flickr, functionality, videos, usergenerated, web, web2.0