Less well-known current.tv is like YouTube in the way that flickr is like photobucket....

It may not ever compete on volume, but will surely compete on quality, revenue and recruiting social media talent.

Current.tv is like Project Greenlight, it encourages video submissions that the community votes on. In fact the community can "greenlight" projects as part of the voting mechanism. And because current.tv is actually a TV channel, it has an avenue to broadcast the best and the brightest. Oh and guess what -- people get paid.

What current.tv has done is probably the model that every channel, that creates original content could benefit from, in addition to it's normal development process. I can't imagine a more cost effective sandbox for television content. I wouldn't be surprised if the concept of a broadcast TV pilot just moves to a social video platform. IMHO this would have been a much better model for Fox Atomic

Current.tv is not a free for all, and it provides guidelines around what it's looking for from the community. It asks for short stories called "pods," mobile video, viewer created ads, and promo spots.

As I've said before, the content will follow the money, but how about the talent will follow the opportunity? Sure some folks will manage to make a career out of YouTube, with its massive audience, but with 65,000 videos uploaded a day, how do you rise above the noise? If you are creating something artistic, thoughtful, thought provoking, where is the outlet for that? Maybe not YouTube?

Current.tv seems to be more of a patron of the arts, a steward if you like, sure they get great content for their TV channel, but they are also encouraging story telling.

Tip of the Hat: Myphonerocks.com

BTW Joseph Jaffe has an interesting conversation going on here at MarketingProfs as well as on JaffeJuice called Why YouTube Imitators will fail. My response is, YouTube imitators will fail as long as the continue to "imitate" and not innovate. YouTube has pioneered a model of social media that no one has figured out how to capitalize on, not even YouTube.

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