fter the excitement of social networking sites, the latest buzz in the internet scenario is video-sharing. YouTube is probably one site that single-handedly stimulated the video-sharing phenomenon - when it was acquired by Google in August last year, the company reportedly had a 43 per cent share of the online video market. There has been a steady rise of such sites in India too. The roll-call includes aapkavideo.com, apnatube.com, meravideo.com, videodubba.com and infeedia.com, among the more popular ones. And all of these were launched in the last 11 months. Why are such sites sprouting? Are they just aiming to do a YouTube in India?

Kanwaldeep Kalsi, CEO, meravideo.com admits that the site was inspired by YouTube, metacafe and rever. "But," he says, "we formed the site in February 2006, much before the buyouts of YouTube and groupper took place." How and why has video-sharing become a craze? Is it because the market is flooded with mobile phone cameras? Or is it because the emergence of low-cost, high-speed connectivity has provided users the chance to explore newer horizons?... more