August Spotlight: Video Bomb

Video Bomb Video Bomb (videobomb.com) is a social site for ranking and bookmarking favorite videos from all sources on the Internet. The site is akin to the popular digg.com site, but for videos. Users rank each video submission by "bombing" them. Video submissions come from various sources of viral videos (YouTube, Google Video, etc.).

The site is written and operated by the Participatory Culture Foundation, hosted here at the OSL. The PCF also provides a powerful cross-platform video application called Democracy. This video platform ties in to the Video Bomb website, allowing you to view and bomb the incoming videos straight from the application. Video Bomb has grown to over 150,000 unique visitors a month since it's launch in February. Check them out today!

Video Bomb screenshot Nicholas Reville, Executive Director and Co-Founder of PCF, kindly answered some questions about Video Bomb for us:

OSL: Where did your organization come up with the idea for Video Bomb?

NPR: We wanted an easy way for people to create their own video RSS feeds of things they like--del.icio.us for video, essentially. Let's say you have a friend that watches hundreds of videos online. She can use Video Bomb to make a feed of her favorites that you can subscribe to. In addition to letting people make individual feeds, Video Bomb serves as a community filtering site where the things that people like filter up to the front page.

OSL: How do you see Video Bomb fitting in with the larger goals of the Participatory Culture Foundation to create an Internet TV platform?'

NPR: Our goal is to, as our name implies, find ways that people can actively participate in creating, sharing, and curating culture. Video Bomb is the sharing tool for our platform and a way that people can play a role in finding and highlighting the best of internet TV.

Democracy Logo OSL: What is in the future for Video Bomb and it's users?

NPR: Video Bomb is gradually becoming more integrated with Democracy Player. We want to make it dead simple to add videos to your feed and share your feed with friends. We're also about to add a few new features to the web side of things, most notably a chunk of javascript that users can paste into their own website or blog that will display the videos that they've submitted or bombed.

Thanks Nicholas, keep up the good work!