Comcast Testing Video-Upload Site
By Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 11/7/2006 11:05:00 AM MT
Comcast is testing a user-generated video-uploading Web site that is being likened to YouTube.
Ziddio (www.ziddio.com), though, will take matters one step further with some of the best user-created content migrating to the cable operator’s video-on-demand platform.
Beta-testing of Ziddio began Monday with an official launch expected later this year. Comcast officials declined to comment on the service.
However, an executive familiar with Ziddio said it will encourage users to submit videos for such different categories as comedy, music, action/drama reality and horror/science-fiction, among others. The goal is to draw in advertisers to support the content, and the best of the user-generated content could “bubble up” onto Comcast’s free-VOD area.
As submissions and the site take shape over the next month, Ziddio will gather user-generated submissions around a pair of contests.
Winners from the Join the Jedi Order contest -- centering around the HD versions of the six Star Wars films, available through Cinemax and Comcast on Demand (www.multichannel.com/article/CA6379921.html) -- will get to visit the Kennedy Space Center and ride the zero-gravity simulator, according to the executive familiar with Ziddio.
Closer to home, Comcast-owned Style wants to see user videos detailing the most cluttered residences, tying into the network’s Clean House series. The winner of the Clean House: Search for the Messiest Home contest not only will get their home cleaned and made over, but will have the transformation chronicled on the series.
Ziddio is owned and operated by Comcast Interactive Media, along with partners interactive-advertising agency Genex and ThePlatform, which helped to create and develop the site.
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