As with radio, and then television, and several social networking sites, youtube.com is just too open-ended for parents not to be concerned when their children use the site.  In fact, Youtube recently made a mandate on their site that only viewers over the age of 13 were welcome.

Credit.

In the mornings, when my coffee hasn’t yet kicked in, but my son is hungry for breakfast, I often Youtube children’s videos for him to watch in his highchair as I serve him breakfast.  At nine month’s old, I’m not concerned that he could chose the SNL 10 year Anniversary version of Aladdin instead of Disney’s, but that time is quickly appearing on the horizon.  As a preschool teacher, I know well that three-year-olds understand all too well how to move a mouse and select a link, especially one that is animated or moving.  To save myself the time and energy of filtering the sites of my own, I’ve been looking for media sites that do that for me.  Here are the ones I’ve used and enjoyed:

• Youtube for Children is great when I am looking for a specific child-friendly show for my son.  I’ve found this site to be the most comprehensive, yet simplest site.

• Another site of interest is totlol because the videos are rated and discussed by parents – it takes on more of a forum.  Viewers must be members in order to watch the videos, which are customized by you.  Their ‘AgeOptimizer’ brings age appropriate videos to front of your homepage.  This would be a wonderful site – if it were free.  As it is, the membership fee is $18 a year.

• Finally, I believe Kideo Cafe could be the silver bullet.  Its free, parent-monitored, as the site boasts, and includes videos for parents as well.  It also creates a safe environment for kids to make and post videos for their peers to watch.  Even with this site, however, I have found myself filtering a bit as I have seen several music videos and other more adult-oriented videos.

Do you let your children watch online videos?  If so, from which sites and how do you monitor them?

With the approach of the five year mark of creating films online, our work –and work ethic- leads us to the forefront of the expanding landscape and medium of web video. Our accolades speak for themselves because our work provides the missing piece many other companies, small and large, usually miss: creating engagement and interactive elements to your web series. We have set the next new standard for the industry with the release of our new series for Comedy Central’s Atom.com, entitled “My Profile Story.”

The series takes viewers onto the social network profile of “Jenny,” and her group of friends who make up her profile page. When Jenny logs off, the site “logs on” springing to life a full-on social network satire. The show doesn’t end with the episodes themselves, the story continues on the fictional website that is featured in the video, as viewers can log on to the real MyProfileStory.com, where they can continue to interact with the characters by becoming their friends, reading their blogs, and joining the community at the site.

This engagement provides web viewers with an entire world to immerse themselves with. So many companies believe videos will magically go “viral”, and though instances of that do happen from time to time, when it comes to narrative web series, a fanbase to watch episode-to-episode is challenging to sustain. Good content is good but not good enough to keep the momentum.

The Internet as a video platform provides ample opportunities to provide personalization and interactivity that is nonexistent for television. Despite this fact, truly interactive web series are few and far between, and the full use of this new medium is only in its infancy. We have always championed interactivity and creating community with our content over the years, and “My Profile Story” is the culmination of all of our experiences and all that we learned with a website that opens vistas, spending time in the fictional world built for you, blurring the line where the video ends, and the web site begins.

Episodes of “My Profile Story” can be seen mps.atom.com, and the interactive fictional microsite can be seen at http://www.myprofilestory.com

Benny & Rafi Fine (TheFineBrothers.com) are web video pioneers with their 4 plus years on the web and over 25 million views on their films. They speak at conferences around the country on New Media.

hat tip: MyStarbucks

In light of the holidays, the lull in new shows, and the repeats of all the Christmas specials, Mashable is giving away 2,500 invites to Hulu! What is Hulu you ask? Let me explain……..

“Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy
the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to
provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium
programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature
films, clips, and more. Additionally, we want to give you more choices
of when and where you can enjoy your favorite programming, while
creating innovative experiences that let you watch and participate in
online video in new and exciting ways.”

Hulu features over 150 shows from 11 networks in 13 different genres. My favorites are 30 Rock, Heroes, Friday Night Lights, and Arrested Development but evidently, The Simpsons and Family Guy are the most popular right now. The cool thing is, video streams are now available for download in the new MySpace PrimeTime community within MySpaceTV.

As with any beta site, there are still some things to work on, and I would venture to say that come 2008, Hulu will have addressed a lot of those issues and moved forward with their original strategies in mind, those being, to compete with iTunes and YouTube.