YouTube and Photobucket

Great post from a vc on how YouTube became King of online videos. One thing Fred points out that YouTube did well was allow users to post videos on other sites (especially MySpace). Explosive growth came soon thereafter. This isn't an original concept (and maybe the hundredth time I've mentioned it), but enabling an application to transcend beyond the four walls of an owned site has been a winning strategy. Take a look at Photobucket. They followed a similar strategy, enabling users upload pictures and now videos onto their servers (1 Gig of space free), and using their service as a means of showcasing that content on any other site (including eBay and MySpace). 15M users and 2% of Internet traffic later, Photobucket is profitable and still growing by leaps and bounds, according to Alexa. Food for thought...