370 days ago I wrote 9 Online Video Predictions for 2009 on my personal blog, but this year I felt this was a more appropriate place to unleash the list of online video predictions for 2010.

Based on my analysis all 9 predictions are quite accurate, especially my Hulu one, so I’m feeling confident about some more good calls this time around as well.

1. Advertisers ramp up their spending in the online video space thanks to an influx of quality content that’s “advertiser safe”, and access to deeper analytics which marketers have longed craved for. TubeMogul and VisibleMeasures will continue to do very well in the analytics game.

2. Collaboration services like Market7 get more valuable and useful to traditional video studios with scattered employees and contractors geographically, and really benefit individuals who connect with others to form global production teams through platforms like our partner Spidvid provides.

3. Broadband TV will further grow as more people connect their computers to their TV. Things could really explode if Apple does in fact offer a $30/month subscription for unlimited premium content via iTunes. I still don’t see an explosion for broadband TV until at least 50% of all manufactured TV’s have direct Internet connections, which should be by 2015.

4. Video creators will start learning about how to integrate products into their videos to generate commission revenues, but the big breakout for interactive video e-commerce won’t truly happen until 2011 as the ecosystem further builds itself out. Overlay.tv is heading in the right direction in this regard.

5. Live video really takes off as platforms like Ustream.tv and Justin.tv get attention from the likes of Ashton Kutcher who do cool new live interactive shows that rival and even exceed TV show’s quality and popularity.

6. Live mobile broadcasting from the average person will take off as apps from Qik and their competitors are now getting approved for the iPhone apps store. It’s nice to see this space get more legit as gaining access to these services no longer require sketchy hacks and jail breaks.

7. At least one of the major online video platforms will bounce out of the market, and at least one will have to change directions like how Joost went from video sharing to more of a white label strategy. Heck maybe Joost will be the company that shuts its doors.

8. Online video creators, actors, directors, and producers start getting movie deals with budgets in the tens of millions.

9. Like it or not pre-roll ads are here to stay as the top online video format for at least the next few years. What we normally see now are TV commercials that are directly transfered online, but I think we will start to see new creatives done such as interactive pre-roll ads which engage viewers right in the video player rather than redirect them to product or promo pages.

10. Small business really jump on board with online video advertising, and look to companies like TurnHere and PopTent to help them with their production efforts.

Can you add #11? In your opinion what is ahead for online video in 2010?

I’m an advocate of Web shows because they offer benefits and other good stuff that TV shows can’t.

While I do have many favorite TV shows that include Entourage, The Apprentice, Dragon’s Den, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and a few others, I’m getting more and more into Web shows because:

- There is no FCC online so the videos and shows while are moderated by viewing communities, the content can be so much more obscene, hardcore, and extreme versus what cable networks can feature.

- Web show episodes tend to be short, and are usually in the 3-10 minute range. By using less filler within the content it allows viewers to not have to invest as much of their valuable time as they would to watch a show like Lost. On a Sunday afternoon I can watch an entire Web show season or multiple season series which is nice.

- A TV show can be sometimes hard to track down if you don’t watch an episode either live, or catch it via time shifting if you have digital cable. A Web show episode is always up ready to be watched, and usually available on multiple video sharing sites.

- Most episodes online can be downloaded for later to watch offline or on portable devices like the iPod. If you want to download a TV show it can be hard to find on a pirated P2P network, and you risk contracting computer viruses that can wipe you out for days.

- If you have a PVR you can rewind TV shows in case you missed something, but otherwise the average cable viewer can’t do the same. With Web shows you can rewind them, fast forward them, pause them, and in some cases even select your favorite clips and share them with others, and even embed them into your own site.

- The TV experience has long been called a lean back approach where you sit back and only consume what you’re watching. The online experience is a lean forward approach where you can engage with your content by commenting and rating, and even add annotations on top of the video player for others to see what you think of the content.

- The video production team and actors can usually be contacted and interacted with directly online, and while some TV stars can be as well through social media sites like Twitter, it’s unlikely you will hear back from them unless you really catch their attention and motivate them to connect with you.

- We trade watching numerous 30 second commercials for the privilege of watching TV shows.  The average show has 22 minutes of content, and 8 minutes of ads, which means that 27% of the time we are watching ads not our show. While some Web shows have an initial 7, 15, or 30 second pre-roll, and an occasional mid-roll ad,  the majority of the time we get to see the show we signed up for straight through. Overlay ads show up in the lower portion of online video players at times, but those can be easily closed by hitting the ‘x’ button on the ad directly. It’s safe to say the content/ad viewing experience is much better online.

- If your remote control breaks down, or you run out of batteries for it, you are stuck changing channels on your cable box or VCR depending on your home entertainment setup. I can’t remember the last time my mouse let me down.

- If you want to watch HD on your TV then you need to buy a HD box that also costs extra each month on your bill. If you have a HD computer screen then you are free to view the ever increasing amount of HD video content online.

I know I’m leaving important differences off this list, so if you have more to add then place a comment below or send me a tweet.

When UnleashVideo was launched last summer (of 2008) the idea was to provide a quality only video sharing network which would compete with the likes of YouTube, Metacafe, Revver, and others. With the video sharing space so competitive now in the form of thousands of sites there is no reason to compete directly against these players anymore.

Our strategy has shifted from allowing only pre-approved creators to upload video content, to only accepting uploads from collaborative production teams on Spidvid. So if you want to unleash videos on our site visit Spidvid and join their video production community.

Future video pages will feature content from Spidvid, have Facebook connect integration for comments, increased social features, and have Google Maps showing where each of the team members is based out of. These maps will show the global structure of the collaborative production teams, and outline that videos really can be created with members located all over the world.

The whole site is having a makeover to make each page more simple to navigate and use, and with less unnecessary features and images to display it will allow pages to load quicker, and videos to play faster which has been a past concern among viewers.

We expect this roll out to happen later next month just in time for Christmas. Thanks to everyone who has supported UnleashVideo 1.0 over the last year and a half, and we look forward to your engagement on our new and improved UnleashVideo 2.0 very soon.

We have been planning a site makeover for a few weeks now and are going to start implementing our plans for a cleaner, simpler, more beautiful user interface for viewers to interact with.

After seeing Facebook come out with their lite version earlier this week it certainly reminded us that getting back to our core purpose (delivering quality video entertainment in an enjoyable way) is what we want to do.

It’s also important to our video sharing site because we plan on delivering a good amount of video content originating from Spidvid’s collaborative production community later this year.

We expect to release UnleashVideo.com Lite early next month in October.

It would be nice to fill this blog full of remarkable content every day of the year, especially now that we have given everything a complete makeover here.

Over the next couple of weeks there are plans to reduce the amount of features and functionality so that pages load faster and the site interface is easier to use.

New video content is our focus going forward and we are unleashing the 4th season of our sponsored web series Assisted Living over the next few days. We’re also very excited about the future video content coming from Spidvid’s community in the coming months.

Thanks to everyone for viewing and engaging with the videos on our site, your community involvement is very much appreciated.

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So as far as we know UnleashVideo.com was the first video sharing website to allow more than 1 person to be part of video project. We have allowed this since we launched last year in May 2008 where any video creator could work with any editor, and then automatically give credit to the editor for the work they did on the video.

Our parent company Socially Collaborative Media Inc. has just recently released Spidvid, a site focused on connecting individuals together within the video production industry. Through these connections, collaborative teams can be formed to collectively produce quality video content. See these 2 visual models which will help you to better understand how this model works.

Since Spidvid is very new and in private beta, the first compatible video sharing site is our very own UnleashVideo.com. There are plans to broaden the distribution ecosystem but for now UnleashVideo is the destination to view, share, and engage with the content derived from Spidvid’s creation and production community.

We don’t expect any videos to be available until later this month or possbily not until next month, but certainly look forward to the creative new content soon. To keep yourself nicely updated on all new content, easily subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you’ve been following our Twitter account over the last few weeks, you know that we’ve had issues with our unleashing functionality.

We are happy to announce that we have fully restored all functionality, so all systems are a go again.

We have also taken additional precautions to ensure that our servers are more protected from unwanted future attacks.

So if you have some great quality entertaining videos, we would love to review them and feature them on our site.

So our video sharing site has been down for the last few days now as we fully recover from the aweful hacking our servers took a couple weeks ago. Not all features and functionality are working 100% but we’re working hard to get back there as soon as possible. 

Season 3 of Assisted Living will be released (we hope) this Wednesday. To make up for the pushed back release date we will be featuring the first 3 episodes of the season to catch up on our initially forecasted schedule. 

We will build UnleashVideo.com back up stronger than ever, and thank all of the individuals who helped us through this difficult time.

It’s never fun reporting bad things, but our servers have been hacked and we need to spend time restoring them back to normal, and increasing their security going forward. This is the first time we’ve had to deal with issues like these, and we will do everything possible to ensure that events of this nature don’t happen again.

On the positive side of it all, it’s flattering that someone out there wanted to take us down, so we must be doing something right. 

We planned on releasing Assisted Living Season 3 last week, but some functionality including video uploads have been affected. We hope to release last week’s episode, along with this week’s episode together either on Easter Friday or Easter Monday. 

Thanks to everyone for their patience, especially to the creators who wanted to unleash a video for us to review. 

Stay tuned into our blog, or follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/unleashvideo) for further updates.

We made what we call the “thumbnail navigation system” at the top of the site wider so that it fills out the entire new site’s width. You would be surprised on how difficult a job it turned out to be, but it was worth the time investment. 

We would like to make the site’s green background white instead (to make things easier on the eyes), but it will take an estimated 24 hours to do. The site is usually pretty easy to develop and design around, but in this case not so much.  So this project may take a back seat for now. 

We are hoping to have an official launch party sometime this summer, so if you would like to attend just become a fan of ours on Facebook and tell us that you’re in.