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TalentTrove – Share Your Talent on Video
Whatever your skill, if you can film it you can share it on this site to attract more viewers and perhaps even get talent-spotted. It could be comedy, music, writing, news reporting, acting, fashion, cooking or a variety of other talents typical of TV: TalentTrove lets you set up a free account to upload and share your videos in an organised way with an interested community.
The site is very neatly organised making it easy to set up your account and select the right categories from the toolbar and submenus so viewers can find your videos. It’s also quick and easy to find videos on the subjects that interest you. I went straight to comedy and watched the most popular videos, then set up my own account to upload my online interview shows so I gave it a good test.
The steps for uploading videos are straightforward if you’re uploading files from your own computer or selecting videos from your YouTube channel. I usually need to use embed code as my shows are on another website, and there wasn’t an easy option to do this – I’m sure it must be available on TalentTrove somewhere and it would be handy to have it on the main upload screen. With more and more people broadcasting their own talent and taking part in citizen journalism this site is an excellent idea and one that I’ll certainly use myself.
ShortReviews – Mini Critical Reviews
Whether you like to review movies, books, music TV programmes or something else you can do it here. The site specialises in mini reviews, so a glance at each page lets visitors instantly see which ones are of interest. This is good for viewers, but also makes it more tempting to get your ideas down quickly, add a picture, and share them. You can also give a star rating to go with each review.
Like many sites this one it going the way of building a community and that seems to be an increasingly popular approach. Users are encouraged to invite friends and look at each other’s reviews. With so many people preferring to Tweet short comments rather than commit to longer blog entries, and with visitors liking to get their information in quickly digested chunks, ShortReviews should appeal.
CulinaryCulture – Share Recipes and Restaurant Reviews
Good cookery websites can be among the most popular on the internet and Culinary Culture has many of the features people look for. Members of the Culinary Culture community can share recipes and photos of their food from the comfort of their homes with no need for fancy kitchens and glossy magazine styling. The chat forums let people also become friends and plan dinner parties and get-togethers.
The website isn’t just a recipe-sharing social network, it also encourages members to list their local eateries and review them so that visitors to their area will know the best places to dine. The information is presented under Places, Recipes, Events and Community, and the website makes it easy to upload photos to illustrate each section. The recipes can be sorted by levels of difficulty, relevance to you, and also by date so you see the most recent.
The photos of the locations look inviting, the plates of food mouth-watering, and there are interesting events of various sorts listed – including a Whisky Fest, a World Festival for food lovers and a Vegan Bake Sale on the first page. This website is definitely my kind of thing and should appeal to many others.
Kideos – Like YouTube for Kids
Anyone with children will know how much they want to go on to YouTube, but much of the content is unsuitable so parents have to keep an eye on what they’re watching. Kideos gets around that problem by providing a children-only website for videos, with content for all ages from two up to ten-and-over. The content is checked for suitability and the videos do look tempting for younger viewers.
This site will mainly appeal to younger age groups, with children starting to grow out of the layout by the time they reach eleven and older. It has the bright colours very young children enjoy, and the videos are presented in a different way to YouTube, with clear menus and a good sized photo of each one. A teenage Kideos would also be appealing, and as children get older they would like to be able to upload their own videos and interact with the community.
Videos can be selected by age group and also from a range of categories including Most Popular as well as favourite TV and book characters, cats and dogs, cartoons and educational. It’s good to see some other languages, with Spanish and Portuguese included, and more languages would help older kids learning the basics. Parents can create playlists for their children, and all videos have been screened and approved by the Kideos panel.
Filmgator – Movies Reviews and Community
There are plenty of movie websites out there so it takes a special design to gain members. Filmgator looks like it has a good chance by combining a comprehensive aggregation of films together with reviews and a social networking approach to involve the community. Movies are well organised by category and by date, so you can find older ones as well as recent movies and those coming soon.
The front page was immediately helpful to me with a selection of the most watched movies out at the moment (I chose one to go to), plus the most in-demand movies coming soon (I chose one of those too). Along with brief information there are reviews by the community so you can get involved and let others know your experience of the movies you’ve seen.
The site aims to be more than a database, helping visitors choose movies, and as well as reviewing movies members are invited to rate each one. This helps Filmgator see what individual members like so they can be sent relevant information about movies. Each member has a timeline to record the movies they see so that friends can take a look, and by following each other it becomes a film buff social network.
YouMicro – Like YouTube for Music
YouMicro aims to do for music and audio what YouTube has done for video. There should be great interest in this as many people want to share their music without having to film their performance or set their audio track to video. Another good thing about YouMicro is that it isn’t limited to music but could be used for any audio file. This will appeal to comedians and other performers, including writers performing their work and sharing fiction and poetry. It could also work as citizen journalism, which is really catching on at the moment, to let people tell their own news stories or voice their opinions.
YouMicro describes itself as a community so it should work as a social network, very like the YouTube approach. Members can upload their files, promote albums and events, and create playlists. A Help Centre and video tutorials help members get started, while the MicroForum encourages the community to get chatting. For ideas on what to listen to the most popular audio broadcasts are listed. It’s a site designed and run by a young team, and the vitality comes across. I’ll be using this one myself for broadcasts as I use video at the moment but sometimes sound alone is more effective.
StreetMavens – What’s Happening Near You
This is an international website that lets you search by country and city to find what’s going on locally for leisure and business. A search for events in London certainly turned up some interesting ones, and although not all cities are included yet there is already a good selection. It’s also possible to list your event, making this a useful place to promote an activity, and with the Southbank Centre and National Portrait Gallery among the first events listed it feels like a worthwhile resource for event promoters and those looking for something to do.
Businesses can use StreetMavens to list their activity, and the map at the top of the main page has a zoom-in feature that makes it a handy street map. Like many recent websites it includes community features, with a Street Talk page to let people make comments, a page for photos, and a final page where you can search for others on StreetMavens to friend them. It all feels very new and information needs to be added, but judging by the start this could build into a popular website as users keep adding content. It would also be a handy resource for researching cities before you travel.
Socially!