Don’t overlook the visual component of social media marketing

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, social enterprises, social media managers, marketing professionals, businesses, brands, Web publishers, photographers.

Guest post by Karissa Van Hooser
Marketing associate, Walker Sands Communications

It seems as though everyone is looking for creative ways to engage their audiences through social media. When social media experts develop a campaign, however, many turn to the usual outlets, Twitter and Facebook, with good reason. These social media outlets reach a large, engaged audience.

Flickr, on the other hand, is an often overlooked but effective social network where the emphasis is on visuals: photos and short video clips. Here are a few reasons why you should add Flickr to your next social media campaign.

People are visual
1You’re able to tell a story in a way you can’t through other mediums. Let’s face it: people like to look at pictures. Plus, the change of scenery is nice. Most people, when browsing online, typically stare at text; mix it up to create more ways to engage with and inform your audience.

You can share your photo stream
2The Flickr community is not the only place where people can see the photos you post to the site. Flickr makes it easy to share photos across all social media platforms.

It’s good for searches
3The tags you assign to your photos are used in search. This allows people with your interests to more easily find you, and enables your audience to grow beyond people who already know about your brand.

Higher picture quality
4Picture quality is much higher on Flickr than any other social media platform. On Flickr, you will have fewer grainy images, and your presentations will be much sharper.

Creative Commons
5Flickr provides a safe platform for pictures. They offer creative commons, which means you pick the stringency of your copyright. This feature can give you peace of mind that others aren’t using (or misusing) photos without your permission. This is something you don’t always get with other social media platforms.

You can start discussions
6Flickr allows you to create groups and comments, just like all other social platforms. Although the focus is on photographs and videos, people are still interacting with each other – and could be interacting around images and videos of your brand or client.

Now, go get a Flickr account and let the fun begin!

The post 6 reasons to use Flickr for your next media campaign appeared first on Socialbrite.

The Story of Stuff from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Filmmaker Annie Leonard offers advice on becoming a network-centric organization

At the TechSoup Global Contributors Summit in San Jose on March 15, Annie Leonard, an independent filmmaker in Berkeley, Calif., gave one of the standout talks, discussing how The Story of Stuff — the film and the project — came to be.

Annie recounted that she had once worked for a traditional environmental organization that was typical of many mission-driven nonprofits: hierarchical, top down, holding its expertise close to the chest, wanting to “own” its cause. A remarkable thing happened that transformed the way she now creates and distributes projects: “The Story of Stuff,” which has received more than 12 million views in all its incarnations on YouTube.

Because her message resonated so deeply with me and the packed audience, I took her aside a few minutes later and recorded this 7-minute video interview that provides the backstory of how “The Story of Stuff” went viral and lessons that nonprofits, businesses and other organizations can take away.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

The networked approach to getting stuff done

Over time, Annie says, she became “obsessed with all the environmental, social and health costs” of the way in which consumer goods are produced, and so she developed an hourlong presentation that she gave at schools, churches and community groups for four years. She took her passion and decided to turn her slide show into a film (an approach that reminded me of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”). With the help of Free Range Studios, a creative services firm, and backing from the Tides Foundation, they created a 21-minute documentary short that put it online for free in December 2007.

“Our goal was to have 50,000 people see this film,” she says. “And to our total amazement we got that in one day. It’s now been over three years and we have over 12 million views in over 200 countries and territories around the world. It’s just exploded the conversation on how we make, use and throw away stuff and, most importantly, how we could do it a lot better.”

The film shows the damaging consequences of consumerism on the environment, developing nation, personal well-being and happiness. The Story of Stuff Project was created to extend the film’s impact by creating a network of people who are discussing the issue in the hope of creating a more sustainable world. The film has inspired ballets, puppet shows, entries in parades, high school and religious curricula and sustainability programs. It has been shown on several national television programs and translated into dozens of languages. One tactic they used that paid off handsomely: a Creative Commons NonCommercial No Derivatives license that allowed almost anyone to reuse it. “We wanted this to be a community-held resource,” she says.

After years of going it alone, Annie came to a realization: “I need to turn the volume up on this work. I need to inspire and engage millions of people so that the issues I care about are not just my personal pet project. So I turned to a more network-centered model and it has been so valuable. A network-centered model has been very different from an organization-centric model. Networks focus on collaborations and connections, on being inviting and engaging so that we’ll take anyone who wants to help on any terms they want.

“With the previous environmental organization I worked with, really the only way people could help was to write a check, and that’s really not [effective]. With a network-centered model, people have a lot more skills and talents and energies to contribute. Network-centered models are more about building those connections than building a big infrastructure. They’re more resilient, they’re more flexible, powerful and long-lasting.”

It’s a lesson many organizations and activists would do well to internalize. Adds Annie: “The real lesson is that if you want to get something done, you really have to work in networks rather than trying to go it alone.”

6 advantages networks bring to cause organizations

At the TechSoup summit, Beth Kanter also interviewed Annie and was given access to her notes for a case study, which I’ll share here:

While Annie isn’t suggesting that we bury the old-school, centralized, command and control model of organizing, she feels that different times demand evolving models. Annie says that working as a network offers these advantages:

(1) Networks are more resilient and flexible and can bigger risks because they don’t have to worry about the longevity of a big institution.

(2) Networks are participatory. They can get millions of people to help, not just paid staff.

(3) Networks offer many different ways to get involved. It’s a buffet of ways to engage people that fits them. Networks value people on whatever terms they want to participate.

(4) Networks are a reflection of where the world is going. There’s a big paradigm shift in everything from our relationship to material goods to organizational models. We’re moving from a “mine” to “ours” environment.

(5) Networks make us all smarter. By sharing information freely and welcoming input and feedback, learning is accelerated. Networks evolve faster because of this.

(6) Networks are more fun. Annie said that she had spent many years trying to get people to talk about the issues that she cared about, thinking her experience and expertise were enough. It wasn’t until she learned to let go of control and shift from lecturing people to inviting them in that conversation exploded.

While I don’t agree that there’s a shift underway toward an “ours” culture with regard to material goods, I think there’s no question that collaborative methodologies — seen in everything from wikis to Socialbrite to the business examples cited in The Starfish and the Spider — are on the rise as a way of getting work done and goals accomplished.

Next for The Story of Stuff: ‘Citizens United’

The Story of Stuff” was just released as a paperback book last week — on the same day that she appeared on The Colbert Report (check it out, pretty funny).

And, tomorrow, The Story of Stuff Project is scheduled to release a new documentary short on Citizens United, the infamous January 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate monies pouring into U.S. elections, “selling our democracy to the highest bidder,” in Annie’s words.

Do you agree or disagree with Annie’s conclusions about the benefits of using a networked approach on behalf of a cause? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

The post The networked activist: How ‘The Story of Stuff’ went viral appeared first on Socialbrite.

Quality, affordable choices for your nonprofit include Fotolia, morgueFile, Bigstock

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, educators, foundations, businesses, individuals. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media.

By Kim Bale
Socialbrite staff

We live in a visual age. Top-tier sites like Mashable and TechCrunch discovered long ago that blog posts accompanied by an image attract many more readers than posts without a photo. So nonprofits and cause organizations should always be on the lookout for rights-cleared photos that can be used on your website, blog, in your whitepapers or reports, in your multimedia slide show — anywhere you make media.

Searching for the perfect image to accompany a project or blog post can prove time-consuming and exhausting even before you factor in the costs, rights and licensing issues. While the emergence of royalty-free stock photography websites has alleviated the stress of licensing concerns, the millions upon millions of images available can often be overwhelming, given the difficulty of choosing which site to use and whether to purchase a single image, join a service or opt for free photos. (Royalty free means you need to pay only once to use the file multiple times.)

Relax! We’ve compiled this list of royalty-free websites to help you make an easy, informed choice. You may want to begin with our Free Photos Directory, a pretty fantastic standing resource at Socialbrite. Sometimes, though, a small fee will deliver big rewards. Regardless of the nature of the project — or the budget — these stock photo sites are sure to deliver. Some are free, others cost just a few dollars.

Which photo services do you like? Let us know in the comments below.

Free stock photo sites

Freerange Stock: A free community service

1Freerange Stock is a completely free stock photo community, supported by advertising revenue and showcasing photographs from talented photographers. Community members can browse the site, download photos for personal and commercial use and sign up to contribute their own work for a share of ad revenue. Create a free account and you can take advantage of their photo tutorials section, browse thousands of royalty-free images and download high-quality photos immediately. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Email their support team and they’ll search for the image in their offline archives!

morgueFile: Comb through free 200,000 images

2The morgueFile is home to a very user-friendly stock photography database of more than 200,000 images spanning a wide variety of subjects. Anyone can visit the site, browse and instantly download photos and participate in community bulletin boards, all for free. The morgueFile license lets you download and adapt photos for personal or commercial use without attribution, and all contributors to morgueFile agree to this license. Register with morgueFile to upload your own work and take advantage of their Portfolio and Organize features.

Stock Exchange: A free service from Getty Images

3Sign up for a free account at stock.xchng and begin browsing more than 350,000 free photos provided by more than 30,000 photographers. These numbers are constantly growing, making SXC one of the leading sites for free stock photography. Community members take part in frequent discussions to tackle site problems and collectively improve the website. Owned by Getty Images, SXC is tied to prominent names in photography and strives to remain ahead of the pack for royalty-free images.

Flickr/Creative Commons: Share the creativity

4This is where we always start: Arguably one of the most valuable resources for a nonprofit, Flickr: Creative Commons boasts more than 100 million Creative Commons licensed images. These images are divided into different CC licenses (explained here) — we recommend nonprofits use the Attribution, Attribution-NoDerivs or Attribution-ShareAlike license. Once you’ve picked your images, you can optionally return the favor by adding a Creative Commons license to your own works.

Stockvault.net: No registration needed

5Easily search more than 18,000 high-quality stock photos at Stockvault.net. The website’s design is appealing and its image library is easily searchable, bringing you one step closer to finding the perfect photo for your project. No registration is necessary to download these free images and to use their section of helpful Adobe Photoshop tutorials, though creating a free account will unlock special features like organizational lightboxes, photo comments and emailing options.

Low-cost stock photo sites

Fotolia: Nearly 2 million professionals

6Joining Fotolia’s community of more than 1.9 million professionals affords access to more than 9 million images and illustrations for sale as single downloads or part of a subscription package. Registration is free, and if you don’t find what you’re looking for in Fotolia’s free downloads, you can buy single images for as little as 75 cents each or 14 cents each with a subscription. Customize your purchase by selecting from image sizes and resolutions suitable for the Web or larger print projects, or take advantage of Fotolia’s selection of high-def videos and other works. Socialbrite’s John Haydon uses Fotolia on his blog.

Dreamstime: Search on 9 million images

7Offering both free and for-purchase royalty-free images, Dreamstime invites registered users to browse, download and buy photos from a selection of more than 9 million images. Registration is free and images for purchase are priced as low as 20 cents each. Photographers either offer their images for a donation or attach a small price tag, and users can download the photos or purchase them using credits or through a subscription service. The flexibility and large selection Dreamstime offers makes it a valuable asset for any nonprofit.

iStockphoto: 10+ years of stock photography

8A pioneer in the user-generated, royalty-free stock photo space, iStockphoto offers free membership and downloadable files using flexible, pay-as-you-go iStock credits or as part of a subscription package. Each image is assigned a certain number of credits based on size, complexity of the work and the collection it belongs to. iStockphoto has also partnered with Thinkstock.com, a site offering a plan that allows subscribers to search images across stock photo sites, including iStockphoto, Getty Images, Jupterimages, Punchstock and Clipart.com. Plans range from image packs (5 downloads for $59) to one-year subscriptions for $199 that are best suited for organizations looking to download images daily.

iClipart: Need clip art?

9iClipart sets itself apart from other stock photo sites by offering a large selection of clip art alongside photos and flexible subscription plans ranging from one week for $12.95 to one year for $49.95. The diverse library contains more than 7.8 million images that can also be purchased individually, without subscription. Pro and plus accounts unlock even more download options, and all subscription plans can be compared.

Bigstock: High-quality up and comer

10With more than 5 million royalty-free images, Bigstock is becoming a major competitor in the stock photo space. Bigstock is free to join and its design makes it simple for members to manage their account, purchase credits and add photos to their shopping cart for easy checkout. Photographers are also encouraged to upload their photos and earn 50 cents per credit spent on their work, which could add up to $3 per download.

The post Top 10 sites for free or low-cost photos appeared first on Socialbrite.

Why Wikipedia supports open video from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

From time to time, Socialbrite explores the use of open source tools by change-makers and social benefit organizations — see below for our past coverage of open video and how open standards can benefit nonprofit tech.

The second annual Open Video conference returns to New York University on Oct. 1-2. If you can make it, it’s a must event for evangelists of open content. At last year’s event, I got to meet Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation and an early advisor to Ourmedia.org, who helped (via email from Berlin) steer us toward the right set of Creative Commons licenses.

In this video interview, Möller tells me why Wikipedia decided early on to support open standards for all video used on the online encyclopedia. “We’ve always had a commitment to open standards,” he said. The Wikimedia brain trust made a decision early on not to support Flash, MPEG-4 or any other proprietary format on Wikipedia when the formats are controlled by a single vendor or handful of vendors. “If [users] all have to get permission from one entity, we would never accept that kind of market power” in other mediums, like TV or radio.

Without question, it was the correct decision — and a vastly important one.

As a result, today Wikipedia has more than 30 million text articles — all available under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license — but only 3,000 videos. Erik hopes that changes. He encourages contributors to collaborate and publish “rich educational materials” through video, photo slide shows, animation and rich media on subjects like genetics or natural selection. “The potential is enormous,” he said.

Watch, download or embed the 6-minute video in Theora Ogg on Tinyvid.tv (and let us know if you can’t view it in your browser)

Watch, download or embed the 6-minute video on Vimeo

Watch or embed video on YouTube

For those so inclined, here is the Wikimedia Commons entry on converting video to the Theora Ogg format. The free Miro Theora video converter is available for Windows and Mac computers and features a simple drag-and-drop interface. Since version 3.5 of Firefox was released last year, Firefox now supports HTML 5 video and audio in the browser without the need for proprietary formats like Flash.

So far, Theora remains a promising but geeky codec that hasn’t advanced much since I last wrestled with it three years ago. I just tried converting my H.264 video into Theora using Miro Video Converter — and it came out as a green screen. Firefox 3.6, Opera, Google Chrome and Safari can play back Theora videos with varying degrees of success. But, to be sure, the era of open video on the Web has just dawned.

Side note: Erik Möller developed the proposal for Wikinews, a Wikimedia project, and organized the vote that implemented it. Before joining Wikimedia, Erik was a freelance journalist and author. He now lives in San Francisco.

A production note: I’m trying a new “outro” on this video — that is, the music over the closing credits — with “TheForce” by j1s, a CC BY-NC musical snippet that I found on beat.org.

Related

• Toward a Web of open video: an interview with Mozilla’s Mark Surman (Socialbrite)
• How open standards can benefit nonprofit tech (Socialbrite)
• Boxee and the promise of open media (Socialbrite)
• The promise of open source video (Socialbrite)
• Kaltura: open source video (Socialbrite)
• Creating media: Tools, tutorials, resources (Socialbrite)

The post Why Wikipedia insists on open video appeared first on Socialbrite.

On Wednesday Esteban released WP-License Plugin Reloaded to the WordPress community, and already others have discovered it in the WordPress plug-in directory and have begun to use it. Here’s Esteban’s announcement on his blog:

The post Socialbrite developer releases CC plug-in appeared first on Socialbrite.

As part of our silo-busting effort at Socialbrite, we’ll be showcasing cool technologies that haven’t received enough attention in the nonprofit and social change worlds. So here’s a one-minute video, announcing the launch of Socialbrite, that I created last night on Animoto:

Introducing Socialbrite.org. Nonprofit tech + Causes + Open source + Social media.

We’re using it at the top of our Media Center.

Check out Animoto: They’re doing amazing things with a very small staff. You can try out a few remixes for free, and choose from music and images on their site; after that, it’s 3 bucks a video or $30 a year.

I chose to upload Enur: “Calabria (Club Mix)” — given that it’s only a 60-second snippet and has a noncommercial context here, it clearly falls within fair use. (One image included in the video is Creative Commons licensed: Muchilottu Bhagavathy Theyyam ceremonial mask by freebird (bobinson).)

The post NPtech + causes + open source + social media appeared first on Socialbrite.

We’re happy to launch today with the news that our lead developer, Esteban Panzeri (above), is releasing a new WordPress plug-in to the WordPress community. It’s called Creative Commons Reloaded, and it lets individual blogs or group blogs assign Creative Commons licenses on a post-by-post basis.

That’s especially useful at sites like Socialbrite, where some of us (me, Beth, Ken) release our works under a CC Attribution license, while others (Amy, John, Katrin) use a CC Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike license. Creative Commons lets you fine-tune your copyright, allowing others to reuse it as you specify.

I asked Esteban, a tech guru/analyst at Lenovo in Buenos Aires, why he developed the plug-in on his own time. “I think the old copyright model is outdated,” he said. “It does not fit the digital era. I’m convinced that it strangles creativity and it is bad for business. Creative Commons is a good step in the right direction. With so many excellent blogs out there, I thought it would be a nice way to help all those authors get a simple way to license their work. That and ‘giving back to the community’ that has helped me achieve so much.”

He cited Michael Geist’s recent post pointing to a new Harvard Business Chool working paper that suggests weaker copyright protection has benefited society.

Esteban — who happens to be the most capable programmer I’ve ever worked with (he Twitters in English here and in Spanish here) — was quick to credit Nathan Yergler (whom I worked with four years ago when he developed the original CC Uploader app for Ourmedia), who created the original WordPress plug-in, WpLicense, which applies to an entire site and which CC Reloaded is built upon.

Some details about the plug-in:

• Esteban is aiming to post it on the WordPress.org plug-in directory on July 6. It’s already fully functional on this blog (see below) and he’s now working on the documentation.

• On your Add New Post page, you’ll see a “Creative Commons Licensing” area that lets you check boxes sayng whether you want to allow others to remix your work, to allow or prohibit commercial uses and to require Share-Alike usage. You can also choose a jurisdiction for your license if you’d like.

• You can customize the look as you’d like. We chose a brighter Creative Commons logo, and styled it with a top border and tinted background by tweaking the CSS.

Thanks, Esteban, nice to see that your development work on Socialbrite is already paying dividends!

Update:

• See Socialbrite developer releases CC plug-in

• You can find the plug-in here: WP License Reloaded

The post Socialbrite releases Creative Commons plug-in appeared first on Socialbrite.

“CC licenses enable anyone to specify to the public how they want their work to be used. If you’re a photographer, you might be happy to let someone use your photos so long as they give you credit. CC licenses make it easier to be clear about how you want your content used.

The Creative Commons License application allows users to choose one of the six Creative Commons licenses to apply to the content they upload to Facebook.”

Why use Creative Commons in Facebook?

You may be licensing your blog posts or website content under a CC license, like I do (you can see the license information in the right hand column).  Maybe you use Flickr and share your photos there under a CC license as well.  Why, because you want others to know they can share or post your cool photos so long as they give attribution (or any other stipulated criteria you’ve set via the licensing options).

Facebook has a great deal of content you are creating, uploading, posting, and sharing.  Why not license that as well so that your Flickr photos and your Facebook photos are both included. So that your blog posts and your status messages are both licensed.

How do you get started?

It’s pretty easy! Just visit the Creative Commons Facebook application page here (be sure you are logged into Facebook first) to add the application and select your license. Something to keep in mind: “Because of the way Facebook applications work, users cannot select a license per-photo or video, and must choose a CC license for all items of a particular type of media.”

If you want to suggest ideas or features for the Facebook application, you can visit the Creative Commons wiki.

What do you think?

Will you use the application? Do you use Creative Commons on other online spaces as an individual or as an organization, like a blog or website?  How did you select which license you wanted to use?

This post originally appeared at Amy Sample Ward’s Version of NPTech.

The post License your photos and more on Facebook appeared first on Socialbrite.

Drop down to see:
YouTube   Blip.tv   Ourmedia   Internet Archive   Yahoo Video   Revver   Google Video   Metacafe   DoGooder TV

Many organizations and users don’t give a second thought to the rights you forfeit over the use of your content when you post a video to a site like YouTube. Here’s a site-by-site breakdown of what you get — and give up — by consenting to the Terms of Service at some of the major video sites.

YouTube

YouTube’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your work but grant YouTube wide rights to reuse it.
• Creative Commons licenses?: Not yet permitted. (Creative Commons explained.)
• Payment to producers?: No.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Yes.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Yes.
• Share your data with third parties?: No, though users may need to opt out.
• Unsolicited emails?: No, though users may need to opt out.
• Bottom line: YouTube is the 800-lb. gorilla of video hosting sites. Most people are there to gain visibility rather than income for their works; it remains to be seen how they’ll react if their work is sold to a third party without compensation to them.

Blip.tv

Blip’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your work but grant Blip rights to display and distribute it. “We claim distribution rights only for the purpose of delivering the service while giving the user as much control as possible,” CEO Mike Hudack says. For example, Blip makes the video available as an RSS feed, creates thumbnails and transcodes the video to Flash.
• CC licenses?: Yes.
• Payment to producers?: Blip gives video producers a 50-50 revenue split from ads (when users earn at least $25 per quarter).
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: “Our interpretation of our TOS is that it allows us to syndicate the content, cross-post it and put it into RSS feeds, but that it doesn’t allow us to sell the content to third parties without the permission of the creator,” Hudack says.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Yes, on the site, but the creator can opt out of that and would have to opt in to allow ads to be inserted into the video.
• Share your data with third parties?: The site does not share user data with third parties except if it’s necessary to provide a service to the Blip user, in which case the site holds the third party to the same standards as Blip itself.
• Unsolicited emails?: The site never sends e-mail to users except in direct relation to an action they’ve taken, and they always have the opportunity for users to opt out of those e-mails.
• Bottom line: Blip is perhaps the best solution for video producers who want free, reliable hosting for their works in a community setting. See their mission and principles statement.

Ourmedia

Ourmedia’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your work and must decide on a license when you upload it.
• Creative Commons licenses?: Yes. Ourmedia’s default license is a Creative Commons license, though members may choose from a wide palette of options.
• Payment to producers?: No.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Ourmedia does not do this. The site is restricted by the license chosen by the member.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Yes. The site uses accompanying text ads.
• Share your data with third parties?: No.
• Unsolicited emails?: No.
• Bottom line: With the Internet Archive serving as its media repository, Ourmedia remains a creator-friendly options for grassroots media producers. (But decide for yourself.)

Internet Archive

Archive’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your work and grant the Archive the right to display and preserve it.
• CC licenses?: Encouraged.
• Payment to producers?: No.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: The Archive does not do this.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: The Archive does not do this.
• Share your data with third parties?: “The Collections are made available to researchers and may be … provided to third parties [such as libraries], for any use, without limitation.”
• Unsolicited emails?: Users consent to being contacted but the Archive has sent out no such surveys in the past two years.
• Bottom line: An artist-friendly repository that is more about long-term preservation than viewer-friendly video hosting.

Yahoo! Video

Yahoo! Video’s TOS and Additional Terms of Service.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your video but license to Yahoo! the right to use it in a wide variety of ways.
• CC licenses?: No. CC licenses are not supported and appear to be inoperable on the commercial site.
• Payment to producers?: None.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes. Yahoo has 14 days to take it down.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Yes.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Yes.
• Share your data with third parties?: Yes.
• Unsolicited emails?: Yahoo requires you to allow unsolicited emails, though in practice doesn’t spam you.
• Bottom line: With millions of viewers and a large community of producers, Yahoo! Video is a good option for those looking for greater visibility, but don’t be surprised if you see your video on partner sites as well.

Revver

Revver’s TOS (Member Agreement).

• Ownership/licensing: You own your own video and Revver distributes it with an ad attached.
• CC licenses?: Yes.
• Payment to producers?: Yes. Users earn 50 percent of revenue generated by ad on their video’s page.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: No, though the site could use it for promotional purposes.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Revver attaches an ad to the end of your video.
• Share your data with third parties?: No.
• Unsolicited emails?: Yes, but you can opt out of emails.
• Bottom line: Revver is one of the most popular choices for video producers who want to go beyond the hobby stage and earn money for their work.

Google Video

Google Video’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You own your video but license to Google the right to use it in a wide variety of ways.
• CC licenses?: No. CC licenses are not supported and appear to be inoperable on the commercial site.
• Payment to producers?: Yes; Google takes 30 percent of revenues
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Yes.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Yes.
• Share your data with third parties?: Yes, under certain circumstances or with user consent.
• Unsolicited emails?: No.
• Bottom line: Google Video and sister site YouTube are good ways to get your video out there, assuming you don’t expect much in return.

Metacafe

Metacafe’s TOS.

• Ownership/licensing: You grant the site a non-exclusive license to use your work in a wide variety of ways.
• CC licenses?: The site’s TOS makes no mention of CC licenses. But spokesman Mark Day told TechSoup: “We recognize Creative Commons licenses. As far as whether we will post a video with a Creative Commons license, the licenses can all be a little different and sometimes complex. We review each application to Producer Rewards and determine what makes sense in each case.”
• Payment to producers?: Yes. Producer Rewards program pays poster $5 per every 1,000 video views — one of the site’s major attractions.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes, unless content has been sub-licensed through Producer Rewards program.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Only if user participates in Producer Rewards program.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: The site uses advertising only sparingly.
• Share your data with third parties?: Not without user permission.
• Unsolicited emails?: Not in practice.
• Bottom line: Metacafe is attractive to video producers who want to earn income for popular, viral videos.

DoGooder TV

DoGooder TV’s TOS: Go to Dogooder.tv and click on Terms of Use.

• Ownership/licensing: Site is open only to nonprofits, which own their own work.
• CC licenses?: No. The site requires a non-exclusive license and the content owner can license the content elsewhere under a CC license.
• Payment to producers?: Allows nonprofits to add a link to their donation page to video.
• Can you remove your work?: Yes.
• Can they sell or license your video?: Yes, for the purpose of “getting the nonprofit’s message out to new people,” says a spokesman.
• Can they put ads on or around your video?: Unclear.
• Share your data with third parties?: Unclear.
• Unsolicited emails?: Unclear.
• Bottom line: A good, free hosting solution for nonprofit organizations.

Note: Since this article was published, Magnify.net is also worth your consideration as a producer-friendly hosting site.

Related

• Understanding Video-Sharing Sites’ Terms of Service
• TOS comparison chart

Brian Satterfield of Techsoup contributed to this article. Disclosure: J.D. Lasica was the co-founder of Ourmedia.

Updated Aug. 14, 2009. Please comment on, correct or expand upon this article.

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