Ultimate Guide to the Best Video Destination Sites on the Web

by Brendan Lopez

The Internet is an ever-expanding galaxy unfettered by the laws of gravity, quality and quantity. Sifting through the millions of hours of video in search of something watchable has become increasingly difficult, but whether you're into sorority girl webcams, livestreams of breaking news in the Sudan, or comedic videos of dudes who repeatedly high-five, believe me - it's all there. You just have to know how and where to look. Below I've compiled the best of the best video destination sites on the web – all of them are still operational, and hopefully they will all survive for many years to come.

LIVE

The Gist: Stickam allows you to broadcast a live show while simultaneously interacting with your overzealous fans.

Inside Scoop: Leo Laporte, producer of the world's most popular technology podcast on Twit.tv livestreams all of his shows here. It's also home to Eric the Actor's (aka Eric the Midget from the Howard Stern Show) channel, JFSC.tv.

Best Part: The Stream Guide makes the site easily navigatable through its organization by genre.

The Gist: Fueled by citizen journalism, LiveLeak specializes in current events and politics with tons on footage of war scenes from all over the world.

Inside Scoop: LiveLeak was created by the founders of Ogrish.com, a shock site infamous for posting gruesome accidents, executions and, war scenes. LiveLeak gained notoriety by posting an unauthorized filming of Saddam Hussein's execution. While many have opposed the violent nature of their postings, co-founder Hayden Hewitt insists such videos remain on the site, stating, "This is real life. This is going on, we're going to show it."

Best Part: In an age of corporate media, access to unfiltered footage of current events from around the world is invaluable. For example, check out the video below of 100 bombs going off in one minute.

The Gist: Another live interactive video broadcast platform that empowers users to use their camera to reach global audiences.

Inside Scoop: Ustream was founded in 2006 by West Point cadets John Ham and Brad Hunstable to help connect overseas soldiers more efficiently with their families. On January 19, the day prior to the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, Ustream released an iPhone application, downloaded by over 100,000 users, that allowed them to watch the event in real time.

Best Part: Top featured channels include Air America and FOX News Talk Radio – you choose, depending on your political preferences.

The Gist: TVU offers a free global live TV service that connects you with TV when you're otherwise unable to access it from anywhere in the world.

Inside Scoop: TVU utilizes Real Time Packet Application technology that improves the quality of the signal with the addition of simultaneous viewers. TVU gives users complete control over how content is monetized, allowing users to create subscription channels, pay-per-view events, or with advertising-supported channels.

Best Part: Substantial international programming available.

The Gist: This Skype-esque site allows you to connect with anyone, anytime by way of video call, phone text and more. ooVoo allows you to see, hear, and speak with up to six people simultaneously. Some of the more impressive features include the ability to record and send video messages to anyone regardless of whether or not they're ooVoo users and the ability to leave a text, video, or phone message that's receivable on any computer.

Inside Scoop: ooVoo reaches a global audience, only a fraction of which reside in the United States.

The Gist: Justin.tv is a network of thousands of channels featuring "lifecasting," as well as streaming of live events. From the comfort of your own home, you can watch other people watching other people in the comfort of their own home.

Inside Scoop: In the vein of "The Truman Show," Justin Kan decided he wanted to broadcast his entire life via the Internet and, that's basically why Justin.tv was born. On March 19, 2007, Justin launched his first "lifecast" and subsequently inspired thousands to do the same.

Best Part: This site caters to the dormroom webcam crowd –both those who are still in it and those who wish they still were.

The Gist: To assist in finding your 15 minutes of fame, blogTV allows you to broadcast your live shows by just plugging in your webcam and hitting "record." It allows users to chat with viewers while streaming to create a virtual conversation with the audience.

Inside Scoop: Originally launched in Israel in 2004, blogTV is the recipient of several international awards – most notably, it won the 'New Trend Leader' category in the global mobile content awards (GMCA) of Seoul Digital Forum 2006.

Best Part: FAQ section includes "Tips for Handling Haters." Check out the most viewed blogTV broadcast below – it's kinda annoying, but it's popular, and that has to count for something, I guess.

The Gist: Mogulus is a full-service live streaming site. Forsaking the old model of television production that required control rooms, sound studios, and editing bays, Mogulus allows you to create an entire show with just the Mogulus Studio, a webcam and a broadband connection. Thanks to a browser-based studio application that relies on a single player widget, users can create live, scheduled, or on-demand Internet TV anytime, anywhere.

Inside Scoop: As part of its mission to assist you in becoming the next media mogul, Mogulus offers users two broadcasting options: Mogulus Free, a model with in-video advertising placement, and Mogulus Pro, a subscription model with a usage-based fee for those who wish to broadcast ad-free streaming.

Best Part: Mogulus Studio allows you to mix multiple live cameras, imported video clips and overlay graphics.

VIDEO GUIDES/SEARCH ENGINES (OTHER THAN EGUIDERS)

The Gist: Despite its lack of name recognition, blinkx is second only to YouTube in terms of video content, boasting over 35 million hours of video - both awesome and overwhelming.

Inside Scoop: A two-time winner of TIME magazine's "Best of the Web" award, blinkx averages 667 million page views per month. It has joined with over 450 media partners including ABC, CBS, ESPN, VH1, BBC News, which theoretically ensures a certain modicum of quality.

Best Part: Each mainpage contains a tidy grid of thumbnails that play video.

The Gist: Truveo's massive search network extends across thousands of sites allowing users to search over 300 million videos on the web.

Inside Scoop: Not only does Truveo act as a search engine for it's own website, it also facilitates video search on a number of other sites including AOL, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated and CBS Radio. Truveo differentiates itself from such big boys as Google Video and Yahoo!Video through advanced web crawling technology that claims the ability to find greater, higher quality content.

Best Part: The search results are divided up into tidy boxes containing thumbnails and a listing of the channel, category, and tags for the video.

The Gist: Scoopvid is a video search engine that allows users refine their query by channel and/or category.

Inside Scoop: Ugly site design, but accurate results. The Best: You can choose the style, layout and number of videos per page for your viewing pleasure.

The Gist: Google, the most widely utilized search engine on the web, extends its search to video.

Inside Scoop: It's Google. They're the biggest and the best.

Best Part: The search results are laid out cleanly, with the most popular result appearing in the largest viewing window and the subsequent results in smaller surrounding ones.

The Gist: Second only to Google, Yahoo!

Inside Scoop: In July 2008, Yahoo introduced BOSS, a "Build You Own Search Engine" which allows developers to build and customize their own search engines with the assistance of Yahoo!'s indexing system.

The Gist: A video search engine for YouTube, MySpace, Google and Yahoo.

Inside Scoop: This no-frills website is a pleasant reprieve from the hyper-designed, overloaded video search sites.

Best Part: Simple homepage, solid results.

CONTENT CREATORS

The Gist: Incredibly funny and surprisingly edgy web originals from the people who brought you Bugs Bunny & Co.

Inside Scoop: After the threat of network closure in 2006, Warner Brothers decided to resurrect the WB television division by way of the Internet. Not only does it allow free streaming of WB hits such as Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dawson's Creek, but it has the best original web series of any network.

Best Part: Children's Hospital, an ER parody with an all-star ensemble of comedy including Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), Ed Helms (The Office) and Rob Cordry (The Winner).

The Gist: My Damn Channel is an entertainment studio and media platform that acts as digital playground to comedy's finest including The State, Spinal Tap and, of course, funnyman/rapper Coolio.

Inside Scoop: Rob Barnett, President and CEO, created MDC as a new studio model for the digital entertainment medium. Essentially, it allows artists to do exactly what they want while receiving mass distribution and revenue sharing.

Best Part: Wainy Days, written and directed by David Wain of The State fame.

The Gist: A reliable source for comedy and not-so-reliable source for news, it has brought its snarky sarcasm to faux video news programming.

Inside Scoop: In March 2007, it launched the Onion News Network, a daily web video broadcast. Averaging 1 million downloads per week, the series include parodies of The Today Show, (Today Now!), C-Span (O-Span), CNN (ONN International), and MSN (OSN).

Best Part: In the Know with Clifford Baines, a parody of Sunday morning pundit shows that deals with such pressing questions as "How can we raise awareness in Darfur of how much we're doing for them?"

The Gist: A division of Sony Pictures, Crackle is a multi-platform network that includes original short form content and full-length traditional programming from Sony's library.

Inside Scoop: Crackle features series with the "once-famous" such as David Faustino (Married with Children) in Star-ving and Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) in the reality show Dating Brad Garrett.

Best Part: Breaking Bad Original Minisodes. For those of you in the dark, it's the AMC hit series about a high school chemistry teacher who starts a drug lab.

The Gist: The Independent Film Channel website devotes itself to independent programming, uncut and uncensored, available 24 hours a day.

Inside Scoop: The web exclusive, Getting Away with Murder, was a 2008 Webby Award Nominee for Best Writing. The site also produces a daily show, Lunchbox, which features a rotating panel of hosts discussing film, music, politics and the web. Best (or Worst, depending on your sense of humor) Part: R. Kelley plays an array of disparate characters ranging from the Rev. Mosely James Evans to the Pimp Lucious in his 22-part hip hop opera, Trapped in the Closet.

The Gist: An internet TV network geared towards the new Internet generation.

Inside Scoop: The company was created by the founder of Digg.com, the CEO of Digg.com, Jay Adelson, as well as tech gurus Dan Huard, Ron Gorodetzky, and David Prager. Although they've recently been forced to cut shows from their roster, most notably Gary Vaynerchuk's Wine Library TV, most of he best ones still remain.

HUMOR

The Gist: FOD, the love child of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, is THE comedy go-to site.

Inside Scoop: FOD's premiere video, The Landlord, featuring Pearl (McKay's 4 year old daughter ) as a drinking, swearing, no-good landlord and Farrell, has received over 61 million hits. Since its inception, the FOD team has been joined by director Chris Henchy and comedy legend-in-the-making Judd Apatow. The website is filled with FOD exclusives featuring not only the biggest names in comedy but regular celebrities who want you to think they're funny, too (ie, Jerry O'Connell, Paris Hilton, Gina Gershon, Alyssa Milano).

Best Part: Baby Pearl in all her glory in, The Landlord.

The Gist: The site features comedic sketches, episodic series, and short films by comedy luminaries such as Bob Odenkirk, Tim and Eric, and comic book artist Brad Neely.

Inside Scoop: Formerly superdeluxe.com, a broadband service provided by TBS, it has since been folded into its sister website, adultswim.com.

Best Part: Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job! Winners of the Webby Video and Film Awards for Best Actors.

The Gist: "College Humor" is aimed at the Frat boy/Bud light demographic that both produces and links to similarly funny stuff on the web.

Inside Scoop: Started by high school friends in 1999 as a place to share pictures, emails, and videos with their college buddies, it has grown into a comprehensive humor site, complete with celeb-driven web series. MTV recently purchased The College Humor Show, a scripted series written by and starring the actual staff of collegehumor.com.

Best Part: Jake and Amir and The Michael Showalter Showalter.

The Gist: Break is the place for dudes-only humor on the web.

Inside Scoop: Break brings you both user-generated and original content that's geared toward people getting unceremoniously injured. They reserve the right to put nut-shots in their videos.

Best Part: Lots of hot chicks getting punk'd.

The Gist: Atom.com, a digital comedy network sponsored by Comedy Central, is a mix of original programming from Atom Studios, including acquired content, and user uploads.

Inside Scoop: The 2009 development slate for Atom.com includes an impressive roster of top comedic talent including Nick Thune, Andy Dick, and the creators of Wainy Days, AD Miles and Jo LoTruglio.

Best Part: Each week, top user videos battle for votes with the winner to be screened on The Showdown, which airs Monday nights at 2am ET on Comedy Central. Winners also get $500 as if the glory being on the old boob tube wasn't enough.

The Gist: The brainchild, or brain ninja, of Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine it features an ongoing series of shorts discussing "viewer submitted" topics about Ninja Love, Ninja Poetry, and Ninja Babysitters.

Inside Scoop: Creators Nichols and Sarine reportedly make approximately $100,000 a month in ad revenue, merchandising and licensing from the show. Next viewer submitted topic: How to strike the Ninja Jackpot.

Best Part: Question 13: Ninjas Hate Clooney

The Gist: From the funny guys who resuscitated Saturday Night Live with star-studded digital shorts, the site is dedicated to their old school shorts, their recent SNL digital shortsm and the music videos from their recent album, Incredibad.

Inside Scoop: The Lonely Island trio, Andy Samberg, Akiva Shaffer and Jorma Taccone produced shorts, song parodies and a full-length TV pilot before coming to the attention of SNL's Lorne Michaels. After being hired at SNL, their first digital short Lazy Sunday became an instant Internet success.

Best Part: D**k in a Box, with honorable mention to episode #1 of The ‘Bu, featuring Frazzles the Squirrel.

SPORTS

The Gist: FuelTV features the best in action sports videos, contests, and tour footage as well as interviews with the industry's top players.

Inside Scoop: FuelTV, a division of FOX Television, is dedicated solely to the culture and lifestyle of skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding, FMX and BMX. Essentially, sports for kids under 35 who really like to get hurt.

Best Part: The site's hyperactive design match the action sports culture.

The Gist: Broadbandsports is an extreme sports site that allows users to upload both professional and user-generated content. The site connects extreme sport enthusiasts, both fans and athletes alike.

Inside Scoop: The original Broadbandsports was founded in 1998 and made over $60 million before succumbing to the dotcom crash. Today, the new company by the same name bears no relation to the former website whatsoever.

Best Part: Not only is the site incredibly easy to navigate, it features Pro Channels from a number of top companies including Burton, Billabong, Volcom, and Quicksilver.

The Gist: ADTHE features free, online live sporting events.

Inside Scoop: There's nothing fancy about this website, just a menu of every live streaming event available from College Football to Ultimate Fighting to Snooker.

Best Part: It's blue.

The Gist: The Nike ACG team captures unbelievable experiments in niche action sports like Base Jumping, Rock Climbing and kayaking.

Inside Scoop: The award winning Nike Sweetspots returns for its second year, featuring new videos every two weeks of "first descents and new experiences." With a rotating globe on its homepage, users can choose from which country they view their Sweetspot. The majority of the vids are created by the Nike ACG team but there is a competition for best viewer-submitted video, which is later featured on the site.

Best Part: In addition to the incredibly compelling feats of human athleticism, the videos are artistically and visually stunning, as well.

The Gist: A comprehensive sports site featuring everything sports, including podcasts, live streaming of sporting events, and highlight videos and clips from ESPN's SportsCenter, Around the Horn, and Pardon the Interruption.

Inside Scoop: ESPN, "The Worldwide Leader in Sports," extends it comprehensive sports coverage to the net.

Best Part: Pardon the Interruption's daily Big Finish.

The Gist: Sportstrick's logo is "Never Miss a Trick," and with its extensive user uploads, instant news updates, and Live TV, there's no reason you ever should.

Inside Scoop: Sportstrick focuses on a Euro-friendly mix of Soccer, Football, Cricket, Boxing, Basketball, Rugby and more. The site's sleek, user-friendly design makes it simple to find what you're looking for, while looking good itself.

The Gist: SI, the most familiar name in sports magazines/reporting/journalism, has a vast website that includes highlight videos, interviews, and "The Vault," which links to great videos in sports history.

Inside Scoop: The website is essentially the magazine online. Stats, articles, fantasy analysis.

Best Part: The Swimsuit Section. Obviously.

GENERIC VIDEO SHARING

The Gist: Oh, you've heard of this one? The big cheese of video sharing, YouTube is hands-down the world's most popular online video sharing community.

Inside Scoop: Founded in 2005 by a trio of former PayPal employees, the premiere site for instant Internet fame was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion dollars. In response to competition from sites like Hulu.com, which feature material from NBC and Fox, YouTube recently signed an agreement with MGM Lionsgate, and CBS to post full- length films and television shows.

Best Part: Thanks to YouTube, the entire universe can watch you go crazy, go dumb, and go viral all in the same two minute clip.

The Gist: A strictly entertainment-based website, Metacafé focuses on original short form content aiming to "amaze, inspire and make people laugh."

Inside Scoop: All Metacafe submissions must first pass Community Auditions, a review panel of 80,000 user volunteers, before they are posted to the site. Metacafe counts Playboy, NBA, and National Lampoon among its featured channels.

Best Part: Metafest: Metacafe's international short film festival that awards $10,000 in prizes.

The Gist: Vimeo is a video-centric social networking site that exclusively hosts user- generated content.

Inside Scoop: Vimeo has assisted Improv Everywhere, a NYC-based comedic prank/performance art group, in generating site traffic for videos of their new pranks. It has also assisted comedians Kristen Schaal, Reggie Watts and Ben Schwartz in promoting their content. Also noteworthy: several Muppets, including Sam Eagle, Beaker and Gonzo, have uploaded videos to the site.

Best Part: Vimeo is by far and wide the most asthetically-pleasing video- sharing website.

The Gist: 5min, "a life videopedia," is pretty straightforward: an entire website dedicated to giving quick, practical solutions for the visually oriented.

Inside Scoop: This fall, 5min launched "Videoseed," a syndicated network that via semantic matching delivers relevant clips to participating sites. In addition to user-generated content, 5min includes videos produced by NBC Universal, Hachette (publisher of magazines such as Elle and Car and Driver, Ford Models and Kiplinger's).

Best Part: Whether you're looking to master the intro to Metallica's One or how to expertly execute a Beyoncé dance move, this site has something to pass a little bit of everyone's time.

The Gist: blip.tv is the leader in independently produced Internet television. Not only does it host web series but it acts as distributor through its syndication network, with the added bonus of revenue sharing for its content creators.

Inside Scoop: One of the site's most successful shows, Rocketboom, a quirky daily show about cultural happenings, was sponsored by the The Sarah Silverman Program.

Best Part: Last September, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore released Slacker Uprising, a movie chronicling his swing state tour of the 2004 election on blip.tv, free of charge.

The Gist: Aside from the ability watch/rate/review videos on the site, Revver pairs videos with targeted ads and tracks them across the Internet.

Inside Scoop: The key to Revver is a tracking system called RevTag. Attached to users' uploads, RevTag displays a clickable advertisement at the end of each video. When viewers click on it, the advertiser is charged and the advertising fee is split 50/50 between the video creator and Revver.

The Gist: Dailymotion expands the power of online video by encouraging users to consider every bit of content they can find – on their mobile phone or in their hard drive or digital camera – and share it with the world at large through the Dailymotion website.

Inside Scoop: Its original domain name, ghandi.net, was registered one month after YouTube's registration, but Ghandi went live one month prior.

Best Part: Dailymotion Kids has kid friendly content suitable for both 3-7 year-olds and 7+ and over.

The Gist: Viddler allows you to upload your videos and post comments and tags with a tremendous amount of versatility.

Inside Scoop: Viddler's ad system lets advertisers to bid videos with keyword tags.

Uploaders also have the ability to sign-up and partner in a revenue share for advertisements placed during their videos.

Best Part: Viddler encourages you to brand yourself by adding your logo to their player and changing the player's background to fit your website's color scheme.

The Gist: Amidst the never-ending stream of online content, Tube Battle proposes to find the best of the best… via battle!

Inside Scoop: The videos are divided by category – viral, ads and commercials, movie trailers – then pitted against each other in a bitter battle to cyber death.

MASH-UPS

The Gist: Pairs up Google Maps with YouTube. Click on the marker to watch a virtual video of the location.

The Inside Scoop: The Government is watching.

The Gist: A mash-up of Flickr and Youtube that allows user to enter tags and view thumbnails of your results from both sites.

Inside Scoop: Youtube is everywhere. So is Flickr. This pairing makes sense.

Best Part: The site makes sifting through the millions of images available of your favorite band easy on the eyes.

The Gist: The popular music site Last.fm teams up with YouTube to deliver music videos from the Last.fm catalogue.

Inside Scoop: Although the design of the homepage is decidedly simple, the actual search result pages are more elegantly laid out.

The Gist: Music Portl delivers information on your favorite band from a variety of sources including Flickr, blogs, video, and more.

Inside Scoop: The site's design utilizes several Java script libraries, including Prototype, Script.aculo.us, Lightbox 2 and Tooltip.js.

Best Part: All results are displayed on a single page, making navigation simple.