I got a google web alert set titled YouTube killer and it piqued my attention enough, at least to go and check it out.
Turns out it’s a Slashdot post on the amazingly titled eefoof.com. This site is supposed to let people upload videos and has (currently) the unique distinction of being the only one to offer users advertisement revenue when (if?) their video gets popular.
Well, ideaworthy or not, I don’t know, but they sure didn’t anticipate the slashdot effect very well.
The site is, at the time of this post, throwing up a quite ugly error saying it could not connect to it’s mysql database:
My point?
Anticipate the requirement to scale up. Especially when you’re thinking of building a competitor to web applications like YouTube and Google Video.
Update: Looks like they’ve finally gone up again. Now with a notice saying “Notice: We’re currently being dugg and slashdotted (at the same time) — bear with us”
Update #2: Looks like I was wrong about eefoof.com being the only one to offer revenue. revver.com does this as well, that too by dynamically embedding an advertisement at the end of the video. And they say they’re the only one as well! 