ANTenna Blog -- Business & E-Business

Online video is hardly new -- if you're not posting videos to YouTube by now, odds are you've at least watched one. The evolution from intriguing novelty to valuable business tool is still underway, but startups and entrepreneurs now have more another outlet to connecting with the funding community without hitting the road.

Video is the "it" technology online -- streaming, posting, sharing: text is so passé. Online video is hot -- where online video lands on Marshall McLuhan's scale of hot and cold media is a debate I hope someone's having at Marissa Mayer's next cupcake party.

This IT quality, makes online video a perfect medium for pumping products and services -- if you're not doing it, you're missing the boat. But is it a viable venue for launching a business? And let's be clear, by launch I mean attracting funding.

The answer appears to be yes. And not just for businesses. Look no further than the 2008 Election for evidence of online fundraising success and the role of video. If you can't make the campaign rally or want to compare the candidates, you can watch their speeches side-by-side online (debates too). Take for example, Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech. More than 4.5 million people have watched it, almost 25,000 have rated it, more than 15,000 have favorited it, and almost 10,000 have commented. That made it the #9 "All Time Top Favorite" in the News & Politics category and the #25 "All Time Most Viewed." But has all that attention and popularity translated into dollars. In a word, yes. Obama has raised $200 million ($55 million in February alone).

So how can start-ups, entrepreneurs, and smaller businesses looking to expand, use online video to attract funding dollars? One option is to put your video on your own site -- it's easier than you'd think to hear Ben Wayne of Fliqz tell it. But creating a video and posting it to your own site is only half the equation: you need to get people (and ideally those in the business of cutting checks) to watch it -- there's always the specter of being mocked mercilessly, but that comes with the territory. You can post your video to YouTube (and you should), but you may get lost in the crowd (Do want to watch a business presentation or William Hung?). Even if you do break out, who knows what videos will appear side-by-side with yours -- Obama's most viewed speech appears on the same page with others featuring the terms drunk, Satan, sex, naked, and Bon Jovi in the title. John Doerr might not care, but others may.

Thanks to the Michael Arrington, Erick Schonfeld-led crew, TechCrunch now offers a home for your Elevator Pitch video. Complete with the Digg-style, wisdom of crowds approach that has made ratings juggernauts of American Idol and the Evolution of Dance. The parameters are simple: you get 60 seconds to make your pitch and then the masses weigh in. Today, SmugMug, a Web 2.0 photo sharing site led by the perpetually ballcapped Don MacAskill, has the top rating. TechCrunch is not the only outlet for the art of the elevator pitch: there's also Bambi Francisco's vator.tv.

Whether this has legs remains to be seen, but it does offer a niche, a channel if you will, specific to business funding among the proliferation of online video. Other than rankling Jemima Kiss, the downside has yet to surface.