Yahoo Video Goes Live

Yahoo announces they've formally flipped the switch on an offering which allows users to share, rate and review online videos with one another.

Yahoo today fired a warning shot across the bows of online video sharing sites like YouTube.com as it unveiled its own video site which combines “search, upload and community”. The new Yahoo Video site is available as part of Yahoo’s free offerings.

The Yahoo Video site, said the online portal, allows users to access the most popular and current Internet videos such as Lazy Ramadi, The Glomp, and the latest Shakira music video. It draws its listings from a combination of ways, including crawling the Web, accepting uploads, receiving direct feeds from partners, and leveraging the Yahoo Media Group’s content and industry relationships.

Features of Yahoo Video include multiple ways for users to browse for videos; the ability to subscribe to and watch groups of videos related by source or topic; the ability to rate, review and share videos within a community, with shared videos being available through means like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and embedded into a Web site or blog; and free tools and a platform to let publishers distribute their videos and create both individual identity and shared communities around them.

“As the video space continues to emerge, our strengths in search, content, personalization and community make it possible for Yahoo to offer a highly engaging video experience for both users and publishers,” said Jason Zajac, Yahoo general manager of social media, in a statement. “Yahoo Video makes it easy for users to discover high quality content, while video creators can be discovered by the Web’s largest global audience.”