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Hi Carl,
As real video enthusiast, we have been thinking it could be interesting for you to know about the City.vi project we launched January 1st:
City.vi is a completely new concept on the internet: City.vi is an access model !
In your browser’s address bar, enter a “city name” followed by “.vi” to access its video site.
For instance: Paris.vi NewYork.vi Seoul.vi and so it works for the 68,000 most outstanding cities around the world.
Think of a city and try it in your browser…
Here are a few examples of cities among those which already have videos:
Paris.vi
Berlin.vi
London.vi
NewYork.vi
Dublin.vi
Sites from this network are all designed on a same template specifically adapted to video content.
The City.vi network aims at making local information directly accessible, even instinctively accessible. Indeed, as soon as one is familiar with the access model, it is easy to anticipate all that can be found on London.vi, Toronto.vi or Moscow.vi without having ever visited these sites.(See the comparison with Google hereunder to better understand what the access model brings)
Sites from the network need all Internet users, concerned as citizens, to upload videos on tourism, news, events related to their city. To encourage people to do so, but also to act in a fair way, the profit made out of the ads located below the videos is entirely distributed to the users who posted them.
All local information deserves to be shared on the entirety of the network. Indeed it gets easier every day to create videos with digital cameras and new mobile phones, which are used more and more. The quality of uploaded videos on the sites will get better over time so as to keep the best over the months.
In this respect, so as to ensure the quality and reliability of the information shared on the sites, we are currently working on setting up collaboration with people in charge of communication in the cities that are part of the network.
For each site, professionals working in the city are free to point to their activity on the relevant page. This service is for free and will stay for free.
City.vi is also the name of the network hub site. City.vi is accessible from any city site and could bear the name of geographical player. This original tool aims at presenting cities one after the other, among the ones having the most interesting video sites, with a picture giving an idea on the city’s lifestyle and size. Further information, such as the country, local time, population and maps is also available. For every city displayed, the corresponding video site is directly accessible by clicking on the “videos” button. With this very user-friendly player, users can discover new cities. You will quickly see the point if you have a look at the geographical player on: city.vi
Let’s compare City.vi to Google when it comes to local information (about 20% of Google queries).
With Google:
1. You type in “Paris” in the search box.
2. You spend time and energy analysing the results.
3. You decide to click on a result, without being sure of having picked the best one or of finding the information you are looking for.
4. You land on the selected site. Again, you spend time and energy analysing how the content is structured on the site and where the information you are looking for is, if there…
5. In the best case, now is when you find the information. In most cases, you need to keep searching, with no certainty, on other pages of the site, on Google’s other search results, and often go through the whole process again with a slightly different query, etc.
This is what millions of people experience every day.
Why is it so complicated?
Search engines are huge directories of sites, their main purpose is not to particularly focus on local information. This is where City.vi becomes interesting:
With City.vi:
1. You know that you can directly type “paris.vi” in the address bar.
2. You land on a site where the information is easily organised (and whose structure is familiar once you know the network). You did not spend time or energy analysing anything.
3. Browse through the videos, it is easy and fun. And any information regarding Paris should be on paris.vi.
Easy to access, easy to use, whichever the city in the world!
For this reason, City.vi is a possible alternative solution to Google when it comes to local information and will be valuable if massively adopted by users.
Aware of this, the City Media foundation has launched an international communication campaign which firstly aims at encouraging all video enthusiasts from any city to post their creations.
Being yourself a video-maker we hope you will feel like posting videos on your city video site: your videos work for you and it’s still a way to promote yourself.
You can also support us and let your friends know about what may be the future of local information.
For any question or comment, don’t hesitate to reply to this message, we’ll be happy to talk with you…
Thanks for your support!
Julien Panouillot
City Media Foundation
Where goes the future, we go together.
http://www.citymediafoundation.org
Is this the the video graf located on west 4th? Are you affiliated with Michael Frenchman and Tom Strodel?