Veokami was the winner of this year's HackLolla challenge for a project that takes multiple live videos of concert events from YouTube, syncs them up and offers each video as an alternate camera angle. It's not a perfect viewing experience but it's pretty darn cool and worth following as an example of what one can do with YouTube beyond embeds and viewing rooms.
Veokami was my favorite entrant to HackLolla and they had some pretty solid competition. At this stage, it's a rough, "good enough" product that is impressive because it does something new with the assets of YouTube while pointing the way to future possiblities. It helps that it's a nice looking site that's easy to navigate.
Rather than a free-for-all, Veokami is targetting specific gatherings, like SXSW and Lollapalooza, and featuring performances from those events which they "unlock" and then make available for public viewing and interaction.
In the HackLolla incarnation, Veokami users could participate by tagging "moments" (possibly inspired by SoundCloud tags in songs). Since then they've added the ability to submit videos to be added to the mix for a particular performance. They're also offering embeddable widgets but those seem not quite ready for primetime. I tried embedding one in this post and it wreaked havoc on everything on the page after that.
They're now rolling out additional viewing features offering a wider range of choices and gradually building on the core product.
Despite the obvious limitations of live fan-made videos and a few rough edges, I still think Veokami is a really cool service that hasn't lost it's appeal since its initial launch. I think it also offers a great opportunity for bands who have lots of fan-made videos online to leverage that love in a productive manner. I haven't discussed this idea with Veokami but I bet if you got your fans to sign up and make some noise on your behalf, it would speed up the possiblity of having a presence on this unique platform.
Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He blogs about web business models at Flux Research and the world of dance at All World Dance. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
