AOL Fights Back: UnCut Video and AIMPages

Mashable has some information on AOL's YouTube play, UnCut Video as well as some thoughts on AIMPages.


From the AOL site:

"UnCut Video is the place to come for videos on the Web. Upload videos from your web camera or camcorder. Watch videos from your home state, from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Middle East. Share videos with your friends over AIM and email. News, sports, pets, music, personals, short films, autos, the odd and the absurd — it’s all here. See it! Shoot it! Share it! Rate and comment on videos, and add them to your AOL Journal."

From Mashable:

"Just like AIMPages, this feels like an early release (too early, as far as I’m concerned) that’s seriously lacking in functionality. However, strategically speaking they might be in a good position right now. The AIM demographic is broadly similar the MySpace demographic - this also happens to be the key demo for online video.

The user experience is poor at the moment, and UnCut definitely needs its own domain (presumably UnCutVideo.com). I also expect to see them leveraging AIM (you can send videos over AIM, which is a start) and adding more social features like tagging.

On the upside, they went with Flash for the videos (good choice), and didn’t forget about the importance of commenting. AOL is in a great position to capitalize on the AIM brand with web-based social software, but its latest ventures still have a long way to go."