YouTube + FaceBook = BerkeleyTube

Coming to work this morning a simple flyer caught my eye:

Berkeley +
YouTube =
BerkeleyTube.com

“Prof goes crazy over stolen laptop”,
“The Play”,
“Sweatshop protest goes nude”
and more!

Brilliant, and about time!

You’ll find about 20 videos embedded from YouTube and Google Video, all having to do with UC Berkeley. They are simply aggregating what exists from the plethora and focussing on the extremely local, which being a University has an extremely Web-based, loyal, spirited, and viral audience. What’s more, they accept video submissions.

Beside the videos they list on their flyer I found Sergey Brin speaking at our Search Engine class. Hey, I uploaded that one! Heh heh.

This is a complete end-around for the slow-moving campus video sites (yes, even webcast.berkeley) and by embedding in a blog-like environment (built on Ruby on Rails) that has potential to easily provide real-time data like latest videos and most popular as well as add comments, tags… all the Web 2.0 and community elements.

The Learn More page indicates that it can embed from YouTube, Google Video, Blip.tv, Metacafe, and Yahoo! Video. It’s built by a teenager named Alex MacCaw from the UK. It currently includes UC Berkeley, Stanford, U. Michigan, National Univeristy of Singapore, and Raffles Institution.

The site is part of MySchoolTube.com, indicating that it’s an easily brandable site for colleges. This is heavily influenced by FaceBook’s model. For a long time I’ve thought that FaceBook should add video. Here’s what it could look like.

This site, much like our local CalTV Project, is the start of a community-driven video site that’s student driven. It might not be the “official” voice of the campus, but surely it’s the most lively and energetic, and I wholly expect great stuff to be produced and will be watching to see how this grows.

UPDATE

No sooner did I make this post then via TechCrunch discovered that YouTube now has an area called Colleges on You Tube. This is a login area specific to .edu domains, which is an interesting move for YouTube to create a walled garden for students, akin to FaceBook. The site is quickly adding colleges and Universities, and here is how their service is described:

Want to see the highlights of last weekend’s game (or last night’s party)? It’s easier than ever to share videos with friends at your college on YouTube—join up and add videos to the pool. You can also start or join groups within your college, to hook up with others who have the same interests.