By Yinka Adegoke, Fri Oct 19, 2007 11:54am EDT
NEW YORK, Oct 19 (Reuters Life!) - After Holly Schnaars, 37, was diagnosed with late stage colorectal cancer she picked up her video camera and decided to tell her story on the online video site Metacafe to raise awareness of the disease.
The mother of two from San Jose, California, is just one of thousands of Americans, as well as charities and nonprofit organizations, who use online video to publicize their cause and raise funds as it becomes easier and cheaper to post videos than hope for television coverage or other forms of marketing.
The ground shift has prompted the biggest online video sites led by YouTube to reorganize their pages to make it easier for such users to find videos related to their favorite causes.
YouTube, which is owned by search giant Google Inc, is creating a special section for nonprofits to air their videos and link them to its Google Checkout online payment system to receive funds directly.
"Nonprofits understand that online video isn't just a way to broadcast public service announcements on a shrunken TV set," said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube.
"It's a way to get people to do more than just absorb your message but to engage with their user generated content as well," he said.
POWER OF VIDEO
It's not just the online video companies giving support to individual causes and charities. Pure Digital, maker of the Flip video camera, has said it plans to give away a million video cameras to nonprofit organizations around the world to capture images and moments in places traditional media outlets might not be able to reach.
Read More ....
0 comments:
Post a Comment