Best Buy moves into online video with Mydeo

Best Buy has partnered with Mydeo to launch  Best Buy Video Sharing, a new online video sharing service. 

It is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for sharing on web sites and blogs, with family and friends, or in e-mail messages. You can choose who can view your home videos, and enables them to do so in an advertising-free environment.

Of course you can post videos to YouTube or other video hosting sites, but the problem is those videos are exposed to the world. What if you want just a select group of family, friends, or business partners to have access?

“With the growing popularity of video, fueled in part by social networking sites, we’ve actually seen an increase in customer demand for alternative video sharing solutions. Many customers, particularly families with children, don’t want their personal memories available for anyone to see in the public domain nor do they want to share them in a cluttered environment that includes advertising,” said Kevin Winneroski, vice president, Best Buy. “Through Best Buy Video Sharing, customers can safely store their videos and share them only with the friends and family they choose.”

Mydeo is a UK based company founded by Cary Marsh. Mydeo is part of our Startup Accelerator Program, designed to help startups get fast traction with Microsoft and shine the spotlight on their success. get more details on this program at MicrosoftStartupZone.com

Best Buy is the largest consumer electronics store in the USA. They have several online programs including one for music called Best Buy Digital Music Store, and another service for photos.

Comments

[Sandeep Sharma]

In terms of brand positioning or extension this is not a good move as it will be tough for people to associate with Best Buy for online videos.

There is no USP in just giving option of making a video private as this can be easily implemented by market leaders like youtube or metacafe. If the monetization model is to leverage community word-of-mouth for best buy products then it may still work otherwise struggle would not be too different from other me-too players in this space. The legal challenges would not be too different either.