AOL and CNN to join online video battle

AOL plans to launch an online video portal where users can view television shows as well as watch and share user-generated content.

The service will compete with similar services from Google, Yahoo, Myspace and Youtube.

There has been a major buzz around online video lately as startup-company Youtube recently reported that it has started serving more than 100m videos each day.

Youtube is currently the largest online video provider. It accounts for about 60 per cent of all the online videos that are watched in the US, according to recent data from Hitwise. Myspace trails in second place with a 29 per cent market share. Other services have yet to surpass the five per cent market share point.

The online video market, however, is considered immature as providers have yet to find a way to make money from the content. Paid video download services have yet to prove their viability. Both AOL and Google meanwhile have started to offer premium television content for free with embedded advertisements.

The 24-hour news channel and AOL sister company CNN on Monday also launched the CNN Exchange website where it invites users to upload photos and video related to major news events.

User-generated content in the past has been a major source for mainstream media. Media outlets, for example, covered last year's London terrorist bombings by showing pictures that users shot with their camera phones and uploaded to the Flickr photo sharing service.

CNN in the past has aired footage from Lebanon that was uploaded to Youtube.

Using user-generated content however makes it hard to verify its authenticity. Pranksters could stage fake news events or archived materials could be passed on as a current event.