PixPo, a British Columbia company that received $6 million in venture funding earlier this year, is out to compete with U.S. heavyweight YouTube. Their product has the look and feel of those hip California-based Web 2.0 companies including all that green and blue, a "beta" designation, and the inevitable round-edged dialogue boxes. Why fight the flow?

Still, is their product really any different than its U.S. competitors? Let's take a look at what's under the hood. Here is what they say:

Think it would be cool to create your own video channels?

Get PiXPO and broadcast on the Internet in minutes. PiXPO makes it easy to get all your videos online. Sure, it's not too hard to get one or two clips online, but PiXPO is the only solution available that lets you broadcast ALL your personal video.

Plus, with music and photo capability, you can broadcast all your media.

YouTube has restrictions on the length of video uploaded. That doesn't seem to be the case here. That puts PixPo out in front already. Plus, uploads aren't restricted to just videos. Another plus. The service does have some real advantages over YouTube.

Where PixPo seems to flag a bit is on its marketing. The site has some awkward phrasing but, more importantly, their sales pitch just doesn't pump up the volume, as it were, enough to showcase the service's benefits. Most notably, they repeat the pitch:

Get showing them off! With PiXPO, just dump your files onto your PC, then create a channel. In under 3 minutes you're broadcasting to the world – right from your own PC.

To do this requires downloading some software. YouTube is an online application so everything is done remotely. Is this a fatal flaw in PixPo's model? I'm not sure but, whatever the case, the (...read more...)