Video Sphere

A new way of publishing classified ads:

Real People Real Stuff proposes a new way of selling and buying through videos ! Between YouTube and CraigsList, RPRS allows to post free videos ads and to browse through categories and places (USA only for the moment !).

You want to sell your guitar, you want to promote your real estate agency, you would like to propose a service, that’s very easy with RPRS:

1) just take you digital camera, camcorder, webcam or even cell phone

2) record a short video to promote your ad

3) post it with a description, price, tags (key words) and photos if relevant, and you’re done !

When someone is browsing classified ads and found something interesting, he can send a link to a friend or contact directly the vendor by email by filling in a simple form.

A great idea with simple tools:

RPRS is not revolutionary, but the idea is simply great ! Why only watching funny and dumb videos on the Internet when you can use it as a powerful promotion tool and may be even make profit ?

That’s one of the reason I love the Internet: great tools available to anyone…you just have to find the next big idea that will seduce thousands of people !

RPRS is using Amazon web services and especially the Amazon S3, Simple Storage Service for video storage and streaming.

Most video formats are accepted, which is not always the case of all video website: .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, .MP4 and .MPG

Possible improvements:

There is several improvements that could make this site more successful in my opinion:

1) The name is too complicated…(ok that’s too late…and if the service becomes famous that will not be an issue anymore…).

2) A real logo and a visual identity easily recognizable by anyone is necessary !

3) You can register and login, but when you have posted new ads, there is no easy way to find everything that it related to your account (no way to edit personal details, no way to find easily all your ads except browsing through all videos…).

4) Tags can only be added by the author of the video, where we expect anyone to use tags…

5) You can not simply post the URL of a video you already uploaded on YouTube…you have to upload it again on the Real People Real Stuff website.

6) It’s a pity HTML can not be used for descriptions and comments, because links are the key tool of the Internet ! Anyway I can understand this choice to avoid spam…

7) Make it international…ok I’m French, so my opinion here is obviously biased

Last word:

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea and the fact it’s very simple to use ! Maybe adding too much options could makes the service less user-friendly. But some of the possible improvements could really boost Real People Real Stuff !

Test it and give me your comments and ideas !

See also RPRS blog.