Some clips offer exactly what you’d expect – snippets from TV shows and movies, news and sports, and high quality independent productions from film enthusiasts and animators. The big players are starting to jump onto this trend, and many studios are doing deals with companies like Apple and Amazon to provide full-length TV shows and films online. Some of the studios and networks are convinced that this time is different and their own websites will finally gain enough traction and audience to serve as valuable distribution points. We’ll see.

Other clips offer something a little more unexpected. For example, video blogs (or vlogs) covering everything from the surf conditions in Hawaii to how to properly taste a great California cabernet are cropping up all over the place. There’s footage depicting the lives of soldiers stationed in the Middle East, and the poignant ramblings of zefrank on The Show. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what RocketBoom, one of the biggest vlogs out there, is all about. There are the caught-on-tape antics of the Star Wars Kid and the Crazy German Kid, the Numa Numa Kid, and the behind-the-tape viral marketing tale of lonelygirl15 and Creative Artists Agency. There are entire movies called machinima that are constructed using characters and sequences taken from video games. This is not to be confused with a whole other genre called Anime Music Videos (or AMV) which mixes Japanese anime with popular music.

Speaking of mixes, remixes, and mashups, there is absolutely no end to the creativity (and apparently, free time) of some of the people out there. This clip of George Bush doing his rendition of U2’s “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is pretty impressive, but my personal favorite display of editing prowess features James Earl Jones as Darth Vader explaining his nervous breakdown in the Vader Sessions.

Why is this all happening now? There are some obvious reasons — broadband is getting faster and cheaper, and digital video cameras are cheaper and easier to use. There’s a good chance your cell phone even has a video camera. A little less obvious is that TiVo, and all DVRs, are stocked full of hundreds of hours of video practically crying out to be uploaded and set free on the Web (you know who you are).

And then there’s MySpace. Not just the actual social network, but the mindset — share with people we know and people we don’t. This phenomenon is behind an incredible amount of the activity and engagement online today, and we’d better not ignore it or pretend it isn’t there. MySpace itself drives over 50% of all usage of YouTube today, and if you’re a studio with a new movie, TV show, or song to release, you’ve got to be there.

The good news is we are there. Yahoo! is a big player in online video. Offering music videos to sports and news clips, movie trailers and TV previews to thousands of user-submitted videos, Yahoo! is one of the largest destinations for watching videos on the Web. We help you track down the videos you’re looking for, whether they’re on YouTube, independent sites, or our own network. But we’re not stopping there.

This week we joined with Doritos to offer users a chance to create their own commercial that could potentially air during the Super Bowl! And today, we launched the Yahoo! Current Network on Yahoo! Video. Together with Al Gore’s CurrentTV, we’ll be creating a truly unique network featuring video content from users alongside professionally produced segments in a range of cool categories. Check it out, and (sorry, I have to say it) stay tuned for even more!

Be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you think, or just tell us about some of your favorite videos.

Jason Zajac
VP/GM Social Media