Ourmedia, Outhink Media join forces

Participatory media sites team up to highlight video producers’ works

SAN FRANCISCO — Ourmedia, the world’s first video hosting and sharing site, announced today that it has merged with Outhink Media, a company that serves the needs of various digital media producers.

Under the merger, Ourmedia will continue to operate as an open-source site and community for independent media producers. Outhink, which previously donated servers and development resources, will enhance and promote Ourmedia for further reach among creative artists. 

“We thank Outhink for helping to bring us this far,” said Ourmedia co-founder J.D. Lasica. “Now we’re formally merging to foster and revolutionize the coming explosive proliferation of independent video production.”

With 145,000 registered members, Ourmedia was recently named one of the Top 50 Video Sharing Sites by Website magazine. The site will continue to offer free hosting and bandwidth for videos and audio podcasts through its partnership with the Internet Archive, but it will shift emphasis to showcasing polished producer portfolios that will appeal to higher quality content consumers and/or advertising clients.

Ourmedia recently introduced a Channels feature (channels.ourmedia.org), allowing any member to assemble playlists that pull media content from other sites. Members have already created content channels on such subjects as global warming, free speech TV, mashups, Barack Obama and Finnish hobbies.

“If you have a silly cat video, head to YouTube or Metacafe,” Lasica said. “But if you want to show off your video chops and exchange ideas and best practices with fellow video producers, Ourmedia is your best bet.” Ourmedia’s Personal Media Learning Center, which mentors aspiring video producers and podcasters, was singled out for praise recently at a Drupal open-source developers camp in Los Angeles.

Outhink is best known for SpinXpress (SpinXpress.com), a free peer-to-peer software application that supports global project collaboration by allowing sharing of large media files across a secure private network. SpinXpress also provides useful wiki and discussion tools for rich project communication, and it greatly streamlines the publishing process to Ourmedia or Blip.tv.

“We’re living in a time of fundamental change in the media landscape,” said Lasica, a blogger and author of “Darknet,” a book about the social media revolution. “We’ve all become media producers. Anyone can create their own Internet TV show, shoot community videos or even produce an ad. Now we're working on making it even easier.”

Sites mentioned in this release:

Ourmedia: ourmedia.org

Outhink Media: outhink.com

Internet Archive: archive.org

Channels: channels.ourmedia.org

Learning Center: ourmedia.org/learning-center

About Outhink Media

Outhink Media specializes in bringing digital media enthusiasts together through easy-to-use tools with powerful sharing capabilities. By empowering the individual to be a creator who can bypass traditional media channels, Outhink Media is helping people to produce engaging, meaningful stories and to connect with one another in a deeper, dynamic form of social interaction. Outhink Media sits at the intersection of user-generated content and traditional media, offering such services as publishing tools, rights tracking, syndication of high-value content, and access to rights-cleared music, audio and video. For details: http://www.outhink.com.

About Ourmedia

Ourmedia.org, the first video hosting and sharing site on the Web, is an online community and learning center. Ourmedia lets its members publish any works of digital media — student films, video blogs, podcasts, music videos, mash-ups, photo albums, home movies, digital art, political ads, photo albums, your unpublished novel — by providing free storage, free bandwidth and free archiving. The site has become a one-stop gathering place for people to experience and learn about citizens media. The organization's advisors include Lawrence Lessig, John Seely Brown, Dan Gillmor, Brewster Kahle, Howard Rheingold, Doc Searls and other leading lights of the participatory media movement. For more information, visit http://www.ourmedia.org.

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