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SkyNews.com to embed user-generated video service in news pages

Posted: 04/03/08 By: Laura Oliver

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Sky News is to embed its video sharing site Skycast across its website to add more user-friendly and user-generated news video to its online content.

Skycast, which allows users to submit video clips to be seen by Sky TV producers, will be integrated into the news pages to allow video to be directly uploaded to the site, Simon Bucks, associate editor online for Sky News, told delegates at today's Digital News Affairs (DNA) conference.

The service, which is already being used on the Sky Sports website, will create a more user-friendly experience for submitting news video without directing users to a separate site, Bucks later told Journalism.co.uk.

"It was originally conceived of as a consumer-facing product, but we think it makes much more sense to integrate it into our existing site, in a sense creating a white label operation," he said.

Using the Skycast format for news video, Bucks added, could help increase video on the Sky News site while avoiding rights issues surrounding user-generated content.

"If you allow people to do a YouTube, you'd be in a lot of trouble. You have to have very draconian terms and conditions and vet it properly, because we're in a different business with a different financial model," he said.

"But this could be good for news, because it tends to be raw and not have any rights issues related to it and increasingly people are going to be shooting stuff that will be valuable to us."

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