February 7, 2007 11:55 AM PST

Expo TV: 15 seconds of fame for your latest purchase

by Rafe Needleman
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Expo TV: Video reviews of luggage, and a lot else.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Boston -- Expo TV is a relatively new video-sharing site devoted to product reviews. Users videotape their rants or raves about products, and post them for all to see. Videos earn their creators money: 1 cent per view.

The site is great fun. As a rule, people don't tend to post videos about products they are ambivalent about, although the bounty on content means you do get some oddball reviews in there (glue sticks? OK). You'll also find reviews on tech products, toys, luggage, and more. Unfortunately, some categories have cheesy infomercials in them, a legacy of ExpoTV's other business, which is aggregating paid product pitches onto video-on-demand channels for cable TV.

Expo makes its money by syndicating its content to other sites, like Buy.com (see New York Times article). Potential reviewers might want to know that the penny-a-view bounty does not apply to content served on Expo's partner sites.

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
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