PerthNorg

Scouta launches to recommend stuff to you

Little Creatures is best known for its great beer and wood-fired pizza, but it might also well become known as the birthplace of Scouta.

Scouta is a video and audio recommendations site that launched just yesterday.

It was over a few good beers early last year that Scouta co-founders Richard Giles and Graeme Sutherland came up with the idea behind Scouta.

Richard and Graeme were lamenting the fact that it’s hard to find good quality podcasts that were really relevant to them.

It was not the case that there wasn't a massive amount of content to choose from, or that everything was bad, it just occurred to them that it was hard to filter everything for personal tastes.

So, they came up with an idea to create the 21st Century “television” guide: a guide that recommends relevant online video and audio for individuals.

Nearly a year later, and with Graeme now based in the UK, Scouta has launched to recommend personally relevant videos and audio to you.

I have been using Scouta as a beta-tester and I have come across some great videos that I wouldn’t have found on my own.

While I spend so much time at my computer it’s good to be able to have access to quality videos without having to find them.

I love YouTube, but without fail the top 100 videos are, let’s be blunt, often trash or at least trashy.

Scouta works by members adding in videos that they like. It then uses that information against what other members with similar tastes like and recommends videos to you according to that data.

If it gets it wrong, you just vote the video as bad and that way it learns to know what you are after.

The other thing I like is that the site embeds the videos, which means that you can watch them all at one spot, be they from Google Video to Metacafe. Infact at the moment it can embed video from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Veoh, Metacafe, Revver, iFilm, Grouper, Guba, Jumpcut, MSN Soapbox, Liveleak, Brightcove, and Superdeluxe.

There are so many video sites out there now that I find this acpect of the site really useful and a way of finding things outside of the mainstream.

Richard gave me a summary of some of the key features of Scouta, but as the member base grows so will its functions:

- don't waste time searching for audio and video, Scouta brings the best to you through personal recommendations

- bookmark your favorite audio and video in one location

- share audio and video easily with friends, family and contacts in private or public groups

- share audio and video globally with like-minded people in public groups

And while you’re there I’ve created a CitJ group where we can share videos on new media, now media, grassroots media – whatever you want to call it.

You can find out a bit more about Scouta here

Also, below are some links to whata few bloggers are saying about Scouta.