When Jamroom was first released 5 and a half years ago, the idea of streaming video on the internet was still in its infancy - many users in 2003 were still "dialing up" the internet using a modem, and you were the envy of your onlnie friends if you could get 1 - 3 mbps (megabytes per second) cable modem service.  Much of the attention to "online media" at that time was focused on streaming audio - the MP3 file was really catching on with the popularity of sites like mp3.com growing all the time (Jamroom actually got its start being an alternative to mp3.com that the artist could control), and online video was still seen as a niche idea due to the file sizes and bandwidth required to stream video.

Over the last 3 years or so, we've seen a real "shift" in the online media space towards video, and video sharing in general.  With the explosion in popularity of sites like YouTube and Google Video, all of a sudden everyone became their own director, and uploading videos to YouTube became something many people quickly wanted to do (which in turn actually spawned a whole sub-industry of cameras that feature "one button" uploading to YouTube and other video sharing sites).

It was on June 25th, 2005 when the first release of the "Jamroom Power Pack" went online, enabling Jamroom to support uploaded videos in the same manner as audio - this allowed artists to begin sharing videos of their shows, or music videos, with their fans.  In the last 3.5 years, the Power Pack has grown to encompass many other "add ons" and features, and is a really "powerful" add on for your Jamroom.  With the release of the Jamroom Conversion Server (part of the Jamroom Cluster Server), Jamroom also added the ability for uploaded videos to be automatically "converted" to FLV videos - this allows the videos to always be streamed directly in the Flash player on the profile page, instead of launching a media player on the visitors computer.

Recently, with the release of the Jamroom 4 Skin Pack, a new Jamroom Skin called "JamTube" was released that does it's best to mimic the look and feel of YouTube.  If you are looking to create a YouTube like video sharing site, then the JamTube skin provides a perfect "launching point" to begin the design of your site.  The JamTube skin offers the basic functionality of a video sharing site, and most likely you will want to add your own unique features and design to the skin.  An entire guide has been developed to help you along:

Creating a YouTube Clone using Jamroom

The guide covers the configuration changes you'll want to make in Jamroom to make your Jamroom "video" centered (instead of audio centered).

I know this new blog entry could have probably been written as a new User Support Forum post, but I wanted to make sure that our visitors that only stop by the front page of Jamroom know how flexible Jamroom can be - if you're looking to create an online video site, Jamroom provides you with a very solid foundation (for audio and and images as well as video) that is a perfect platform to build on.

If you have any questions about Jamroom, or Jamroom functionality, make sure and join us in the Jamroom User Support forum and let us know what you're looking to do - we're always ready to help ;)