• Business Week, Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:46 AM

The explosion of online video on the Web used to be all about amateurs. Not anymore. Apparently, the average Web user has become bored with clips of lip-syncing 7-year-olds and kittens falling asleep. Professionally produced programming surpasses amateur video as the hottest trend in online video. VideoEgg co-founder Matt Sanchez. z would know: Video Egg provides producers with tools for making and delivering ads to online videos.

His sentiments are underscored by recent moves made by Bebo, a social media site, Sony, and ManiaTV, a video destination with more than 3,000 user-generated video channels. Bebo last week decided to open its pages to traditional media providers to boost its online video offerings. A few weeks ago, ManiaTV scrapped its user-generated channels altogether due. Earlier in July, Sony relaunched Grouper, its online video property, as a professional-grade content site only.

What does that say about user-produced video? The market has reached a saturation point, as sites like YouTube continue to pull in the bulk of user-generated video content. Also, the newness of being able to broadcast yourself online is starting to wear off. Professionals tend to do it better, and more often.

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