A number of clients and potential clients have been approaching our firm, Mitra Creative, to develop Web 2.0 applications with video components. When video is involved, the “heavy lifting” to build these applications is not in the design of the application itself — though custom creative design is by no means ”off the shelf” — but in storing and moving the content across the Internet. The most important element of scalability for these applications comes with awareness from the start about the issues of uploading and downloading video and ensuring that the materials are highly available. This may seem like a rather obvious point, but when we are approached with questions about building these applications and we reply with the consideration of CPU and http and digital traffic, our clients/prospects’ mouths are usually agape.

Scalable multimedia storage and fast, efficient bandwidth does not have to be a prohibitive cost. It simply has to be considered as a part of any business plan when an entrepreneur wishes to incorporate the sharing of video, audio, photos and other rich media into the mission of a social networking site. There are many options, including the utilization of co-location facilities where storage, availability and maintenance can be, essentially, ”rented”.

As Web 2.0 grows in scope and its applications vastly increase, it is critical to know that usability is the principal mission of any social networking site… and when it comes to multimedia, usability virtually equals availability.