Youtube sits tightly on its spot as the number one video portal in the world. It’s extremely hard to compete Youtube, comparable to the problems that search engines have to compete with Google. One way of dealing with this challenge is to provide a specialized video service. 5Min is one of those specialized video portals. It provides access to thousands of Do It Yourself and How To videos. While it is not the only video portal in that niche it provides access to interesting functions that the other portals do not provide.
Videos are archived in categories like Tech, Food or People and can be played without having to register an account at the video portal. The website offers the usual “social web” features like rating videos, leaving comments, embedding videos and bookmarking them.
The videos on the main site have about the same resolution that Youtube provides but the player provides additional functionality like zooming in, slowing down or increasing the brightness of the video. Even more interesting than that is the so called Smart Player which opens the video and controls in fullscreen mode.
The resolution of the video is increased in that mode. It pretty much looks like a standalone video player in that mode. The functionality in that mode remains the same with the exception that it is a tad easier to browse related videos, add-ons and external links all without having to leave the page or stop the video from playing. Access to additional videos is given on that page as well which means it is entirely possible to stay in that mode and watch many videos.
Registered users can upload their own videos to the website. It is possible to edit video details while uploading the video which is another interesting feature.
The contents are extensive, lots of videos to chose from. Most videos have a playtime between 1-5 minutes but there are some that have a longer playing time. 5Min is a specialized video portal that provides enough videos to put it in a top spot of the Do It Yourself video portals. The player surpasses the players of most video portals by a mile and is reason enough to check the site out.
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Looks very cool, almost like WonderHowTo.com, which I found through a contest. How to videos (as a field) are growing rapidly, and I expect a lot more people to jump into it–pretty cool for the ones, like 5Min, already established!