[fbnt]

Back in 2004/2005 (pre-youtube era) I created a site with a voting system similar to Digg/Reddit where instead of links or text people could upload video files. My servers were able re-encode any video format into flash, and queue the videos into the voting system. I would grab the videos at the top of the stack (the ones with the most votes) and broadcast it on a streaming video channel shown in the front page. The streaming would've been non-stop granted that I had at least 24 hours of material uploaded each day, and guaranteed to only show the best videos voted by people.

It never took off because I was a scrappy student in the middle of nowhere (Italy) and 180$+/month for a dedicated server somewhere in PA was hurting my savings. I ran the prototype for a few months and then I decided to go back to my engineering classes. Sometimes I have the feeling that if I were born in SV I could've built something serious out of it.