Sony launched a Web site in Japan on Friday where users can share videos and blog about them, creating a potential rival to Google’s YouTube.
The eyeVio site allows users to upload video clips, watch those of other members and subscribe to channels featuring content from commercial providers as well as models, designers and writers.
To avoid the copyright infringement problems that have dogged the YouTube service Sony said it would carefully monitor the videos uploaded by users, although it did not say how it would do that. The company has not announced plans to launch the service overseas.
Sony has traditionally done projects alone and resisted tie-ups with other companies, but users can download video from eyeVio to Apple’s video iPod as well as to Sony’s latest Walkman and its PlayStation Portable. And Google Gmail users can enter their account details to have their address books imported automatically.
A video feed can also be linked to an existing blog. Besides the Sony-affiliated Playlog and So-net services, users can link to a blog from Livedoor. And users can set the system up to receive posts from cell phones.
Videos can be up to 150MB and use any of several formats: MPEG4, MPEG2, MPEG, Flash Video, 3GP, 3GP2, Windows Media Video, AVI, Quicktime, DVD VOB and Real Media.
The site went live at 11 a.m. local time Friday. Six hours later it displayed a sign apologizing for slow load times, which it said was caused by high demand on the server.