Video is on the rise - big time. Youtube dominates the market, however even with its re-design it’s pretty poor at discovery. Social networks spark virality, however offer a terrible viewing experience due to all the non-video clutter.

Video curation startups VHX and Shelby.tv are out to solve these problems, and will be something more and more people spend time with in the near future.

Why?

1. Lean-Back: Video curation tools stream videos back-to-back with no breaks similar to how TV delivers content. Users simply need to select a channel, then sit back, relax, and consume. It increase time of engagement, and can be considered a substitute for television.
2. Relevance: Whether sites curate by social, interest, or location graph info, they offer much greater relevance than TV. Also, content is short-form, which is a fan favorite amongst Gen Y.
3. Any Screen - Although cable programming is doing a better job of offering content on any screen, its still expensive and nowhere as easy as just pushing play on VHX or Shelby. Shelby has iPhone and iPad apps, can connect to Apple TV, and work on your computer. That’s huge.

Although neither offer formal ad opportunities at present, they’ll ultimately be able to increase views, interaction, and virality as both platforms have built social into the core of their products.

i strongly encourage everyone to play around w/ both products and see what you think. Shelby’s strength is its social curation and any screen compatibility, allowing users to pull videos from their Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds.

In addition to social, VHX offers a list of non-social channel including Boing Boing, Buzzfeed, and more. It also allows users to create and embed playlists making it a great solution for blog content.

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Also, if you’re looking for music videos, the founder of VHX hacked together a Pandora for music videos called Music Video Genome. They don’t promote it, so it’ll be our little secret, okay?

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In conclusion, video curation is the future of content and will continue to eat up market share of people’s online viewing time in the coming years. These two players are ahead of the curve and are definitely something to keep an eye on.