Have you ever watched an online video that immediately compelled you to find the share tool? Thus born the viral video, a visual experience shared by millions within days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last month an entrepreneur, internet marketer and videographer, with a bond formed by shared childhood summers on Whidbey Island, Wash., banned together to introduce a new noun to the global network of shared online multimedia: epipheo (formed from the words “epiphany” and “video”).

Epipheo Studios (ES) launched a beta website epipheo.com to aggregate such works that are not only viral, but “turn a light on” and transform the way people think and live.

“It’s likely that a day will come when creating an epipheo for a new campaign will be as common as writing a press release,” said Jeremy Pryor, ES cofounder.

Pryor dropped out of graduate school in 2001 and put down $1000 to start his first ecommerce business TolkienTown (“store for the Lord of the Rings and other collectibles”), which reached more than $3 million in sales by 2003. In 2004 Pryor cofounded Marketplace Earth, search engine marketing for online retail.

Epipheo.com is Pryor’s first hack at social media strategy, although the epipheo aggregation system is far from complete.

Right now only YouTube videos populate epipheo.com by user submission (this prevents worthy Vimeo clips, such as Hanson Hosein’s Rising from Ruins: Tax Subsidy Animation, from submission) and they currently maintain the Youtube rating, although translated from traditional gold stars to lit light bulbs—a bit confusing.

Programmers are working on an epipheo rating solution and overall system that encourages participation.

“Ideally it will be a site that grows by itself,” said ES cofounder Jon Collins, “People can post what they think are epipheos, flag videos that are not, and rank their favorites.”

Collins made his first video in 2006 for skatechurch, an indoor skate park for youth sponsored by Portland’s Central Bible Church. Since then he’s started Retrograde Media and produces story-driven videos full-time, working for mostly non profit clients.

Epipheo.com itself is not about making money, but instead a strategy to drive traffic to Epipheo Studios, a small video production company that is poised to create epiphanies on video with a proportional rate ticket.

Sure, video recording and editing tools are cheap and available to amateur artists who are capable of producing professional quality stuff. Instead of competing with such dangerously numerous creatives, ES is open to outsource for amateur videographers.

Whether using After Effects or Common Craft-style cutouts, ES is all about achieving the epiphany in video storytelling.

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Previous to eHarmony and Match.com, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan made online dating socially acceptable in “You’ve Got Mail.”

CWTV drama series Gossip Girl propels conflict using mass text messaging.

If he doesn’t call you: “Please don’t cyberstalk him,” said Janine to Gigi in the recent film “He’s Just Not That In To You.”

Last week 30 Rock “Goodbye, My Friend,” had a cleverly written scene that mocks the way today’s youth communicates, specifically in romantic relationships:

Pregnant teen Becca: Dude I know you’re getting these messages because I know how to check your voicemail. You’re officially a d-bag Tim! I hope you lose your indoor soccer game.

…

Becca: And when I told Tim I was pregnant he just freaked out and didn’t call me for a week.

Then he texted me and was like “Oh, I love you, No, I’m mad at you, you did this on purpose,” as if. Meanwhile, his MyFace page still says status: “horny.”

And I’m like, “If you care about me at all at least have the decency to skype me face to face.”

Liz Lemon: Man, there are just so many different devices for guys to not call you on now. When I was your age you could just be like, “oh he probably tried to call me but my line was busy,” and then just watch Falcon Crest and cry yourself to sleep.

I don’t think popular culture is too far off the mark. What are examples (real life or on the screen) you have encountered?

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Relief organization World Vision is rooted in child sponsorship and has been the first of its kind to experiment with existing digital technology to improve communication between child and sponsor online.

Typically donors receive tangible letters and photos through the mail from community organizations, called Area Development Programs (ADPs), on behalf of their sponsored child. But now, through a trial online project called “mySponsorship,” donors of sponsored children in Senegal, Columbia and the Philippines can also navigate online videos, photos, drawings and stories of those communities.

“The idea is, if we give sponsors a better connection to their sponsored child’s community, they will stay on and sponsor longer,” said WV Director of New Media Robert Coronado, who managed the creative execution for mySponsorship.

In order for this closed social network to work, all of WV’s community programs needed to be wired. Last year WV International launched SandukaNet, a global satellite communications network that enabled every ADP (280 locations in 24 countries throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America) to access the internet through “very small aperture terminals” (VSATs). However, the connection quality is not consistent among ADPs and, in Coronado’s experience, “it’s only a little bit better than dial-up.”

MySponsorship is no Facebook or MySpace. Sponsored children do not have the individual technology or know-how to update their status, post digital notes or tag themselves in picture albums. Trained community program staff are equipped with video cameras and mediate all content created and uploaded online. MySponsorship is not designed to allow direct contact between child and sponsor, and information about a child is only accessible by the donor. WV is partnered with more than half a million child sponsors.

“Child specific content is only available past login,” said Director of mySponsorship Eric Showell. His team worked closely with the field office’s Child Protection officers to ensure security and privacy for the children.

User analytics for mySponsorship are promising: high email click-through, and 41 percent unique visitation with 35 percent returning. Results show that the program was meeting the donor retention goal (improved by 7 percent on first year cancellation) and also made significant progress in donor acquisition (8.2 percent higher for “first gift givers” and 7 percent higher for “autogiving”). And in the midst of national financial crisis, the means of mySponsorship are economically beneficial—uploading digital content to the internet is free.

“I think it’s really amazing that you can actually interact further in some way with a child you are sponsoring by reading stories and watching videos and everything about the community they live in!” wrote a donor in an email, “Will there be any more countries and communities available in the future, specifically in Haiti or Zambia, and if so, do you know when?”

MySponsorship has not been publicly launched, and is still in its pilot stage. The prototype was up-and-running in July 2007 by in-house creative services and its slightly improved beta version is the current platform used today. Any further expansion is “on hold for the time being,” said Showell after a meeting with WV President Richard Stearns, who conceived the idea.

World Vision has more than 30,000 staff serving close to 100 million people in nearly 100 countries. Stearns wants to establish a unified vision for mySponsorship with WV International before he gives the nod for a “general roll-out” that would expand the program to more than 50 additional ADPs.

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Oldie News Vets Hold to Journalistic Principles but Embrace Newer Practices

Only on-site gathering, only online reporting.

• They will not cover U.S. stories.
• They will not focus on breaking news.

A new American internet news organization equipped some 70 international correspondents with Flip video cameras to embark “on a bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.”

“New technology allows us to make newsgathering a more transparent process.”

Global Post (Boston, Conn.) covers only international stories—the exception is US Foreign Policy—with on-the-ground reporters stationed around the world.

And they advocate social media, although public participation may relate directly to how transparent the typically controlled traditionalists can become.

“We invite you to be part of that community and to provide feedback on our coverage and actively engage in the site as a participant.” The news is mostly free to the public online.

Founded by news veterans Philip S. Balboni and Charles M. Sennott, GP was launched Jan. 12. The news organization is for-profit, earning from advertising, syndication, and its membership feature dubbed Passport—discounted to students—that serves exclusive “inner circle” content.

We, the Founders of GlobalPost, are also acutely aware of the fact that quality journalism in America is threatened more profoundly today than at any time in our history from an unprecedented combination of forces: the transformational power of technology and the internet, the dramatic erosion in the economic underpinnings of the traditional media, and a steady migration of the most devoted consumers of news as well as younger people to new content platforms, most importantly the web.

-Balboni & Sennott

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