Megavideo.com - Better than YouTube?

Megavideo has high aspirations and isn't afraid to say it -- they want to replace YouTube as the online video leader. I love YouTube, but I also love competition and recognize that competition is the only way to keep all these guys fresh and on their toes. With Megavideo, you can earn money from your videos through their reward system (although you can really only get cash from them if you pay for their premium service), as well as add a personal Adbrite account to your video channel and keep all the revenue from that partnership. Their premium membership is $10 a month or $50 a year. Megavideo also touts that you get 'quick seeking' of videos, you can upload video in 20 languages, you can customize their video players to match your website or blog, upload videos faster, and download the original video files. All videos are categorized for easy search, they list the most popular and highest rated videos.

Megavideo is aiming to replace YouTube as the leader in online video. Megavideo was built by the same people who brought you Megaupload.com. We allow our partners and users to keep 100% of all advertising earnings. Your content, your money. We just charge a little fee for bandwidth and coffee.

The big boys of the internet like YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, etc. need competition to stay on top of their game, and this site might help YouTube continue to evolve. I like the idea of generating reward points based on high viewership, as well as the idea of allowing users to create their own ad account with AdBrite. I also thought their video about why they are better than YouTube was clever and possibly persuasive.

I am not a huge fan of the design and layout here, even though the design and layout of YouTube is much worse. (Still, when you are competing with the behemoth YouTube you have to be 10 times as fascinating to even get a second look. They are not there yet). How many paid users do they have? How much have some of their users made from either the reward points or the Adbrite accounts? Those should be highlighted, along with testimonials.