A little while back I wrote a blog post entitled, “YouTube is like the bar that lets in underage kids”. It was a quote from Mark Cuban. In the post I was agreeing with Mark’s point that YouTube is successful because it has the eyeballs, not because its the best way to run a video website. Like many of the first sites to truly “get” social networking (like MySpace, Flickr, etc.), their success is founded on filling a hole in the market. The ones that will be successful in the end are the ones that will just do it better. The perfect example is Yahoo vs. Google. We all know which one was first and we all know which one ended up the winner in the end.

So who’s going to start the dismantling of YouTube atop the video world? My money is on Brightcove and Revver to really kick things off. Brightcove just got another round of funding to the tune of $59MM and Revver added another $8MM earlier last year. And Brightcove has some amazing companies backing it (see their corporate site for more). Oh, and Revver is also partnering with Verizon (much the same as YouTube). But, the real reason I think these two will start the process of unseating the king is that they are focusing on two different niches: Revver primarily on user videos and Brightcove primarily on marketing-based videos. Brightcove has a much more user-friendly interface and Revver provides an incentive for users to upload their videos (they split the ad revenue 50/50 with the user).

So keep an eye out for these two companies to start shaking things up. They’re still far behind YouTube, but my money is on them leveling the playing field sooner rather than later.