The use of videos on company homepages has risen almost as quickly as the availability of broadband itself; literally everybody's at it. There's arguably plenty of space left for a clever newcomer to make videos more 'usable', which is where Quick.tv comes in. Launching in coming weeks, co-founder Nick Bell describes it as "a service to allow users to make their videos interactive, it allows you to upload videos and add features, click on hotspots, move on to other websites..." While similar features have appeared on youtube in recent months, Bell assures me that these are merely a 'primitive example'. "It’s a professional service for professional users, for brands to utilise their output- we’re about more than a dog on a skateboard", he insists.

In short, everything from allowing users to find out more about certain aspects of the clip, to the prospect of real monetisation exploitation of online videos are possible. And investors seem to share Bell’s optimism. The Tyneside-based business was set up with £60,000 of investment from NorthStar Equity Investors’ proof of concept fund together with £850,000 from other investors. There’s also been funding from Business Link, the North East England Investment Centre, various angels and the management team as well. All in all, £1.2m has been raised. Revenue-wise, companies wanting to ability to upload customisable video (using Quick TV as an app or tool, rather as an alternative destination) will sign up to a subscription-based model: Pay X per month for a set amount of streams, and if you go over that cap, you’ll pay a little more, a la mobile phones.

Launching the business with Todd Yeadon in November 2007, he says they "saw the power of video but it seemed sort of static – everything else was so interactive. From the early days of the web when people would just upload a whole brochure, things have changed." And between Bell, who launched a string of internet companies from his teenage years onwards, to Yeadon, a man who’s worked in licensing across the music industry for years, they at least appear to have the background for success. For Bell’s pitch to a Techcrunch crowd at Christmas, click here: www.jonathanmacdonald.com