Obviously Youtube and other video sharing sites have changed the way we entertain ourselves. Who doesn’t like silly monkey videos or people getting hit in various parts of their anatomy, or even the way we educate ourselves such as studying philology from Ms. Hotforwords?

How as software developers can we take advantage of this? Well, the folks at 37Signals who brought us Ruby on Rails and some very cool products like Highrise, use video to promote their new versions of software. We think this is a pretty clever idea that goes so far past the standard release notes that it really sets a new standard for other software shops. Besides being a way to promote the new features to existing customers it also serves as a marketing message for new customers. Another example of how video is changing our world comes from Johnny Lee at TED who has had his Youtube video seen over 4 million times in six months resulting in 500,000 downloads of his open source software.

Yet another example of high potential online media is a product called Goldmail.

Are you using video to promote yourself, your product, or your ideas? If so let us hear about them.