Since its public launch a couple of weeks ago, a new video-oriented website and community called BigThink has been called snobbish and “a YouTube for smarty-pants.” But Montreal-born Victoria Brown, who co-founded the site with her partner Peter Hopkins, told me in an interview that the site isn’t intended to be elitist or preachy, and stressed that anyone is free to contribute their thoughts on just about any topic.
That said, however, it’s clear that BigThink is trying to take the high road when it comes to content. Anyone who has grown even a little weary of the funny cat videos on YouTube or the coked-out Amy Winehouse videos on gossip sites such as PerezHilton may find it a refreshing change. Brown and Hopkins have seeded the site with video interviews featuring people like such as Moby, psychologist Steven Pinker, activist Aayan Hirsi Ali and Buddhist scholar (and Uma’s dad) Robert Thurman.
The BigThink site is divided into two large content groups: Meta and Physical. The videos — of which the site has more than 180 now — are done in the style popularized by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, with the subject looking straight at the camera, as though talking to the viewer. Most of the interviews are an hour long (although Ms. Brown says the site will be doing shorter, more news-focused interviews as well), but they are segmented by question and by topic, to make it easy for viewers browsing BigThink to find videos they might want to watch.
After registering with the site, viewers can comment on an existing interview, or they can start their own conversation about an issue. They can also flag content as inappropriate. The content at BigThink is divided into a purple section — featuring experts — a green section with user-generated content and a blue section for editorial content. Users can rank the videos or other content they look at on a scale from irrelevant or to very interesting, and they can also vote on whether they agree with the opinions expressed. All of the video content can be embedded onto any other site, in the same way that YouTube videos can.
BigThink is also working on giving each user a profile page with the content they have shared, comments they have made, and other users they want to put on a favourite “playlist.” And Ms. Brown says the site is close to rolling out a new video-capturing feature that will allow anyone with a webcam to either upload video (in the case of users) or respond to questions from the site (for those who have been defined as experts). The site is also planning to host debates, and will be putting all of the transcripts of its videos online as well.
Ms. Brown got a political science and philosophy degree from McGill before moving to the United States to work in the film industry, and then left to her business degree from Harvard. Former Harvard University chancellor Lawrence Summers is an investor in the site, as is former PayPal founder turned VC Peter Thiel (who also has a large stake in Facebook). Ms. Brown and her partner met while working as producers on the Charlie Rose show, and decided they wanted to create a site that could look at serious issues and get reaction from viewers.
A similar sort of site, which some have called “the C-SPAN of the Web,” is Fora.tv (which you can read more about here). And there’s a video interview with Ms. Brown at Beet.tv.