Google Inc (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s YouTube is not the only popular video destination. For example, there is Metacafe, which has more than 25 million unique monthly viewers.

In fact, the company has announced a $30 million found of venture capital from Highland Capital Partners, DAG Ventures, Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital.

Metacafe has built strong community features and also has developed regional versions of the site. It's known as "audience-driven programming."

I had a chance to interview Chase Norlin, who is the founder and CEO of Pixsy (a multimedia search engine). According to him:

"The Metacafe funding makes perfect sense and sends a signal to the market that they're really going for it in the shadow of YouTube. Their prospects look good given they're clearly one of the top 3 players in that category. Paying out users via their Producers program makes a lot of sense; the real question is, how big is the customer generated content market and is there an upcoming saturation of viral video on the web? Given their large audience, the model bodes well if they can make inroads in semipro and professional quality content."

Also, if you want to check out more venture capital fundings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Are you an entertaining person? Are you a visual story teller? Can you capture an audiences attention and make them respond to you? If you think you have what it takes to create interest, incite and entertain, then there are options open to you. Don't just tell me you're an artist. Grab your video camera and prove it on Metacafe.

Metacafe is not just another video sharing website. Metacafe has something for you. Cold hard cash awaits the future producer of indie films. As of this writing, the top earning video on Metacafe has pulled $26,683. Note that it has taken about two and a half years to do that. Still though, that's not a bad return on less than four minutes of video. Other vid-clips on the site have generated between $3,000 and $8,000 for their creators. While not an amount that you could live on, it's still real money which could help pay the bills.

I myself have several ideas that I'd like to try in pursuit of Internet-based revenue generation. I do call myself an artist and I have the ability to make people sit up and take notice. What I don't have is a high-speed Internet connection...

I guess my gay version of Gumby will have to wait a while longer... and his pony pal Pokie will too.

Late last year, the buzz was that Metacafe -- a venture-backed video site -- was about to be sold for a $200+ million.

As is often the case, the rumor proved to be without much basis in fact.

But, according to a recent story in Reuters, Metacafe has hired a new CEO, Erick Hachneburg. He certainly has a nice resume; that is, his former gig was the senior VP at Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS).

True, YouTube is still the dominant player. Yet, Metacafe is no slouch. And, with a veteran CEO, the site should get more traction.

But, a big payday is probably going to have to wait awhile.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Recently, I talked to the founder and CTO of Blinkx, Suranga Chandratillake. When he started his video search service a couple years ago, many people were skeptical.

Of course, that's no longer the case – especially in light of Google's $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube.

"But searching video is still a tough problem," said Chandratillake. And even the mighty Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is coming up short.

The acquisition of YouTube should help with the effort. Google will also learn how to deal with complex content licensing issues, as well as scaling infrastructure for the heavy bandwidth requirements of online video. Oh, there is also the challenge of finding ways to monetize the stuff.

For the most part, video sites let their own users tag the content. While this generally works with sites like Flickr and other Web 2.0 properties, it is far from perfect. Actually, it is often the case that users enter little or no information about their videos. Rather, the users just want to quickly post the content.

Another big problem: some users will put misleading tags on videos. This is a way to help juice traffic. But, of course, it means the search results are essentially irrelevant.

As for Blinkx, it has developed a system that uses voice recognition to build search indexes for online video -- as well as facial recognition. And, it is working fairly well – as the company has been signing a variety of major deals, such as with Lycos and even Microsoft.

True, Google has thousands of smart programmers who can come up with video search technologies. But, as seen with its original video sharing service, the in-house-development approach has its limitations.

Besides, given the fact that video is critically important for Google's growth, it's a good bet the company is going to buy up more companies in the space. And its major competitors – like Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) – will also open their checkbooks. In fact, Google recently purchased a facial recognition company, Neven Vision.

In other words, there are a variety of upstart video search companies in play. Besides Blinkx, it would not be surprising to see others like Metacafe, PureVideo Networks, and PodZinger get scooped up.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.