Chase Norlin has spent over a decade in the online space. For example, he was a senior business development executive at ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK). He also served as an executive at InfoSpace (NASDAQ: INSP). Oh, and he also helped to create Sony's (NYSE: SNE) first online photo sharing service.

His latest gig: Pixsy. It's a fast-growing company in the online video space.

Well, this week, I had a chance to catch up with Chase.

Q: How are things at Pixsy?

A: Image and Video Search are the fastest growing consumer search verticals on the web. In fact, Image Search is 10% of Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) traffic and grows 100% every year. We said early on, "if image and video search are so popular, why doesn't every website have it?" And that's the driving growth behind our business. Pixsy is unique in that we can provide image and video search to a website, under their brand, with content tailored to that specific vertical, and enable that site to have their media searched or combined with the Pixsy index. All of this provides great value to publishers: new search traffic, users stay on the site longer, new content tailored to that site, and new ad inventory is created. Additionally, the service provides great value to content providers as they receive free, targeted traffic from users performing image and video search queries. We now have a backlog of 8,000 providers trying to get content into the Pixsy index as a result.

What is Google, Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG) doing with Google Video now that it has bought YouTube? Well, not a company to just jettison a product that had quite a bit of initial fanfare, Google is making a wise decision and will be turning Google Video into a "video search" site that will be a search engine for video content all across the web.

Wow -- I wonder if purveyors of video content will get as mad at Google as the websites (news websites, generally) that get all miffed when Google indexes content into its search engine?

Google continues to try and "democratize" the Internet and it's gotten quite few enemies int he process --- but I like what the company does. For one, it levels the playing field and tries to wrangle absolute control over freely-available content from one central source out into the whole wide world (web).

So, while paid video downloads from Google Video will probably go away soon,Google Video will still be an important tool for customers looking for specific pieces of video from websites across the globe. Hey --- can't YouTube be used for this purpose now already via clip tagging?

If you haven't figured out the online video craze is in full tilt, it's time to get with the program. This is becoming the next "NEXT BIG THING," although if you are in the post-college or younger age group, it has been here for a long time. AOL now has launched its developer program on an open platform basis that will allow real-time submissions and search across AOL and third party platforms and video content owners.

This announcement will not have any significant positive or negative financial impact on any of the Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and AOL subsidiaries, but it is one of many focused core strategies that is getting the AOL name ready for the next move. Initiatives are ramping fast now and the company is really trying to show it can be just as nimble as the kids over at Google (GOOG) and as savvy as the competition at Yahoo! (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).

AOL is essentially saying it will be there for the explosive growth in real-time video search. That may not sound as exciting as it is. If you don't recall how fast video can change public opinion, think back to "American Pie" and how a live video feed changed things. That was in a fictional story of course, but that was based on current technology for the year 1999. Digital video technology has come a long way, and the new video compression standards have only contributed more and more to the viral wave of video on the web. Imagine what happens when near real-time amateur video comes out when a politico makes a comment he or she thinks is off camera, and that is instantly available for the world to see.

Through its new AOL Video Search developer program, AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts. The AOL Video Search Developer site can be found at http://developer.searchvideo.com.