MyVideo Presents Mina

The 14-year old has become a huge hit, not only on the video platform but also in the music charts, thanks to one clip of her singing. Now, she has an apartment in her name, a recording contract and a hit single, "How the Angels Fly."

The clip of Mina singing attracted three million visitors and the attentions of the Starwatch label which searches and promotes new talent in cooperation with German broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1. The youngster's music career is now well and truly off the launch pad, with no little help from Magic Internet, the company which runs MyVideo.

But the video hosting site is not looking for gratitude or royalty payments. The fact that Germany's latest starlet sprang from the Berlin-based company's portal is thanks enough. A talented and pretty new star is a great advert for a small firm of 20 staff which has now been catapulted into Germany's Internet elite by capitalizing on the wide-reaching possibilities of Web 2.0.

Ideal platform for those seeking fleeting fame

The basis for MyVideo's success since it was launched in March 2006 is simple. People want to be famous. It seems that Andy Warhol's assertion that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes doesn't rate highly with the new generation of self-publicists. Five minutes will do. And MyVideo provides the ideal platform for this fleeting flirtation with fame.

"The users want to present themselves, they want the chance to become famous for five minutes", Christian Vollmann, manager of Magic Internet said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) recently.

It doesn't seem to matter what they do to become famous either. Videos of cleaning mishaps, crazy pets, teen-angst monologues and wannabes singing in their bedrooms all share space on the portal. More than half of those who appear are under 30 years old.

It is, however, a fiercely competitive sector. MyVideo's attraction is that it is a young and hip portal. While this makes it popular with a certain demographic, it also leads to a creative chaos which the sector leader, YouTube, keeps under control and which German challengers like Clipfish and Sevenload try to avoid.

Mina inspires MyVideo to plan expansion

However, if the Internet free-for-all results in a Mina every 18 months, MyVideo would gladly accept it. Since the youngster exploded on the scene, she has retold her story of how MyVideo launched her on the world in every interview she has given. People in the entertainment business know that you can't put a price on publicity like that.

MyVideo now has other plans for expansion of its name and services. The site recently hosted the video for the new single from popular German band Die Fantastischen Vier and has signed a cooperation deal with Sony BMG to host videos from its artists.

There are also plans in the pipeline to expand into other European countries, with Scandinavia, the Benelux countries and eastern Europe the targets. Perhaps, with an extended range, MyVideo can provide another Mina, currently singing into her hairbrush in a Romanian bedroom perhaps, with the chance to be a star.