Suttree.com: Casual Games, Social Software by Duncan Gough

Now that the dust has settled on the recent Youtube purchase by Google, the online video clip ’space’ is ‘hot’. Sony previously bought Grouper for $65 million and companies like eBaumsWorld must be wondering when they’ll cash in. eBaumsWorld is too controversial, being stuffed full of stolen content. Revver is Youtube with ad revenue sharing for contributors, like Kongregate does for Casual Games. There’s a potential for Revver, but what about Miniclip.

Miniclip is pretty much the biggest online games portal - whenever flash gaming is mentioned, Miniclip is namechecked as the best example. It has plenty of traffic too, it’s possibly the only Flash gaming website that can claim to be anywhere near touching distance of Youtube.

But, going back three or four years, Miniclip used to promote itself on the back of ‘Free Games And Shows’, at a time when Flash games weren’t in such a great abundance and viral videos, like the ever-popular Star Wars Kid, were beginning to show the way. Miniclip capitalised on the birth of viral content and hosted videos, it’s very name is a statement of what Youtube has since come to represent - short video clips.

Noticeably, there hasn’t been a video clip on Miniclip for a long, long time. The recent redesign seems to indicate a definite focus on games, with no real community features present on the site either. So the question remains: Miniclip - Ahead of their time or missed the boat?