Can Waywire Take on YouTube?

A new startup has its sights on YouTube and with the big names behind the young company, it just might stand a chance.  Mayor Cory Booker is now a one-third partner in Waywire after being approached to be involved in a side project.

Waywire

His two partners include Sarah Ross, who was once the senior director for marketing with Yahoo and the CEO for TechCrunch; and Nathan Richardson, the former president of Gilt City.  Backers to the project include such big names as Oprah Winfrey, Eric Schmidt – Google Chairman, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and Troy Carter, best known as Lady Gaga’s manager.

The company is barely even in existence with only three months behind it and still in alpha mode.  However, it already shows promise as it is doubling its users already.

The big difference from YouTube is that Waywire uses a recommendation engine to choose videos that you might want to watch.  One of the problems with YouTube is that there are so many videos on there that it can be hard to find what you want.  Waywire is answering this quandary with its system.

Friends can recommend videos and select things from their own wire, which is a list of videos that they made and watch.

Experts see the potential with Waywire in the future as it grows and expands its videos.  If it can solve the biggest problem that YouTube has, it can become competitive.  Booker may be the best known of the partners but he leaves the daily work to the others who have more experience.  He does see the potential for Waywire to become the new YouTube in the future.

Since YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google, so one has to wonder at the bravado of any video site that dares to take it on.  Can Waywire live up to its expectations?

[Image via techcrunch]