Another Youtube esque launch, this time from Viacom's Nickelodeon

Chad Hurley opened a bag of we don't know what to call it. More and more media companies are doing their own thing when it comes to the online video thing. The latest to hop on the bandwagon is Viacom's Nickelodeon which is launching a kiddie Youtube like site for kids to upload video clips of themselves. Yup, now web predators don't have to search for kids, they have another one stop shop where they can pick chose and refuse. It's no secret that Viacom and YouTube have had a rocky relationship; the two have not been able to sign a deal over video content, and Viacom has gone ahead and started offering its own videos, complete with embedding code. In a further sign of how Viacom would just as soon create its own alternatives and retain control over its content, its Nickelodeon subsidiary last week announced the "first-ever TV programming block featuring user-generated content provided by kids." "Nickelodeon's ME:TV is you TV," says Tom Ascheim, Executive Vice President of Nickelodeon, who couldn't make the "YouTube" parallel any more explicit without calling the new program "YouTube for kids." Nickelodeon launches YouTube clone for kids [ARS Technica]