Kiva Video - Loans that Change Lives

A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me about Kiva, an online service that lets people loan money to budding entrepreneurs around the globe. The small loans they request help them earn their way out of poverty -- for example, someone might ask for money for a sewing machine for a tailoring business, or for a few dollars to purchase some goats for a dairy business.

Kiva was looking for people to make videos to describe the service, so I volunteered. Turns out it was a contest. Turns out I won fourth place. Woo hoo!

Here's the video. If you share it -- facebook, blogs, whatever -- more people will know about this wonderful service, and maybe they'll help more people. The "share" button on the upper righthand side makes it easy:

Online video increases sales up to 30%

Online retail giant zappos.com has jumped into video with both feet. They've started adding product description videos, and have found a sales boost of 6% to 30%. That's money in their pocket, so they plan to roll out 50,000 product videos on their website in 2010. Check out the details in the video (of course) below: