Five years ago, the thought of viewing a video on a website was similar to that of using a modem to access the Internet: painfully slow. Who didn’t have fears that an online video would cause a computer to freeze? Or, if the video played, who didn’t speculate about its poor quality or buffering in the middle?

Now, thanks to more bandwidth and better technology, videos are almost everyone online, from daytime TV on Yahoo!’s “Daytime in No Time” segment to clips of children’s shows on YouTube. And so the viral-video phenomenon continues to cross over to social platforms…

In March, the Open Video Alliance launched a campaign to bring video content to Wikipedia. The video content needs to be short, in good taste and educational. Videos are subject to review by Wikipedia volunteers for copyright violations. Since Wikipedia is a non-profit organization and doesn’t allow advertising on its site, some people are opposed to the new video-content model. They state video will slow down the site’s speed and lengthen the already lengthy turnaround to get content up on Wikipedia.

I, on the other hand, think adding video to the site is actually a smart move. Wikipedia is one of the 10-most-visited websites in the world, so what a great way to improve articles by explaining and clarifying through video. Wikipedia is already optimized and usually shows up within the first-five search results, so I’d expect the embedded videos to receive plenty of views. This is also an excellent opportunity to achieve video optimization.

This move also provide brands with another opportunity to market their messages. In the few searches I performed today on Wikipedia, video content is lagging. But Wiki Project: Lights Camera Wiki! will hopefully generate more videos over time.