The future of television is the Internet. At least, that's what everyone from TV network executives to Hollywood studio heads would have us believe. Every day, more resources—and programs—are being poured into online video sites. But media execs aren't the ones at the forefront of this new vanguard. It's being led by individuals--teenagers and grandmothers, politicians and rock stars. It's the YouTube effect, and there's no reason why you couldn't become the next star in this video revolution.

Many sharing Web sites, like eBaum's World, started as simple clip compendiums of pranks, cranks, and car crashes. (Of course, there were also the obligatory television gaffs pirated from over-the-air broadcasts.) And it turned out that people actually enjoyed watching the stuff—really enjoyed it. Within a year, YouTube ballooned to approximately 30 million unique visitors a month who watch about 100 million video clips from its site every day. So it's not really surprising that Microsoft is working on its own sharing site called Soapbox and that Google decided to pay $1.65 billion to buy YouTube and get access to all those eyeballs. And there's more online video coming.

Apple's iTV box, which is designed to bring online video from your computer to your living room TV is expected out soon. Meanwhile Tivo already offers a service called TivoCast, which allows you to automatically record online videos to its DVR just as you would your weekly fix of American Idol . The result is that you can watch amateur videos culled from sites like One True Media ( www.onetruemedia.com ) alongside episodes of Desperate Housewives .

Web videos are even going mobile. Verizon Wireless recently inked a deal with two video sharing sites—Youtube and Revver (www.revver.com)—to deliver online video clips to cellular handsets.

Getting your moment of potential video fame is relatively easy. To wit, videos are being added to YouTube at a rate of nearly one every second. And all of this material is being added free of charge to contributors and viewers a like. So even though Google paid millions for YouTube, you can access to the same audience for free. All it takes is a broadband connection, and a good idea.