Video Valentine
on 1-800-flowers.com

E-commerce sites like 1-800-Flowers.com, Buy.com and Blendtec.com are betting that seeding video-sharing sites and and otherwise relying on video will increase sales and traffic, writes the New York Times.

Blendtec's WillItBlend.com have led to a measurable boom in business, and its popular videos have been viewed 11 million times - despite being responsible for hundreds of copycat videos' being posted on YouTube. And in a move to increase customer involvement, 1-800-Flowers is promoting its Video Valentine service: Users can upload photos, write messages and choose music and graphics to send to their valentines, for free.

The flower company is also posting on YouTube a Reconnections series of clips, which highlight when a gift from the site either resulted in a reunion in the person's life, or helped make the reconnection special.

Finally, Golfsmith.com is employing user videos for reviews and is considering rewarding people who create popular videos, while hiring vendor BazaarVoice to screen content for inappropriate content. In addition to adding value to the site, the videos help increase traffic coming from search engines when a product is typed.