Amateur video to start with had been something of a fad - only those who could afford expensive equipment got to try it. Over the past 10 years we've seen an increase in the popularity of amateur video with the advent of cheaper camcorders and webcams; amateur video is now available to the masses. One the internet the first signs of using video as a medium for blogging came about around the same time as YouTube with what seemed a peculiar method of using video at the time. Previously people had embedded AVIs, MPEGs, and other formats in their pages though this often caused problems when using different browsers as the same method would not always work in every browser. YouTube's solution to this was to have a video player written in Flash and to convert the videos behind the scenes to a format it could use meaning a single method for embedding content was now possible and had been made easier for everyone to use whether a developer or not.
YouTube's popularity exploded and Google soon bought them out. We then started to see people using webcams to record their own weblogs and the birth of video blogging had truly begun. Where previously we had seen only audio podcasts we then started to see video podcasts, and even short interviews in the format of a podcast such as Robert Llwellyn's fantasic "Carpool" series. Twitter has even played it's part in changing the face of blogging with it being single handedly responsible for "micro-blogging" and for the current AudioBoo craze. All of this has transformed blogging from being something you type and post on your blog into a complete multimedia experience akin to watching reality TV shows. Video has given the blogger the tools they need to entice a much larger audience in what I've seen referred to occasionally as a meritocracy - someone who is good at "vlogging" stands a good chance of getting their message across.
I believe Wordpress might just be the first Open Source CMS to provide a tool dedicated solely for vlogging with their newly announced VideoPress. However VideoPress isn't a standalone product, you still need to have a WordPress blog already, but it's like having Vimeo or YouTube built directly into your blog. You can upload and embed videos with very little ease. The only tool more powerful, yet still intuitive and easy to use that I know of is Jadu CMS (a commercial CMS aimed at Enterprise) which has fantastic management of multimedia content and has a really nice interface for doing so.
