That may be changing, partly through the efforts of youngeremployees who comfortably embed video on their MySpace and Facebookpages and partly through the launch of slick new applications thatmake video easier than ever to create.

Take Animoto, a web application that createsMTV-style videoswith the click of a button. Users upload photos, selectmusic and let Animoto automatically generates a unique video. Ittakes from a few minutes to a few hours for the video to becompleted.

The founders of Animoto Productions have backgrounds in film andtelevision. Many worked as producers for MTV, Comedy Central andABC. But Animoto videos are not produced by humans, but bypatent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence developed to thinklike a human editor and director. "The resulting video is producedin a widescreen format, containing the visual energy of a musicvideo and the emotional impact of a movie trailer," the companyboasts.Last month, Animoto released a commercial-use service calledAnimoto forBusiness, which creates videos for commercial purposes.Brad Jefferson, CEO & co-founder of Animoto, says the servicelevels the playing field. "Larger businesses typically outsourcesuch video creation services for thousands of dollars per video,while smaller businesses settle for suboptimal videos or commonlygo without," he said, noting that Animoto for Business makes iteasy and inexpensive for all businesses to create videos. Thesubscription service costs $99 per user for three months or $249per user for one year.Before launching its commercial offering,Animoto partnered with ten companies across several industries totest the application. They include Herman Chan, an associate broker at PrudentialCalifornia Realty in San Francisco who creates video tours of hislistings. "In this changing real estate market, it's critical todifferentiate my properties for sale," he says. Chan said he'sreceived positive response from both buyers and sellers, who "findit hard to forget a listing set to music and movement."