As you know, Viral Videos are one of the most powerful marketing tools ever created. Just ask the rock band Weezer, who tapped the YouTube talent pool to make their latest video a smash hit. They pulled in all of YouTube’s most popular stars to make a cameo. Including that weeping kid who loved Britney Spears a little too much. They then uploaded it to YouTube and watched it’s popularity soar.

All forms of social media can be used to generate big exposure, not just videos. A fake news story on a boy who goes on a spending spree and plays his Xbox with hookers made it to the top page of Digg. It was later reported on Fox News as being a real honest to goodness true news story. It wasn’t but it generated roughly 6,000 inbound links. That’s some killer exposure…

Well, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand the power of online video, but the ones down at NASA, who now are sending us live photos of the Martian landing mission seem to have a fir grasp. We reported on this earlier in the week, and we now have something to look at it. The Phoenix Mars Mission site is alive and kicking, and has tons of great photographs of the landing and the surface of mars.

Even the indie movie industry is getting in on the whole viral video thing. IndieFlix created a marketplace for independent films called MyFestival. It will stream video, and will let users select movies for film festivals. The most popular and most viral movies rise to the top. They will be performing a trail of the software for the Seattle International Film Festival.

Of course, not everyone sees online videos as the way of the future. Viacom is currently suing YouTube for copyright infringement, asking for over 1 million dollars in damages. We feel Viacom’s lawsuit is kind of a direct attack on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a law that was passed to help keep freedom of speech free on the internet. Google has gone on record saying that, “Viacom threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”