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Video on the corporate intranet? If your company's intranet lags far behind the more-cutting edge corporate portals in terms of features and sophistication, video might seem like an impossible dream.

Yet, the Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual 2007 showed that some of this year's best intranets are using video to communicate messages, show meeting, or let employees do more social networking within the company.

(If your site isn't that far along, don't despair: a recent survey from Intranet Dashboard showed that most intranets are still fairly basic, and companies are mostly cautious about adding new features.)

Here's what the Nielsen Norman Group annual has to say on the trend for intranet video:

Television has infiltrated the world, and now the intranet. While video and television are still not widespread, we are seeing an increase in television-type intranet offerings. The idea? Video is more personal than the written word. Accordingly, several organizations offer company meetings, reports, and commentary from executives on their intranets.

One of this year's Nielsen Norman Group winners was American Electric Power (AEP), which not only uses video extensively on its intranet, but has its own in-house television studio. We spoke with Tim Nicholson, AEP's director of interactive media, and William Amurgis, AEP's manager of intranet strategy.

AEP had a head start on producing online video, since it first built an in-house video studio 15 years ago to create safety videos for its employees. Seven years ago it upgraded that studio for online work in order to better reach employees scattered across 11 states, and in the process spent about $300,000 to make a state-of-the-art space. The studio now includes four broadcast-quality Sony cameras, four teleprompters, a full lighting grid, a green-screen stage, and four editing suites.

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