Want to Learn to Belly-Dance? Brew Beer? Click Here.

You might expect to find a topic such as “how to tell if a lizard is male or female” in a Veterinary 101 textbook. Instead it’s one of more than 7,000 how-to videos on the four-month-old Web site Monkeysee.com. By Kate Nerenberg

Comments () | Published June 17, 2008

Founders Greg Letourneau and Will Jerro—both of Northern Virginia—created the site to provide free step-by-step instruction from experts or professionals. The two recruited local “experts” to help build an initial library of 5,000 videos—a number growing as users and the founders post up to 100 new videos a day.

Videos—made mostly in high definition as opposed to the often grainy clips on YouTube—are organized under umbrella categories. In Food and Drink, Bob Kiebler, food and beverage chief of Morton’s Washington steakhouses, teaches how to become a grill master, while the Pets category includes Krista Heinz of Doggy Style Bakery in Dupont Circle teaching how to cook up homemade dog food.

User-submitted content is on the site, but it must meet stringent standards—although some videos still raise eyebrows: User “Gianny 1” considers herself an expert in crafting a bra from a pair of underpants. The video does what it promises, proving that everyone can be an expert in something.

This article appears in the June 2008 issue of Washingtonian. To see more articles in this issue, click here.

More>> Capital Comment Blog | News & Politics | Society Photos