At South by Southwest Interactive a couple of weeks ago I heard about MindBites, a year-old instructional video marketplace based in Austin, Texas. I had the chance to sit down for a few minutes with Jason W. Reneau, founder & CEO, and Huntley Tarrant, vice president of business development, who walks us through the online learning and training site.

Unlike sites like Lynda.com, which require a fairly steep subscription fee, MindBites lets trainers set a price — generally as low as 99 cents to $2.99 — for watching an instructional video. Reneau says he came up with the idea after discovering that his only choices were hit-or-miss experiences on trainers’ websites or the old-fashioned Berlitz instructional CDs.

There are a couple of other online sites out there offering training and tutorials, but I haven’t checked them out so don’t really know how MindBites compares. But I was impressed with Jason and Huntley and would gladly produce some instructional videos on social media — if I can only carve out the time.

Watch or download the video on Blip.tv. (We’ve added it to the video feed at the top of the front page, for viewing at a larger size.)

JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large companies and nonprofits on social media strategies and campaigns. See JD’s business profile, contact him or leave a comment.