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March 28, 2007 • 11:13 pm 0

Video Online, Done Right

Fred Wilson has been writing an interesting set of posts under the title “Do Tube” with advice for the new NBCU-Newscorp video venture.

(If you’re interested in how the world of online video is going to evolve, these are worth a read.)

In our view, the #1 thing that the new NBCU-Newscorp venture (or anyone else with video assets) needs to do is to provide an embed codes. As I wrote a month ago, the embed code is effectively the URL for video; not providing an embed code for your online video is like not providing a URL for your web page.

The second thing people will and should do is to make their embed codes available through an RSS feed. YouTube does it, so does Daily Motion. We’ll see more of that, I suspect.

Finally, all of this only works if you find a way for advertising to work in these embeddable, short clips; where the advertising works for advertisers, but isn’t unbearably intrusive for us viewers. A fifteen second pre-roll in front of a 30-second clip is unbearably intrusive.

The new Onion News Network is showing everyone a path to the promised land. You get a quick, not-too-painful 5 second pre-roll splash (Dewars is their advertiser now), followed by a post-roll. I don’t like pre-rolls, but something under 5 seconds is probably ok given that they let me take the video, that I can add to my pod, or get a feed of videos on vod:pod.

So here’s to the Onion. NBC-Newscorp, take note. Show the folks at Google their “ClownCo” nickname for your venture was clownish.

Filed under: Stuff We Love , ,

March 27, 2007 • 6:11 pm 0

The People’s Guide to Video = The People’s Network

Liz Gannes at Newteevee (have you seen what a cool widget they have!) posted an article yesterday that very briefly touched on our new feed service, but led with a quick paragraph about TV Guide, and quoted one of their executives saying this:

“Everybody says, `Who’s going to be the TV Guide of online video?’ and we say, why shouldn’t it be us?” said Richard Cusick, senior vice president of digital media at Gemstar-TV Guide. “We’re making a bet, but we think it’s a safe bet and consistent with our mission.”

That got me thinking, “OK, who is going to be the TV Guide?”

Now, without wanting to sound like that frickin’ Time Person of the Year issue, the answer is US (not us as in vod:pod, but us as in me and you and you). We’re each going to be guides for each other.

That’s what vod:pod is about — when you put a video in your pod, you’re making your own personal guide — maybe it’s useful just for you or your friends, or maybe thousands of people who share your interests, or your tastes will take an interest. We see this happening already, throughout the day, every day, on vod:pod.

Of course, the great thing about the internet (and hyperlinks, and embed codes, and digital media) is that one metaphor is never sufficient, it has to metastasize and grow to really capture what’s happening. And so, because your Pod (your guide) provides access to the programming itself, too, its a channel, or cable network, or movie theater, too. Pick the additional metaphor of your choice.

This is that much more true with the addition of feeds. I now subscribe to several of our “Pod” feeds because I like the taste, or share the interests, of the person curating the collection of video. They’ve become more reliable, more interesting ways to discover programming.

So, you’re now all a guide, you’re now all a network. Get busy, we’re all looking for something to watch.

Or, to use another metaphor (badly, and compounded): to find a pony in there somewhere, in that great big YouTube-Daily-Motion-GoogleVideo-100s-of-others pie of video in the sky.

Filed under: Stuff We Love ,

March 26, 2007 • 2:33 am 0

Feed Me, vod:pod!

Ever wanted to have the videos you want, from hundreds of sites around the Web, delivered to you?

Now you can.

We’ve just launched a new addition to vod:pod that makes that possible, here are the details:

* When you join vod:pod, you can now get feeds of videos — basically, a regularly updated selection of videos — delivered to your home page on vod:pod.
* Just click on any thumbnail for a video in your feed, and the video plays right there, right on the page.
* Save the videos you like to one of your Pods, or send them to your friends; we’ve provided handy buttons to do both things.

* You choose what feeds you want to receive. We’ve provided a handy set of pre-selected feeds; or you can add your own custom feeds.
* Pods are feeds (so you’ve got thousands of potential feeds to choose from right from the start). Find a pod you like, add it as one of your feeds!
* You can add feeds from YouTube and Daily Motion by tag or by username, and feeds from Google Video by keyword search.
* And you can add a feed from almost any site that offers video sharing (videos that provide an embed code) and RSS.

If you’ve already started collecting videos in a pod, it’s a great new way to find videos you might like to add to your pod, to show your friends, or to put on your blog with our widgets.

If you’re just interested in the best way to find videos from around the ‘Net, we think you just might like this.

If you want to find out more information about our new feed service, here are some handy links:

Forum
Feed Details & Discussion
Using
Our Recommended Feed
The Video
Inbox
Custom
Feeds, the New Frontier
vod:pod tour

Filed under: News ,

• 2:27 am 0

Recommendations, Delivered

With gazillions of videos now out there on the ‘Net (we don’t know the real number, so gazillions sounds appropriately big), helping people to collect videos (by putting them in their Pods) is a useful thing indeed. Their actions separate the wheat from the chaff, skim the cream from the… Well, you get the idea: people who make great pods make it easier for the rest of us to find the good stuff.

But with over 5000 members and pods, and nearly 30,000 videos collected, we can’t even keep up with it all.

So we built a recommendation engine, and a “Recommended” feed to go with it. Our new Recommended feed will shows you some of the more popular videos when you first start. Then, as you use the “LOL’d” or “Loved” gestures, we’ll get a bit more precise with our recommendations, based on what you like.

Try it out, let us know what you think.

Filed under: News ,

• 2:22 am 0

Be a Net Pioneer, Try a Custom Feed

Among the most exciting things we’ve added today is the ability to create a custom feed.

It essentially let’s you add a video feed for any site that supports:

a. RSS

and

b. Video sharing, by providing Flash videos with embed codes.

There are lots of interesting ways in which you can use this. Here is one: you can create a custom feed for blogs that frequently include embedded videos from YouTube, Google, Myspace, Daily Motion or many other sites.

I am a dedicated reader of venture capitalist Fred Wilson’s blog (http://avc.blogs.com), in particular because I like his taste in music. He often adds great new music videos to his blog, so I’ve added a feed for avc.blogs.com as one of my custom feeds on vod:pod. Next time he adds a video that I like, I can easily add it to my music pod!

But while the ability to add a custom feed is exciting, it’s also still a little tricky to use, and we know this the user experience isn’t perfect — yet. Nevertheless, we thought it was important to give our members on vod:pod the chance to start playing with this. We’ll learn a lot, and will be in a position to improve this more rapidly with your help.

You can get further information on custom feeds in the forum. We encourage you to share your discoveries there with other vod:pod members, what’s is working and what isn’t.

Filed under: News ,

• 2:18 am 0

Your Video Inbox

There is a lot to this new video feed reader we’ve released today.

Among the features I like the most is the “video inbox.” It’s simple, but addictive.

When you see a video you like, click the “Send to Friend” button. It’s such a nice thing to do.

Send it to a friend on vod:pod, and they’ll get the video in their inbox. A nice place of their own, rather than sending them off to the deepest and furthest corners of the ‘Net.

They can leave you a message on on vod:pod tell you what they think, or let the whole world know they loved the clip, or that it made them laugh out loud. And they can add it to their collection, of course.

You can also send the video to someone who is a friend, but not yet on vod:pod, and they’ll still get it in their inbox. Yep, we’ll set them up with a temporary inbox, where they can watch the video. It’ll take just a few extra clicks for them to join vod:pod and save the video to their pod — if they want.

Filed under: News ,

March 22, 2007 • 6:16 pm 1

Line Riders, Very Addictive

From Top10 Tubes, with, you guessed, many pods collecting the top ten videos per category!

Filed under: Stuff We Love

March 11, 2007 • 1:08 pm 3

vod:pod by the numbers, installment #3

We’ve continued to see very dramatic growth on the service. Thanks all you vod:podders!

Some vod:pod number haiku:
22,993 videos collected
From 310 sites
In 3986 pods
By 3913 members

As of this instant. Those numbers will all change in the next minute or two or three.

Traffic is quadrupling month over month. See the lovely chart below:
Absolute Unique Visitors to vod:pod

Also, if you’re interested in tracking our traffic and growth, Quantcast seems to be more accurate than Alexa for vod:pod.

Filed under: News ,

March 8, 2007 • 12:57 pm 0

Inspiration from Ira Glass

I’m going to start featuring a pod each day on the blog, using our wonderful PodPlayer Widget.

Today’s pod is from Robb Montgomery and Visual Editors. They’re making and collecting videos for journalists, editors and designers about producing news online.

If you’re involved in a creative endeavor (making a pod fits is a creative endeavor, by the way), you’ll find this inspiring.

Filed under: Stuff We Love

March 6, 2007 • 2:17 pm 0

The Expanding Video Web

Among the bets we made as a small little bootstrap start up late last summer was that there would be a rapidly growing list of “video sharing sites” — defined as sites offering Flash video with an embed code.
At that time, when the dominant memes were (a) “There are too many video sharing sites” and (b) “Game over, GooTube wins” people (even good friends!) thought we were crazy.
Just last week, I noted that our members had added videos from 237 sites. As of right now, that number stands at 285 sites.
It’s nice to see the numbers going the right direction:-)

Filed under: Stuff We Love ,

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