Cool Marketing Thoughts

YouTube is really on the roll now. Almost daily there are changes to the interface, making it better and better to experience the online video viewing and sharing. Nathan recently posted that YouTube possibly bypassed GoogleVideo in a race for video content on the web, and I’m the first one to agree on that. YouTube is very web 2.0, has thousands and thousands of users and allows those users to add personal value to each clip. From comments to bookmarks, to creating custom playlists, it’s all there. I’m a very satisfied users, and I think I made Nathan switch to YouTube too.

"YouTube, founded by Internet commerce pioneers from PayPal, has developed a new service that allows people to easily upload, tag, and share personal video clips through www.YouTube.com and across the Internet on other sites, blogs and through e-mail. The service also allows users to create their own personal video network." All you need is a Flash Player, which almost all of the surfers nowadays have installed already.

I remember Nathan asking me a little while ago why I didn’t upload all these clips from my archive to the GoogleVideo site, and I said it was far too complicated to then access them afterwards. With YouTube, I can browse on the tags I gave the clips, I can embed the clips into my blog, I can subscribe to RSS feeds from users, or have RSS feeds being generated on a specific tag or a combination of tags. It’s not just the amount of videos online, it’s the way I can use them. You can also add or invite friends to your personal friends list, making it even more easy to track recently uploaded clips by people you want to stay in touch with or of whom you like the things they’ve uploaded so far. Another thing that comes along with adding friends is that you can also access their favorites, so you even have a lot more clips to look at. Also very popular is the starred rating option which allows you to express your fondness of clips other people have uploaded.

I made my own archive on YouTube, uploading every funny/shocking/deranged/sexy clip I’ve received this last year. I’m up to 488 clips, and it’s still growing. I did this because I got tired of the forwarding, with my ‘out’ box always filled with ‘pending sending’ mails. Also, due to spam regulations, a lot of companies are blocking video clips or file extensions for their employees, making a lot of emails to former colleagues bounce or just redirect to the junk folder. Forwarding a short (especially compared to GoogleVideo !) URL to someone is a very good way to bypass this corporate rule and doesn’t cause my email load to exceed human limits.

You can also use YouTube to share private videos with friends or family, making it very easy to upload clips from family reunions, dinner parties or birthdays and share them with other loved ones online. Yeah, YouTube really gets to it. It’s a perfect community. No doubt. If Google should decide they want some web 2.0 action, like Yahoo has it’s Flickr… they should buy YouTube and forget about their GoogleVideo stuff. To be honest, I haven’t really used GoogleVideo since I came across YouTube in July because the time between uploading a clip, and actually being able to use it somewhere online is just way too long. With YouTube, depending on the filesize (max 100 mb), it only takes a few minutes before it’s available. And instantness is a very high-valued quality of any web service.

Adult footage isn’t allowed, and the self-regulation between users is pretty high. You can flag a clip for unreasonable content, and be sure it’ll disappear very very soon. Not at once, but the review monkeys over at YouTube are very alert and step in very often to remove copyrighted or obscene material. And another wonderful thing about YouTube is: there are no porn ads, no adult friend finder ads or whatsoever, making it a very clean site for all ages.

I can recommend YouTube to all of you, so y’all can broadcast yourselves.

Links :

* Signing up at YouTube (for free, of course)
* Coolz0r Videos

So now what? Well, YouTube is a perfect online sharing tool. But there’s offline fun too. And in comes Veoh, an initiative very much like YouTube, but with some extras. I’ll take you through the extras and explain a little how it works.

Veoh is an Internet Television Network that is able to reach anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a PC or a Mac.  All you need to do is download and install the Veoh software, and you’re off. (Took me about a minute to set it up, downloaded .exe file size: 2.38 mb)

Veoh allows anyone to create and broadcast their own TV show or a Channel full of shows. Not small streaming videos, but FULL-Screen, TV-Quality video. Veoh does not transcode the content, whereas YouTube renders it all and makes a Flash clip of it. Veoh offers it in it’s native encoding, and does not limit the file sizes/length of video. YouTube has a 100 mb limit. Veoh’s goal is to become the platform for producers of all sizes (from individuals to studios and everyone in between) to have a democratized TV broadcasting system. Democratized means unfiltered, thus including adult material.

Veoh has over 10,000 shows available for immediate consumption.  If you’re worried about being exposed to Adult content, Veoh has a built-in family filter that is on by default.  You can choose what rating not to go above. Filters are: TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, TV-MA, Adults Only and ’shocking & offensive’. Altering those filters requires the password to be re-entered.

Veoh has a stand-alone function built in, so what you’ve downloaded is also viewable when you’re not connected to the internet or on the move with your laptop. Prior to watching, the show must be downloaded to your computer. Veoh makes this process as easy as clicking a download button. Most shows will download within minutes or even seconds, others may take longer. Once a download is complete, you can watch the show. If you like the show, you can “subscribe” to it, and automatically get every new episode that the broadcaster publishes. It is FREE to subscribe to all shows . Think of this as a TiVo for Internet TV.

One of the coolest features is that you can manage your Veoh video queue remotely. So if you have Veoh installed on your PC/Mac at home, you can log into our system from work, and add stuff for your Veoh to download, so that you have it when you get home.

Veoh also has an integration for iPods, with over 3000 videos ready to download and play.

Veoh is based in San Diego, CA, is venture capital backed, and built by some pretty cool guys :-). CEO- Dmitry Shapiro built Akonix Systems, (an IM/P2P security company with over 1 million deployed enterprise seats), Chief Scientist – Dr. Ted Dunning built MusicMatch’s recommendation engine (sold to Yahoo). Full bios can be found here.

Getting Started :

* Download the tool for Mac OS X (10.3.9 and +) or PC (WinXP)
* Take a Tour, hosted by Veoh’s CEO, Dmitry Shapiro
* Learn how to make Veoh use iTunes to download videos

What other Video Archives are there left?

Not really plenty. I haven’t found or heard of any others that are building upon social networking, but there are some cool places where you can access pretty funny viral material.

* Viral X
* iFilm
* EatMail.tv (register)
* ViralMeister
* Lycos Viral