Immediately following the Friday night broadcast of MTVU's alternative-music awards show, the Woodie Awards, viewers will be able to watch a 360-degree video of it online.
The Immersive Media technology supporting the online video, scheduled for online availability at 8 p.m. PST, is designed to enable users to freely navigate around a video, 360 degrees, letting them explore angles and shots that they wouldn't normally have been able to see.
While I haven't seen the Woodie feed yet, I did have a chance to play around with the technology on some test videos. The video experience seems perfectly suited for a concert format. It's certainly something worth checking out, even if you don't particularly care for the music, which is scheduled to include performances by Death Cab for Cutie, The Dead Weather, Matt and Kim, and Passion Pit.
This is the first big event for the IM Live technology, so it should be interesting to see how the experience of the fully produced show on TV compares to the IM Live video experience, in which site visitors essentially become their own producers. If you end up making your own comparisons, let us know what you think.
Zynga, the social-gaming developer behind the wildly popular Facebook game FarmVille, announced on Thursday that it has launched a new game for the social network, this one called PetVille. The news was originally reported on the Games.com blog.
According to the company, PetVille allows Facebook users to "raise, dress, and care for a pet" that they've created. Gamers can also visit friends' in-game houses and "play with their pets to earn coins you can use to make your own house the coolest on the block!"
Although PetVille's userbase pales in comparison to Zynga's FarmVille, which currently has almost 70 million active users, the game has already added 125 gamers as of this writing and more than 400 people have become fans of the title. Considering the popularity of Zynga's other games, it's likely that PetVille will enjoy the same kind of success.
If you're a FarmVille fan or you just like playing games on social networks, you can check out PetVille by clicking here.
See also: Facebook games to hold you over until Civilization Network
In a nod to efficiency, YouTube on Thursday began testing a more lightweight version of its video player pages called "feather."
Feather pages do a number of things to speed up the video-playing process, from defaulting to the standard quality version (instead of high quality or high definition), to removing various on-page features such as being able to control the size and coloring of an embed. The idea is to get the video playing as soon as possible with fewer on-page distractions.
Other efficiencies include limiting the number of loaded comments to just 10, which users are now unable to vote on or respond to. Video replies, real-time sharing, and auto-suggest from YouTube's search bar have also been cut. However, related videos remain--albeit at a more limited 5 videos compared to YouTube's usual offering of 21.
Users who want to try out the new interface can do so by opting in to it on YouTube's TestTube page, which houses experimental, or otherwise not-so-ready-for-primetime features. These include YouTube's visual warp browser, its live streams product, and comment search tool. Once it's enabled, it can quickly be disabled from any video page with a little green box that sits on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
It's worth noting the feature does not yet appear to work on all videos just yet. We had the best luck on popular videos, including those from YouTube's featured section. Also, if you're a YouTube power user who regularly makes use of things such as video replies and user comments, it's worth staying on the standard version of the service.
Below you can see a before and after of feather mode on the same video. Click it to enlarge.
YouTube's new feather mode ditches many of YouTube's advanced features in favor of a faster-loading page.
(Credit: CNET)As one of its weekly new features for Hulu for the Holidays, the company has rolled out new advanced search functionality. Hulu's blog notes that the new feature is part of an ongoing effort to improve in the area of search. This is going to be crucial for Hulu moving forward as users have more and more videos to sift through in their ever growing catalog.
This new advanced search allows users to filter their searches by fields like show title, season number, video type, network, air date, and people. This really helps you to narrow down a search if you have a specific video in mind that you want to track down.
When Hulu first launched, search wasn't as big of an issue since the library of videos that they offered was relatively small and easy to browse through. However, as the site has grown larger, it has become more difficult to find what you are looking for. By taking steps such as launching advanced search and debuting support for search operators back in April, it is clear that Hulu is making an effort to correct that problem.
ComScore on Wednesday released October viewing statistics for online video. And although there weren't any surprises at the top, the figures did provide some interesting insight into how users are consuming video on the Web.
According to the research firm, more than 167 million U.S.-based Web users watched video online during October. All told, they watched 28 billion videos. Google easily led the pack, servicing a whopping 38 percent of all videos Americans viewed online, with 99 percent of those videos watched on YouTube.
In a distant second, Hulu delivered 856 million videos, accounting for 3.1 percent of the market and setting a new record for monthly views. Microsoft came in third, with 451 million videos viewed on its site, capturing 1.6 percent market share.
ComScore also took a look at the total number of viewers that consumed video content during October. The research firm found that the average viewer watched 167 videos during the month. Google sites attracted 126 million unique viewers. Fox Interactive Media followed Google, with 53 million unique viewers. Yahoo sites attracted 50 million viewers. Although Hulu didn't make the top three in unique viewers, the average user watched 20.1 videos on the site during October, representing another all-time high for the site.
Some interesting tidbits rounded out ComScore's report. According to the company, 84.4 percent of all United States.-based Web users viewed online video. The average viewer watched 10.8 hours of video in October, which is especially shocking, considering that the average online video was just 3.9 minutes long.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Ustream in action on Android-based devices.
(Credit: Ustream)Online video-streaming site Ustream announced on Wednesday that a mobile app that allows users to view Ustream content is available now in the Android Market.
According to Ustream, the app, dubbbed Android Viewer, allows users to watch any show on the site over Wi-Fi or 3G. The app works with Android software versions 1.5 and up. It also includes a chat function, allowing users to communicate with others who are also watching the show.
This isn't the first time Ustream has released an application for Android. The company already offers the Android Broadcaster, which allows users to stream a show to viewers from their Android-based gadget.
Those looking to try out Ustream's new Android app can download it for free from the Android market.
YouTube might still reign supreme in online video, but the big surprise coming out of Nielsen's VideoCensus release on Thursday is that Facebook is now the world's third most popular place to view video online.
According to Nielsen's latest VideoCensus numbers, which look at the number of video views in October, YouTube serviced over 6.6 billion streams. In a distant second, Hulu offered up over 632 million video streams. But it was Facebook with over 217 million streams in October that easily beat out Bing, Yahoo, and several other online sites. In September, Facebook was ranked tenth in total streams.
In October, Facebook placed second in total number of unique viewers: over 31.5 million. YouTube had almost 106 million unique viewers during October. Hulu placed fifth with 13.4 million viewers.
According to Nielsen, the amount of time Web users spent viewing videos on social-networking sites increased 98 percent year over year. In October 2008, users watched 503.8 million minutes of video; they watched 999.4 million video minutes in October this year. That growth far outpaced growth in number of online video streams as a whole, which grew 26 percent year over year.
Facebook has moved its way up to third place.
(Credit: Nielsen)"During the past year, online video viewing has become central to the Web experience," Nielsen Vice President of Media Analytics Jon Gibs said in a statement. "In conjunction with this increase, we are seeing remarkable growth in video viewing on social networking sites and it is only natural that these two trends would converge in consumers' minds, making sites like Facebook and Myspace.com, increasingly important distribution points for both consumer and professionally generated video."
But it was Facebook, not MySpace, that led the way in video streams on social-networking sites, nearly tripling MySpace's 85.2 million streams during October.
According to Nielsen, the "total time spent viewing video on Facebook" grew by 1,840 percent year over year. The number of unique viewers grew 548 percent over the same period. Total streams increased by 987 percent year over year.
"Facebook's rapid growth in online video during the last year illustrates the site's evolution from simply a communications focused tool to a media portal," Gibs said. "Social networking sites are evolving from a venue for catching up with friends to a platform for personal expression, allowing consumers to share their experiences in the full variety of content formats available online."
Online video company Fliqz announced on Tuesday that it has launched a new tool called SearchSuccess designed to increase the effectiveness of clients' video placement on major search engines.
According to the company, SearchSuccess "addresses many of the common flaws in existing video SEO strategies." Rather than submit a video to YouTube to increase Web traffic, Fliqz works with its partners to submit their videos to Google through the company's Webmaster tool.
Fliqz claims that with the help of SearchSuccess, "more than two-thirds of all videos submitted produce a first-page Google search result, and up to 25 percent have resulted in a number one Google ranking." That said, it didn't specify how many videos it has submitted, so it's important to take that number with a grain of salt.
SearchSuccess is available as an add-on to Fliqz's Gold service, which costs $499 per month. SearchSuccess tacks on an additional $250 per month to the service.
The hype surrounding Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 keeps heating up.
After Gamestop announced last week a $40 trade credit for those who preorder the game and bring it back to a Gamestop store by December 13, Amazon.com has launched a competition, dubbed "The Call of Duty-est Town in America." The contest is seeking the town or city with the most preorders of Modern Warfare 2.
According to Amazon, any town or city with a population of 5,000 or more can compete. It determined population size using the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.
Whenever a person preorders Modern Warfare 2 from Amazon, the location is tallied. The goal for each location is to have the highest percentage of preorders. Realizing that population plays a role in those figures, the number of orders doesn't factor into the competition.
Amazon said on its contest page that it will give a $5,000 gift certificate to a charity that serves the winning town. If the competition had ended at the time of this writing, the winner would be Grand Forks, N.D.
The page also features some interesting information about those preorders. As of this writing, the Xbox 360 version of the game accounted for 61 percent of Amazon preorders. The PlayStation 3 and the PC versions captured 31 percent and 8 percent of the preorders, respectively.
"The Call of Duty-est Town in America" competition ends on the game's release day, November 10. The winning town will be announced that day.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
As a frequent Twitter user, there's nothing more appealing to me than checking out the photos and videos that the people I'm following publish in their Twitter timelines. It makes the experience a little more rich.
That's precisely why I wanted to write this roundup. Why only write text in Twitter? Why not share multimedia content? If you're like me, you'll want to do just that. So take a look at some of these services and let's work together at making Twitter just a little more fun to use.
Be entertained
Ffwd Video-sharing site Ffwd allows people to share their favorite videos with Twitter followers.
When you get to Ffwd, you can view a host of videos on several topics. When you find something you like, Ffwd provides a "Share to Twitter" option. When you click that, your update box will be populated with a standard tweet and a link to the video. You can change it before you send it out. It's a nice service, but given the fact that there are many more videos on YouTube (which also lets you share content on Twitter), it might not be your first option.
Ffwd populates your update box with a link and message.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Flickr If you're a Flickr user, the Yahoo-owned site allows you to show off your images on Twitter with the help of a unique Flickr URL.
In order to syndicate your content to Flickr, you first need to authorize it on your account through the "blog this" pane. Once Twitter is authorized, you can share any of your Twitter images with Flickr. I tried out the service, and it worked relatively well. The site provides users with a unique shortened Flickr URL for an image. That said, Flickr hides the "tweet" button under the "blog this" option. It's a little annoying. I would have liked to have more convenient access to it. Either way, it might be worth trying out if you're a frequent Flickr user.
Flickr makes it somewhat difficult to add photos to Twitter.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
