Video service Ffwd has a new tool out for Facebook users that lets them import their videos from the Web into their news feeds and fan pages.
Similar to what Splashcast once did with its Facebook application (which has since been discontinued), Ffwd gives you the option to import a specific video feed, be it your favorites or all videos you've uploaded, and turn it into a content channel. This means you can have it automatically post to your Facebook wall every time you upload a new clip. You cannot, however, select individual clips to be sent to your Feed. A small workaround is to set up to post your favorites, then bookmark the clips back on the video service you're using.
Where this comes in handy is for content providers who want to re-syndicate content they're putting on these sites, onto Facebook without having to worry about the setup or upkeep. In turn, users get to watch the videos right on the page without leaving the site.
Right now this app only works with YouTube and Brightcove, so if you've got your videos elsewhere you're out of luck. The company says more services will be added shortly, along with the option to add any video stream by its RSS feed. Until it gets those extra services, this application is somewhat limited. In comparison I'm using FriendFeed which has been set up to post to my Facebook wall any time I upload or bookmark a video on about five different sites. I can also manage what it's posting from both FriendFeed and Facebook.
In the meantime, if you're just interested in doing this for just YouTube there are several other pre-existing Facebook apps that can post your latest uploads or favorites to your wall.
Ffwd's Facebook app lets you suck in videos from YouTube, Brightcove, and soon other video services.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Digitalsmiths, a video indexing, analytics, and publishing firm, announced Thursday that it closed a $12 million Series B round of funding that was led by .406 Ventures, Aurora Funds, and Chrysalis Ventures.
According to Digitalsmiths CEO Ben Weinberger, the funding will be used to accelerate the company's product development and provide advertisers with the information they need to monetize more online video.
But monetizing that video may not be as easy as it could have been just a few months ago. Numerous reports suggest online advertising is slowing and monetizing online video is still relatively vexing for major players in the market like YouTube.
So far, Digitalsmiths has been able to perform relatively well and attracted TheWB.com and pulled TMZ away from Brightcove. But with Brightcove showing no signs of losing ground and other competitors like Viewdle making inroads, being more attractive to clients may not be as easy for Digitalsmiths as it may want to believe.
Update at 6:10 a.m. Wednesday: Specific information about when uploads will cease has been added.
Online video company Brightcove has decided to pull itself out of the user-generated content race dominated by YouTube.
In the future, the site will serve only as a place for Brightcove to host the professional videos that it collaborates on with businesses.
I had personally never viewed Brightcove as a hot spot for user-submitted content, but rather as more of a solution for businesses. I think its decision is a good move for Brightcove and will help it to focus on its efforts and partnerships with companies. Since Brightcove never really established a strong user base for consumer-submitted content, the real value in its service lies in customized, Web-based video for businesses.
Peer-to-peer company BitTorrent is set to announce on Tuesday morning the availability of a new enterprise content delivery product, BitTorrent DNA. Designed for companies that use streaming video, large downloads or games over the Web, the launch of BitTorrent DNA marks yet another conscious move by the San Francisco-based software brand to move beyond its roots as the creator of file-sharing protocol that became nearly synonymous with digital piracy over the past few years.
BitTorrent described the new BitTorrent DNA product in a statement as "the ideal solution for publishers seeking ways to overcome the obstacles associated with centralized content delivery, such as slow downloads, choppy video streams, and inefficient use of network infrastructure." The inaugural client for the new content delivery network (CDN) is online video start-up Brightcove, which powers a number of large companies' broadband media operations.
BitTorrent DNA will be used to "accelerate" the delivery of the video hosted on Brightcove's platform.
With the rise of online video and large-scale media downloads, content delivery has become a crowded niche in the market. BitTorrent DNA will square off with industry leaders like Akamai Technologies--the force behind CBS' video distribution network as well as a host of others. BitTorrent is hoping, however, that its massive following (150 million downloads of its client, according to the company) will help give it an edge.
In addition, the peer-to-peer format has become increasingly popular in the streaming video space, with recent entries like Joost and Babelgum touting P2P technology as the backbone for their professional-quality video content.
In February, BitTorrent announced that it was creating a digital download store that would use that robust user base as a way to legally transfer large movies, games and other files. The company has also forged alliances with major movie studios for legal film downloads.
Meanwhile, the exhaustive battle over online piracy wages on.
Up until this afternoon I had never heard of the expression "hypervideo," although I was quite familiar with the concept having used it in video services like Viddler, and enhanced podcasts in Windows Media Player. The idea is simple--take hyperlinks and textual information, and add it to various times or positions on a video. The result is that your viewers can have added contextual information about whatever they're watching, at the moment it happens.
The hard part is the execution, and making things user-friendly. A service called Asterpix has taken a stab at it with a hypervideo service that lets users build their own link-infested videos, complete with visual cues that tell you when you can access the added URLs and notes. While watching a video that's been enhanced on Asterpix, you won't notice much besides a small glowing circle that will show up on a person or object, and track them as they move. When you mouseover the notification, the video will pause, and you'll get a little page full of whatever text or links users have added to the video.
The actual process of adding these links takes two-steps. The first is picking the video you want to annotate. This is managed through the integrated search tool, which will scour YouTube, Google, MySpace, Brightcove and MTV to let you find whatever you'd looking for. Unfortunately you can't just plug in a video URL from one of these services, but if you know the title, you're good to go. The second step involves maneuvering a box around any object in the video clip and adding a description, URL, and tags. To do this, you simply need to highlight the object with a box. The service will do its best to track the object you've tagged, which it managea to do really well with on clips where there aren't quick cutaways.
The end result is a video experience that is slightly disjointed due to starting and stopping videos, coupled with various flashing indicators that pop up on the screen. If you're just in it to watch the video, you can turn the notes off, or click the link to watch the video on its original site. Also, if you're trying to avoid the flashing indicators altogether, there's a index on the left that shows all the notes for the entire clip. Clicking any of them will jump you right to the spot, complete with annotation.
I actually prefer Viddler's approach to this entire concept with their timed tags and comments, which are visually separated into two groups by color. The only downside with that system is that you can't call action to what's going on in certain part of the screen, and with more than 30 or 40 comments on a short video, things get a little hectic. However, when you scale Asterpix's approach to visual tagging, the entire screen will be covered in little pulsing indicators--not exactly viewer-friendly.
For other solutions that do visual video annotation with existing videos, see BubblePly and the currently defunct Click.TV.
Tag people or objects in a video with Asterpix. In this case, we're annotating Erica Ogg's face for the sake of identification.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
BOSTON--So-called user generated content is being built into the business models of forward-looking media companies as they venture out onto the Web, according to experts who spoke today at the MIT Enterprise Forum's Brave New Web conference on Wednesday. (See this CNET News.com story.)
Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of online video company Brightcove, said that Web is a tiny fraction of the overall media industry but that's changing because media companies are starting to distribute video over the Web. Brightcove itself is building social media features to its video distribution system which will allow people to post content or chat online.
During a panel after Allaire's talk, experts in Web media said that media firms are trying new advertising models to make money online--and that includes embracing user-generated content.
"We see user-generated content as a farm league," said Laurie Baird, director of technology partnerships for Turner Broadcasting System. "Good content will come to the top and those who have an economic mind (will find ways to make money)."
JibJab, for example, made very funny satirical videos for the Web around the last presidential election that were very popular. Now it's doing that same work but getting paid for it, she said.
Of course, there is this little problem of copyright infringement in Web media. What is called user-generated content is often redistributed TV clips and the like.
So how are online media companies going to make money in this environment where the consumer is participant as well?
Ads, said Alex Laats, the CEO of Podzinger, which makes a search engine for audio and video content. The trick is aggregating several niche communities to create a volume that becomes interesting to advertisers, he said.
"Once ads can deliver campaigns against user-generated content, then the copyright issues go away," Laats said. "Copyright issue will be solved by business models as opposed to pulling the content down."
Boston -- I'm at the MIT Enterprise Forum's Brave New Web event today, and later I'll be moderating a panel about starting Web 2.0 businesses. But this morning we're all listening to Brightcove CEO (and local hero) Jeremy Allaire talk about how to start a technology business today.
He said that unlike a lot of current Web 2.0 businesses, he started a business that "we knew would require a lot of capital." He raised $6M early on, far more than most current Web start-ups have in the bank when they get going.
Jeremy has a history of success, so raising money was easier for him than it would be for a college student with a clever idea and Ruby on Rails chops. But his point is important: If you can start a business on your Visa card, somebody else can too, and they can compete with you directly and immediately. There's a lot to be said for solving expensive problems. "It's radically easier" to build products today, but that is not necessarily to the benefit of the entrepreneur who wants to build a business. Money is a natural barrier to entry, and if you build a company that doesn't need much of it, in some ways you're just making life difficult for yourself.
On the other hand: Digg launched at a cost of $2,000.
A detailed blog post on Jeremy's talk is on CenterNetworks.
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