Webware

On Tuesday Vimeo rolled out a new way to discover content on its service. Dubbed categories, the new system lets users explore content that's automatically been sorted by an algorithm that scans across Vimeo's groups and channels and picks some of the best and most interesting clips.

The system works by having group and channel owners pick just two genres that their videos best fit in. After which, the algorithm goes through and automatically picks a few clips that are sent to the parent category page. The goal is to have this system constantly watching for content across the entire site, and highlighting some of the best or most noteworthy stuff with very little need for human editors.

Categories come to Vimeo

(Credit: CNET)

That's not to say the system can work well without humans, or is being designed to replace user input. A big part of the algorithm is based on videos users are favoring on the service. In a call with CNET News last week, Vimeo's community director Blake Whitman told me that the algorithm does not even count views, something he says can easily be gamed. Whitman and the rest of the team are also hand-picking certain videos to be featured on the new category pages as the algorithm continues to be tweaked.

Along with categories, there are also editor-created subcategories. These are based on trends and can change based on the volume of content within a certain category, and help to further hone down what users want to view outside of titles and tags.

What's interesting about this approach is that in many ways it's taking some of the responsibility off the users who cannot choose a category or add tags to their own clips. Most other video hosts make this a mandatory part of the upload process. Part of the reason for Vimeo's, as it was explained to me, is that it keeps people from adding videos to categories for which they don't belong. With this system, videos are first vetted by group and channel to make sure they're a good fit.

That's also good news for advertisers, which Vimeo can now pitch with very honed, and focused content verticals. On the other side of that, Vimeo users will be more likely to see more integrated ad campaigns, similar to the one Honda did a few months back for one of its vehicles.

Vimeo's next big project is an overhauled analytics dashboard that will give users a high-level overview of how their videos are doing compared to one another, and across the entire service.

Vimeo's categories suck up interesting content from groups and channel pages.

(Credit: CNET)

Web video host Vimeo has rolled out a really cool new update to its content channel pages. Channel owners can now design their video pages with one of 10 new themes, and pick from three different layouts, including a new "gallery" view which scales up the main video player into glorious 940x530 (up from the standard 640x360).

In a call with Andrew Pile, Vimeo's director of development, he told me the change was all about making it easier to find content, as well as giving users more control over the presentation. He said users were complaining that channel pages were getting too cluttered. As a result, blogs, calendars, files, and forums have all been removed, putting more focus on the videos, which users can now rearrange.

The new gallery view makes the video player the center of attention, and puts a playlist underneath which channel owners can rearrange.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The change is one of many for the small video company. Pile says 2009 is going to bring big things. "People want videos all over the place," he says. As a result, the company is planning to switch over to H.264 encoding to widen distribution. This will let users watch their videos in places besides their computer, like iPods, iPhones, and on game consoles.

Vimeo is also planning to tighten down on freeloading companies who are simply using its service to host videos about their latest features. As a result, screencasts may be the next thing to get banned from the service. Last year Vimeo took a stand on users uploading footage of video games with the defense that it went against the creative concept of the site. This was met with a mixed user response. Vimeo's hardcore users were happy to see the gaming content go, while others cried foul about censorship.

"I don't know what the future of screencasts are," Pile says. "We do not want to be the company that people use to externalize their hosting costs."

At the same time, companies that may have flocked to the service for its fluid player and HD-quality streaming video aren't given many options. Vimeo does not offer a white label or "professional" hosting service, nor is it in the immediate plans. Late last year Vimeo introduced a "plus" service, although that was mainly to give its power users a higher upload limit and access to new features like statistical analytics--something that's due in the next few weeks.

I've embedded a look at the new features after the break.

Longtime gamers "Bello" and "Merca" were married this past December in Artix Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role-playing game AdventureQuest Worlds, the company reported Monday. The bride and groom have been avid MMORPG gamers for three years and met each other while playing the game. The wedding was held in a private, in-game room and 11,000 avatars were on hand to witness the exchange of vows.

Unfortunately, the wedding was raided by Troll Wedding Crashers, a clan within the game that "camped out on the dance floor of the reception area."

Low-cost pocket video camcorders have enjoyed a resurgence in sales, thanks to Web 2.0, reveals a report from research firm Futuresource. According to the findings, pocket video camcorders represented less than 5 percent of total camcorder sales in the U.S. and Western Europe in 2006, but that number could swell to 40 percent by 2010, thanks to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and others that make it easy for consumers to upload captured video online.

Online research firm eMarketer released a study Monday claiming small businesses plan to increase ad spending on social-network marketing during 2009. According to the study, 25 percent of all the small businesses surveyed claim they will increase social network ad efforts throughout the year. Twenty-two percent of companies said they plan to increase e-mail ad spending during 2009, while 13 percent of respondents claim they will increase spending on e-commerce sites. The full report can be viewed on eMarketer's site.

An online retailer that allows users to sell goods by providing a 240-character description of the product, has decided to rename its service from Twee Bay to Tweba. According to the company's site, which is basically a Twitter for e-commerce, "some people" asked the service to rename the site and, to no one's surprise, it did just that. The company's founder won't say who asked for the name change, but you can bet they probably worked for a company that has a name that rhymes with Twee Bay.

Balderton Capital, a U.K.-based venture capitalist, announced Monday that it has launched a new fund worth $430 million to invest in new technology and media start-ups. That said, the company told TechCrunch UK in an interview that it would "invest mainly in early stage" firms, but it might "also look at later stage companies."

I'm as guilty as the next person for having a social network portfolio that's too big. Aside from my Twitter account, I belong to Plurk and Identi.ca, and although I use Facebook most often, I still have MySpace and Hi5 accounts.

But now that 2008 has passed and it's time for us to evaluate what we did last year and try to improve upon that for 2009, why don't we start by cleaning out our social network portfolio and start using only those services that we like best in each category? After all, spending more time on multiple services isn't nearly as rewarding as getting more quality time with the best services, right?

Social bookmarking keeper: Delicious

Social bookmarking services are extremely handy when you want to remember a site at a later time, but that doesn't mean they're all created equal. In fact, Delicious, the leader in the space, easily sets itself apart from competitors like Ma.gnolia, Diigo, and ZigTag by boasting a better interface, more users, and better tagging, which makes it easier to find and share bookmarks.

Although Diigo's highlighting options are useful, ZigTag's semantic technology tries to improve bookmarking, and Ma.gnolia aims at providing a more thorough solution, none compare to Delicious. Yahoo's social-bookmarking service now features a streamlined search function, which makes finding bookmarks simple, and its new design makes it the most intuitive social-bookmarking service on the Web. But Delicious' most useful offering--its Firefox add-on--has nothing to do with the site at all. By installing the Delicious add-on, users can tag pages on-the-fly without being forced to visit the Delicious homepage. Granted, its competitors have Firefox add-ons as well, but after using each, it quickly becomes clear that they simply don't work as well as the Delicious tool.

Taking all that into account, I simply don't know why it's worth using another service besides Delicious. It's a superior tool with more convenient options, offering the same basic functionality as its competitors. It's the cream of the social-bookmarking crop.

Micro-blogging keeper: Twitter

I'll be the first to admit that I complain about Twitter as much as the next person, but after using competing services like Identi.ca, Jaiku, and Plurk, it's not hard to figure out that it's the only worthwhile micro-blogging tool.

Granted, Twitter still doesn't offer groups and I wish it had an element of open source like Identi.ca, but the sheer number of users who comment each day on Twitter makes it the best choice for your social-networking portfolio. If you want to be a part of a community that's both lively and engaging, you won't find it anywhere else but on Twitter. And now that it's more reliable and the Fail Whale is an occasional annoyance instead of a daily occurrence, Twitter has become an even more compelling service.

As the best place to find friends, colleagues, and thought-leaders in any industry, Twitter is the obvious choice as the only micro-blogging service that should be found in your social network portfolio.

News Aggregation keeper: Reddit

Trying to find the ideal news aggregator on the Web can be difficult. Depending on your definition, there's conceivably hundreds of services that package the best stories into one page. But it's the "social" news aggregation services, like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon that lead the pack. And although Digg is the most popular service in that grouping, I'm a firm believer that Reddit deserves to stay in your portfolio as your chosen news aggregation service.

Normally, I would pick the social site that offers the largest and most engaged community. But when it comes to news aggregation sites, Digg simply doesn't cut it. Sure, it's the biggest and arguably the most important to content sites, but that alone doesn't make it the best. Instead, I find Reddit's site design, while simple and ugly to some, incredibly useful and designed to help users find the best stories as quickly as possible without gaudy extras. But the most important differentiating factor working to Reddit's advantage is its community. It might be smaller than Digg's, but generally, the comments on each story are more edifying and lack the invective that has become a staple for Kevin Rose's brainchild.

Reddit may not be the biggest, its site design may be odd, and its community not as rabid, but in terms of providing interesting stories on a slew of topics without as much "gaming," it leads the pack and deserves to be in your social network portfolio.

Social Network keeper: Facebook

Choosing the single social network to use while ditching the rest isn't easy, since most of us have friends scattered across Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace. But it's because of those few friends still clinging to the past that we hold on to all those social networks. Enough is enough. It's time to rebuff the rest and stick to Facebook.

Why choose Facebook when MySpace is still the world's most popular social network? It's simple: Facebook doesn't have the awful design found on MySpace profile pages, offers a huge, engaged community, and most importantly, it's growing at a rapid rate, which means all those friends who still hang out at Friendster, LiveJournal, or even MySpace are starting to make their way to Facebook.

MySpace still provides value and Hi5 could be a significant competitor in just a few short years, but for now, Facebook, with its addicting features, applications, and growing community, should find its way to your portfolio as you leave the others out.

Video site keeper: YouTube

Maybe YouTube is the safe choice for the only social video site you should keep in your network portfolio, but I simply don't see how anyone can choose anything else. Vimeo is nice, but much of its content is barely watchable and while Metacafe is still an interesting site worth visiting, it doesn't provide the professional content that YouTube does.

And it's that professional content that I find most valuable when it comes to YouTube. Sometimes, I want to find a music video that isn't available elsewhere and YouTube will have it. And when I'm feeling nostalgic and I want to watch an old clip from The Wonder Years, it's sitting on YouTube waiting for me. As a bonus, some of the user-generated content is pretty good too, though most of it is strange.

I know that anyone can make a case for why practically any user-generated video site on the Web should be the exclusive service in your portfolio, but when it comes to finding the obscure, professional, or just plain weird, YouTube is the only place to go. All the others are practically useless.

Blip.tv, a video site that shares advertising revenue with show producers on all the clips it hosts, announced on Tuesday that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round that was led by Bain Capital Ventures. The company also announced that it has grown 250 percent in the past year, serving more than 51 million video views last month alone.

"Our goal is to make online shows sustainable by providing services of scale to independent creators and Web studios," said Blip.tv CEO and co-founder Mike Hudack. "Web show creators should be able to focus on creating great content while we take care of infrastructure, distribution, and advertising on their behalf. With Bain Capital's support, we know that we'll be able to grow our offerings for producers while providing value for distribution partners in the form of excellent episodic programming."

Blip.tv is competing in a tough market. The company is fighting for attention and users with services like YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo. And although each company has enjoyed success, none of them have been able to find an easy way to become profitable. Just last week, Vimeo launched a new service called Vimeo Plus, a paid solution with additional features for $59.95 per year. YouTube is trying professional content and advertising to increase its revenue.

For its part, Blip.tv has decided to raise more money and maintain its 50-50 revenue split with users. And although each has merit, there's no indication that any single solution will make these companies profitable as their popularity rises and costs skyrocket.

Corrected October 20 at 11:55 a.m. PDT. Details below.

Vimeo, the popular site that lets users upload videos and share them with friends, announced today that it has officially launched Vimeo Plus, a paid service that will offer users more features for $59.95 per year.

Vimeo Plus ups the user's storage limit from 500MB per week to 2GB per week and features no banner ads. Vimeo Plus users will also be able to customize any part of the player, which will allow them to remove the playbar or decide what happens at the end of the video.

But perhaps the most controversial announcement surrounding Vimeo Plus is the company's decision to scale back the number of high-definition videos allowed in its free version. Free account users will only be allowed to upload one HD video per week, while Vimeo Plus users can upload an unlimited number of HD videos. But there's another catch: embedded HD videos can only be played 1,000 times before they're reverted back to standard definition. Alternately, the user can pay more to keep the video in HD through the company's online store.

"First of all, you'll only be able to upload one HD video per week," a Vimeo representative said in a blog post detailing the new limitations being imposed on users with free accounts. "You will also be limited to creating one group, one channel, and three albums. It really does pain us to impose these limits, because we want you all to be happy, productive Vimeans, but we feel that if you're going to be a power user, you should help us keep Vimeo working by purchasing a Plus account."

Vimeo's decision to scale back some of its offerings on free accounts shouldn't come as a surprise. The company is operating in a highly-competitive market against companies like YouTube, Blip, Viddler, and countless others that are trying to find the best way to monetize their expanding communities.

Vimeo claims it needed to charge its users because its advertising revenue wasn't covering the cost of hosting so many videos. Now it needs to hope its user base will understand and use the paid service.

This story initially misstated the limits imposed by Vimeo. It is only embedded HD videos that can only be played 1,000 times before they're reverted back to standard definition.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

On Monday, video host Vimeo announced it would no longer allow video game-related content to be uploaded to its site. According to the post on the company blog, this includes "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs. player battles, raids, fraps, or any other video gaming videos that simply depict individuals playing a video game."

The post goes on to mention that the reason for the new ban is twofold: one, for the sake of the company's servers which have slowed to a crawl having to transcode all of this content, as well as what community director Blake Whitman calls a lack of "creative expression" from people simply holding down the record button for content that statistically has ended up being larger, and longer, than the majority of that found on the rest of the site.

The good news is that not all video game-related videos will be getting the axe. For example, machinima, which uses video games as a platform to create scripted stories, will not be deleted. Also, any game-related clips that have been uploaded to the service and that are scheduled for removal will be hosted until September 1, giving creators over a month to get it off and hosted elsewhere.

There are several sites that specialize in video game clips. One of the more popular ones out there, and my personal favorite, is WeGame, which has far more generous upload limits and video transfer from YouTube. For many, I think the reason to flock to Vimeo was simply the quality, as the site is one of the few to offer high-definition video hosting and playback, as well as download links to grab the original files.

Media "discovery" site StumbleUpon announced Tuesday that its video service, Stumble Video, has a host of new content available: content sites College Humor, Funny or Die, and VBS.tv, as well as video-hosting sites Vimeo, DailyMotion, and Veoh.

Stumble Video, which uses past preferences to pick out videos that a member might like--in other words, a nifty procrastination tool--already amasses content from big sites like YouTube, MySpaceTV, and Metacafe.

StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay last year, about six months after it debuted the Stumble Video feature. There's also a specialized version of Stumble Video for Nintendo's Wii console.

Now go ruin your productivity level. As for me, Stumble Video just told me I might want to watch some Daft Punk videos.

For quite some time I've been playing with Tumblr, the latest darling of the New York tech scene.

Tumblr (earlier coverage here), founded by 21-year-old David Karp, has been making headlines because of its interesting not-quite-a-blog-platform format and its big-name investors: Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, Next New Networks co-founder Fred Seibert, and Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick. (Lodwick recently started a Tumblr blog with his girlfriend, Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison, and everyone around the Alley likes to pretend they don't read it.)

I like Tumblr. I think it could be a whole lot more "social," since the friends list function does leave quite a bit to be desired, and I'm still not quite sure how exactly the company plans to make money. But on the positive side, it's simple, fun, and aesthetically pleasing. I also have quite a few friends who have been jumping on board; Tumblr seems to appeal to "creative" types as well as Web 2.0 early adopters, so it makes for a fun mix.

Yikes! All I wanted to do was share a photo of my hair!

(Credit: Tumblr)

Unfortunately, on Tuesday morning I was attempting to upload an extremely awesome photo to my Tumblr account--to be more specific, visual proof of how badly I need a haircut--and I was greeted with repeated error messages. Ouch. Is my hair really that atrocious?

It finally worked after about 10 minutes of trying (yes, I was that desperate to show the world a photo of me with my bangs falling past my cheekbones), so I'm glad that Karp & co. are being attentive about monitoring glitches. Microblogging platform Twitter, after all, was plagued by downtime in its early days, which some might connect to the fact that it has still failed to expand beyond the early adopter "nerd herd" (credit NBC's Chuck). Let's hope Tumblr scores a better shot.

By the way, I still need a haircut.