Given its place as the number one Internet video destination, you’d think YouTube would put some promotion into their video awards and try to create some drama around them. Instead, they seem to treat the Awards as an afterthought.
SplashCast, a startup that lets you create your own broadcasting channel, has announced that it has successfully secured $4M in Series A funding.
While the company once hyped the idea of injecting social networking into podcasting, now its focus is “a new form of online marketing called social advertisements.” According to the compan, their social advertisements consistently receive click-through-rates 75 times higher than typical banner advertisements used on MySpace, Facebook, and other social network sites.
“It’s clear that Internet sites such as MySpace and Facebook are the new TVs for today’s young consumers and that SplashCast is far and away the best tool out there for reaching this audience,” said Bayliss.
SplashCasts are like multi-channel TV screens that can be placed on an individual’s social network profile page. Brands and media companies can use SplashCast to distribute videos, games, pictures, and other digital content. You can share SplashCasts so that others can embed them in their MySpace or Facebook pages.
Entrepreneur, podcaster and blogger Jeff Pulver has announced that his latest venture, PrimeTimeRewind.tv, is now live.
The site is intended to be a sort of TV Guide for Internet television, with a social media twist.
“We would like to put you one-click away from watching your show,” according to Pulver.
“Prime Time Rewind also allows you to present you personalized Facet. It can consist of existing prime time TV shows, Internet only shows or any RSS feed of videos you would like to include.”
The site presents links to current TV show episodes on the faces of a cube.
When I checked out the site earlier in the year, I said that Prime Time Rewind set Web design back 10 years, and that the site “takes you on a hyperlinked virtual reality journey into cyberspace, the likes we haven’t seen since around 1998.”
Maybe that sounds a bit harsh, but a text-based interface would be dramatically easier to use than the site’s current Flash-based one.
Pulver says they are working on a variety of updates to the site:
A couple of words on what we are working on next (other than fixing bugs, improving usability, etc. )
1) Twitter Integration (ability to send out twits when new episodes are available etc.)
2) RSS feeds (various feeds, for users, for shows, etc.)
3) more social features
4) better recommendations
Pulver’s concept for the site is great, and it sounds like they have great ideas for the future of the site. The site is dead in the water, though, until they address the site’s usability issues.
TiVo today introduced version 2.6 of TiVo Desktop for Windows, adding deeper support for Web videos and podcasts.
Features include:
You can now transfer all your downloaded Web Video from your PC to your TiVo DVR so you can watch them on your TV.
Automatic conversions of your TiVoToGo transfers to support portable devices that support MPEG-4 or H.264 video—Transfer video to your iPod, PSP, Treo, Nokia and other portables devices.
Set automatic transfers of your favorite shows and videos from your PC to your TiVo DVR.
Improved video quality and aspect ratio in the Series3 and TiVo HD DVRs when downloading high-quality video.
Automatically transfer shows from your TiVo DVR to a Windows PC or laptop.
Browse and listen to your computer’s MP3 library from your TiVo DVR.
Watch full-screen slide shows of your computer’s digital photo collection on your TV.
In a nutshell, the updated Tivo Desktop for Windows allows you to sync content automatically between your TiVo and Windows computers and peripheral devices.
Unfortunately, TiVo’s support for podcasts is fairly convoluted. Details below. (more…)
YouTube has announced that it’s going “higher def”:
We’re making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you’ll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality. This feature applies to all eligible videos uploaded from the YouTube community, and is not restricted to partner content, so everyone can enjoy this upgrade.
How do you watch higher quality videos? On your Account page you’re now able to choose “always show me higher quality when available” or “never show me higher quality.” We suggest you select “always show me…” only if you have a fast internet connection, otherwise you might find that videos don’t play as quickly or smoothly as you’re used to. Higher quality videos also have a link right below the video player which will allow you to select between the normal or higher quality settings.
YouTube is putting usability over image quality, though:
Our general philosophy is to make sure that as many people as possible can access YouTube and that videos start quickly and play smoothly. That’s one reason why you don’t see us racing to call this “Super Duper YouTube HD,” because most people don’t want to wait a long time for videos to play.
One-third of all Internet videos watched in the US were on YouTube, according to the latest research from comScore.
January 2008 data shows that YouTube.com accounted for one-third of the 9.8 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. during the month. The total number of videos viewed in January was down slightly from the more than 10.1 billion viewed during a record-breaking December 2007.
Top Five Internet Video Sites:
Google Sites - 34.3% share of videos viewed. (YouTube.com accounted for more than 96 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.)
Fox Interactive - 6%
Yahoo! Sites - 3.2%
Microsoft Sites - 2%
Viacom - 2%
Other notable findings from January 2008 include:
More than three-quarters of the total U.S. Internet audience (75.7 percent) viewed online video.
78.5 million viewers watched 3.25 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.4 videos per viewer).
49.4 million viewers watched 534 million videos on MySpace.com (10.8 videos per viewer).
The average online video duration was 2.9 minutes.
The average online video viewer consumed 70 videos.
Podcasters Across Borders, a Canadian podcasting unconference, has announced its schedule for the 2008 event, being held June 20-22 in Kingston, Ontario:
YouTube today announced new features that turn YouTube into a platform for Internet video development:
We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause. Meanwhile, we provide full access to our substantial video library, enabling you to attract users and enhance the experience on your site. It’s all free, and it’s available to everyone, starting now.
This is implemented through a set of new APIs that let developers:
Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software
The move is a smart one for YouTube, because it turns the site from a destination into a platform. YouTube provided some examples of what this makes possible:
Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube.
The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube.
Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube.
Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.
YouTube provides several resources to help you get started with the new video API’s:
Internet video site Hulu launches today, offering full-length episodes of more than 250 TV series, including Lost and The Simpsons, along with older hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In addition, Hulu will feature content from the Warner Bros Television Group, Lionsgate and from sports leagues.
According to the company, it has already attracted over five million viewers interested in catching up with long-form video online. With its library of older content, the site provides viewers a way for digging into the “long-tail” of television programming.
Even more important to the site’s long-term success is the fact that it launches with a mature advertising platform in place, and advertisers lined up to use it.
I’m still skeptical about Hulu’s ad implementation and navigation. The site’s top level navigation doesn’t give you any idea of the range of content hidden on the site, and browsing is equally clunky, with relies too much on Flash.
Hulu’s ad implementation is equally clunky - showing you long, poorly targeted ads and forcing you to grab a mouse and click to continue watching the show.
The site does a great job delivering the shows, though. I caught up with much of season 3 of Lost via the site, and the video has the best I’ve seen for streaming HD. This, along with the fact that it’s lined up an impressive range of content, should give the site a chance at taking on YouTube.
Natural/organic supermarket chain Whole Foods Market, is launching Whole Earth Generation, a video podcast series dedicated to raising environmental awareness among young people.
The podcast project is beginning with a search for six “fresh-faced personalities” aged 8 to 17, to be auditioned as hosts of this green-themed series. Children from all over the United States and Canada are invited to try out for the online series, premiering today and running through April 29.
“We are excited to celebrate Earth Month with this series … about eco-friendly actions and how they can make a difference,” said Heather Kennedy, Senior Coordinator of National Marketing for Whole Foods Market. “So many shoppers tell us they have learned how to be more environmentally conscious by listening to their kids. We hope this program takes that trend to an even broader audience via the Internet.”
Topics on the podcast series will address topics generated by “Generation Y and Z,” (which we guess means kids and young adults). Highlights of the series will include interviews with celebrities and peers, ideas for a sustainable future, cool green products, and how to convince skeptical families and friends that green is the way to go.
The Whole Earth Generation youth host casting call kicked off a couple days ago on YouTube. Additionally, in-person casting calls will be held throughout the month of March in some of the chain’s stores.
Submissions can be uploaded to this spot on YouTube, or youngsters ages 8-17 can show up at one of the Whole Foods Market stores on the designated audition date in New York, Chicago and Austin, for auditions.
Six winners — three from the YouTube entries and three from the in-store auditions — will be selected.
“The six young hosts will be the on-air personalities with the charge of engaging their peers and showing that tweens and teens can really influence how we protect our planet,” said Kennedy.
YouTube today announced the winners in its 2007 YouTube Video Awards, which seem to have come and gone again this year with a whimper, not a bang.
TiVo today 
Internet video site 
Natural/organic supermarket chain 
