Video players Review

Here’s one of the video players or streaming sites review posted recently. It compares Youtube, Jumpcut, Vimeo, Viddler.

To do this review I will use four criteria on which I will base my comments: First, in terms of Video Player we can find different types of interfaces, ranging from very easy to use for the users to others very complicated. A second important point is the quality; while the sound normally is very similar along the spectrum of possibilities, the image is very different. A third point is the community, a very important criterion when thinking about web 2.0 applications. In this case, we need to assess if and how the users are allowed to comment and create social networks around the services. Finally, it is important to assess the financial component: how these services can create a revenue model for those interested in using them to attract consumers.

You could click here the view more details about how the authors said about each service.

In conclusion if you want to be famous with a video you need to upload your video to youtube, if you want to create and edit videos Jumpcut is a good option, but if you are looking for a high quality service you need to try Vimeo.

I would add that other than those sites, we have this new emerging online interactive video market, such as Asterpix, Ooyala, Overlay.tv, etc. Service like Asterpix actually doesn’t host your video. You could still use Youtube and Vimeo to host, and use their free web service and enhance your video and provides interactivity. You could then share with your friends or add to Facebook, Myspace, etc. For example, here’s what you could do with Asterpix:

and here’s their embed player:

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original post here.

Do People Really Watch User-Generated Online Videos?

Jim Tobin from Ignite Social Media Agency had posted recently on this interesting topic. Often the time, people will ask “Sure, Jim, you can get the video and put it out there, but do you really think people sit around and watch this stuff?”

Jim has given couple metrics in his blog:

“Um, yes. They do. And not just a little–a lot. Only 22 billion views of user-generated video in 2007. This is projected to rise to 34 billion views in 2008. So, yes, note to all clients, people are watching this stuff.”

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project (as reported by e-Marketer), there is a clear age difference, with 30% of 18-29 year olds reporting that they actively visit these sites versus only 4% of folks over age 65.

Men are also about twice as likely as women to watch user-generated video than women (20% to 11%), but there is not much difference as you look at education level, income or ethnicity. Remember this is user-generated video. The numbers are different for all online video viewing. I’ll share those numbers in a couple of days.

The bottom-line lesson here is clear: There’s a tremendous opportunity for video to help folks with their social media marketing. If you do it right, people are clearly willing to watch.

Also, from the blog comments, Andrew Merchant from Liberate Media also mentioned about their success of iCrossing, which had over 1000 views just after a week of launch. They are using the web service Asterpix to try out the interactive social media video release. I have also blogged about their usage of interactive videos to create resume. Here’s my post and the interactive video:

from www.asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original post here or here

Asterpix Interactive Video – Robots inspired by animals

This interactive video from Asterpix is a good demo of how links in video could help giving you more information.  It’s not time-based, which most of the other sites or tools could provide years ago.  This is object tracking, the rectangle or hotspot will try to follow your object pick as long as it could!

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Interactive Video Resume

“PR is changing. We’ve already evolved.”

Interactive videos are changing our internet experience one by one, from education, retail, travel, etc. Today I came across this post Not the Social Media Press Release…but the Social Media Video Release, which about how the PR firm Liberate Media located in UK use Asterpix to promote Interactive Video Resume/Biography.

Each of the company directors filmed a video biography, and sourced additional online links referencing the credentials they talk about. These resources included visual cues for Flickr and LinkedIn, as well as downloadable photos that we hosted, and a PDF script for accessibility and fact checking purposes.

Our trials were so successful that we pitched the idea to our client iCrossing (formerly Spannerworks in the UK) for their re-brand announcement. They very much liked the idea but wanted a more polished finish, and more in-depth additional information.

Here’s the post Spannerworks announces iCrossing re-brand, and they distributed an interactive video release of global CEO Jeff Herzog, and CEO of iCrossing UK Arjo Ghosh, discussing the brand integration, and vision for iCrossing and digital marketing as a whole in 2008.

from www.asterpix.com posted with vodpod

The above video is interactive, offering links to other sources of information on iCrossing, our spokespeople, and some of the work that we’ve been pioneering in integrated digital marketing. Hover over the logos as they appear throughout the short film to view a description of the additional resource they provide, and click on them to open-up the information in a new browser. A PDF transcript of the video is also available as a download.We hope you enjoy the video, and continue to support us under our new brand.

I think there could be a lot more potential in this idea of using interactive video as the resume. Maybe pretty soon I will see interactive videos showing up in LinkedIn profiles. If you are interested, you could visit Asterpix to create your own.

This is another post from Asterpix CEO Nat Kausik talking about this idea.

Online Travel Guide – Interactive Videos Gives Travelers Breakthrough Experience

How many times when you as a traveler watch a video clip of your vacation destination like Paris and you want to have more information about Eiffel Tower? And for an advertiser, I would like to deliver advertisement of restaurants on the sidebar when the video is describing food, or hotels when talking about accommodation. Now this dream could finally come true with latest technology like Asterpix, which provides hyperlinks/hotspots in video. Here’s one of the videos I found from their website:

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

If you don’t know what Asterpix is and how it works, I strongly recommend you to read their learn more page. It’s a free web-based service which allows you to create hotspots and associate notes/hyperlinks/tags. Using their javascript based API, you could create your web page with a tour video and displays extra information of each hotspots when mouse over. Of course you could also display direct targeted advertisement related to the objects it’s showing. Comparing with YouTube’s overlay ads or other time-based ads, Asterpix provides more control on “object” level and improves the user experience with the video content.

Since wordpress doesn’t allow me to play around javascript, I couldn’t get a demo here. However, here’s a picture from Asterpix Pro and could give you an idea how it will look like.

Watch Out Hyperlink, Here Comes Hypervideo

Original from RedHerring article:

The digital world is moving to video, and anyone who can enrich the experience is bound to make a buck. One startup with its eyes on the prize is San Jose, California-based Asterpix, which on Monday launched the latest version of its web-based tool that promises to do to video what hyperlinks did to text.

Asterpix’s technology lets creators place links, or “hot spots,” in their videos on any object, such as a dog or the jersey of an athlete. Viewers click on these links to get more information directly on the screen or to connect to other videos or sites.

A video showing a sports car speeding down the highway might have a hotspot on the car’s tires, for example, which once clicked could give brand and pricing details and a close-up picture.

Here’s an example of a hot-spotted surfer riding a 64-foot wave in Maui.

Much like text-based hyperlinks, hot spots also let users bounce from point to point throughout the web as if—in the words of Asterpix CEO Nat Kausik—you’re “video surfing.”

The larger goal, said Mr. Kausik, is to help bloggers and web publishers build more customized, interactive videos. And if hypervideo technology—from Asterpix or elsewhere—were to become pervasive, one could imagine a world of layer upon layer of interconnected video.

But for the time being, Asterpix is still fine-tuning its service. It already has a free consumer version online, and with Monday’s launch of the “Pro” version, the company has its first moneymaking offering. For the latter, video owners—who host their own content—will pay Asterpix a few cents whenever a customer views videos or clicks on certain hotspots.

While there are hypervideo desktop products on the market, such as one by VideoClix that starts at $249, Asterpix is betting that its simple interface and web-based approach will attract users.

But there is big money to be made for anyone who can help make money from online video, said Gartner analyst Van Baker, and that means more direct competitors shouldn’t be far behind.

Overlay.tv is one of them. The Ottawa, Canada-based startup, which completed a $4.6 million first round of venture funding this January, launches next month.

Founded in 2006, Asterpix is backed by New Enterprise Associates.

If you haven’t seen my earlier post about Asterpix Pro, you could click here.

Tip for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product – Asterpix Pro

So you have a great product and decided to advertise it in an online video, too? This post Top Ten Tips for Making a Powerful Online Video About Your Product describes 10 tips to make a online video about your product. Here’s the first tip:

1, Put yourself in an online mindset

Forget the TV lore and treat your video as an experiment (yes, as a constant beta): you can have multiple versions with slight or major differences, you can put up your video on loads of video sharing sites, you can make instant changes – so, yes this is a test and will always be a test version that can get better and better. Don’t forget that your video can be downloaded (even if you didn’t plan with it), can be commented (expect a mixture of nice and nasty comments – there is no single video on the web that has no nasty comments!) and can be remade – giving it totally different interpretation and emphasis. Can you accept it? Great, let’s go on. Make your videos interactive by themselves – have hypervideo links.

And over the weekend Asterpix has announced Asterpix Pro, which fits perfectly for this purpose. With their existing object tracking capability, Asterpix has already become a popular site for end-users to create hypervideo links on any popular video sites like youtube, dailymotion, myspace, etc. Now the Asterpix Pro allows content owners/advertisers to create hypervideo links on hotspots. Here are couple screenshots from their demo:

As you could see, users could highlight and click on the hotspots, and will drive the side panel to display detail information or related buying info. Do I need a consultant companies or team to get this working? No. Asterpix’s easy to use (point-and-shoot) interface and their Asterpix API make the life much simpler.

There are couple blogs talking about Asterpix Pro too.
Asterpix Pro Offers Hyperlinked Video with Stats
Nat’s Blog talking about Asterpix Pro

Online Video: 2007 Year In Review

According this post, YouTube.com continued to lead the field of video contenders in December, commanding 52.3% market share with 238M Visits on 59M Unique Visitors, up 6.1% from November and 40% since December, 2006. The overall online video market, which consists of Compete’s classification of over 50 sites and subdomains serving video to US-based visitors, grew 7.4% for the month.

I assume 2008 will have more new competitors, especially from all those interactive videos providers like Asterpix, VideoClix, Viddler, Overlay.tv, Ooyala, etc. (Although some of those are not in the end-user online video space)

Original post here

Asterpix Interactive Video – Unbelievable Aerobatics!

Unbelievable aerobatics video! Especially the second hotspot “watch the cup of iced tea on the dashboard!”. Also, clicking on those hotspots will load another video clip too.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod

Original Asterpix link here

2008 President Election Videos

This probably will be the most discussed topic on the web or blogs this year 2008. Can you imagine how many videos on the web about Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, McCain, etc? How many times when you search Hillary Clinton on viddler or youtube and you end up seeing an unrelated video or Clinton only shows up in the middle of the video for just couple secs?

I have just noticed that Asterpix could help on this issue. Browse the search results of Hillary Clinton on Asterpix, and you could quickly scan through all different hotspots and videos about Clinton.

Also, with Asterpix API, for example now I could post a video of debates from the candidates, and could change my google ads or other web widgets based on which hotspots you are watching. That definitely adds a totally new dimension for online video marketing and provides more fine-grain direct control to advertisement, not just based on video tags like “debate clinton obama” and you have no clue where Clinton will show up.

from asterpix.com posted with vodpod