An announcement on YouTube blog said YouTube design changes are under way. So far there’s only one example of the new look, and apart from layout changes, the new look sports much stronger colors, which users may or may not find attractive. There is much more contrast which is a drastic change from the current look. See for yourself, current and new look:

Other changes:

• Categories will now be found under the “Videos” tab,
• Dropdown menus make for a smoother transition when clicking through popular pages, ie. “Most Viewed,” “Top Favorites,” “Recently Featured,” etc. ,
• Tabs and video browsing pages have a new overall look and feel.

Share This

There is a new service on the Web, called TokBox (tokbox.com) which enables users to make video calls without installing any additional software whatsoever. What you get is free video chat, no downloads to use the service, interface embeddable in any website, and privacy control. Finally, this sounds too good to be true.

This is nothing really new in concept. The service uses Flash technology, and its support for audio/video streaming. The rise in adoption of broadband Internet in the last couple of years has certainly contributed to something like this finally happening, but the fact that all you have to do to use this service is to register, and all you have to do to make yourself available for video chat is to paste some code, makes this really useful.

There is also an API for a more advanced use of TokBox services, but I haven’t tried it yet. The API documentation is simple enough and gives basic control on how you are going to use TokBox on your site. Developers can make POST requests with or without authentication and get functionality accordingly. If I understood correctly, apart from calls, you can also register users through the API from your own website. This is cool if, for example, you give someone the option to video chat with you but they don’t use the service yet. I can see a lot of implementation for this for something like customer support, where a friendly face can get more than than a lengthy phone conversation. The only obstacle may be industry adoption, but look at Skype, and how quickly it spread.

So, what about money? Advertising appearing on the site may be delivered to TokBox users by TokBox or one of their web advertising partners. I expect this will not be much different than other in-video advertising solutions such as AdSense in YouTube (video units). Free always has a price, but if this is done moderately it shouldn’t bother users too much.

NY Times gave TokBox a more in-depth coverage, and gives them a thumbs-up for the future. Actually, according to the NY Times post, one of the people backing TokBox is a former YouTube founder Jawed Karim, which should mean TokBox is heading in the right direction. TokBox aims to do for video chatting what YouTube did for online video.

The service is still in Beta, so glithces are to be expected. The API has a lot of room for expansion so if you have suggestions, head on over to their blog. BTW, they announced a small competition, The TokBox $5000 Developer Challenge, where the best use of their API for development gets $5K. So, if you have an idea, go for it.

Share This

Are you using video in your online promotion efforts? Recent trends show that online video can be a very good means of communicating with possible clients. But there is a twist! Online video is also good for a completely different purpose. With the introduction of universal search, which incorporates rich media results together with the usual text (pages), it is now more important than ever for webmasters/marketers to turn their attention towards online video as means to get into the search results.

If you are ranking well for certain keywords that may now trigger the appearance of rich media results in SERPs, you may soon find yourself in a tight spot because some of the positions may now be taken by video listings. Fortunately, video is not that hard to produce, now more than ever, it’s quite easy to make viral video content that may find its way into the universal search results. All the major search engines are implementing new ways of showing search results. ASK is probably the best example, having been the first to actually go on and do this with its 3D search concept. Now, Google, Yahoo and Live Search are doing it too.

Pretty soon, it won’t be enough to practice standard online promotion techniques. Marketers are always quick to adopt new ways to reach potential customers, especially it there is a way to get more presence in search result pages, and that means competition may get ahead. If we were ever considering online video promotion, now is the time to make a decision, although, the way things are going we don’t really have a choice, do we? Multimedia results for search queries are already happening, with or without us.

Share This

Wanna make money streaming sharing video content? It seems things are taking serious speed in online video content sharing. An alternative to Google’s AdSense video units is about to hit the public Internet space - Blinkx AdHoc!

First of all, Blinkx is not a new venture. It has been around since 2004 and was founded by Suranga Chandratillake. According to their own site “with an index of over 14 million hours of searchable video and more than 200 media partnerships, including national broadcasters, commercial media giants, and private video libraries, it has cemented its position as the premier destination for online TV”. Blinkx features meida partners such as Reuters, BBC News, ITN, Forbes, Discovery Channel, MTV, HBO to name but a few from the list which features several dozen partners. I must say I wasn’t following this too closely, thinking Blinkx will probably be going with a different direction, but having read this post on C|NET News I realized I made an error in judgment.

So, what is Blinkx AdHoc? Well, in short it’s a platform that allows site visitors to view videos that are contextual with page content, or search for videos on their own. Blinkx already offers an API which enables webmasters to embed video search and show units on their sites. This is a move on the part of Blinkx which they say is a good way to remunerate webmasters who have already been using the Blinkx API earlier.

Based on blinkx’s ground-breaking AdHoc platform, the new widget places unobtrusive, highly-relevant text advertisements against embedded video from popular sharing sites such as YouTube, GoogleVideo and DailyMotion. blinkx will share 50 percent of the revenue generated from the ads with users, and payments will be facilitated through PayPal.

Similar to Google’s AdSense video units, Blinkx AdHoc will be showing contextual text ads which when clicked on will bring revenue to the site showing the videos (and Blinkx naturally). Blinkx boasts over 14 million hours of quality video content, so this initiative might prove to be very profitable for Blinkx AdHoc users.

The official press release on Blinkx invites people to sign-up, but after going to the AdHoc page I found the service start announcement for October 10, 2007, but no sign-up as yet. Probably in the works…

Share This