Here at MetroWize, we geek out on Video start-ups a lot. At the end of the day, some are better at distribution, some claim you can make money, some of them are online mixing stations and some of them just plain suck. The leader in the video market is of course You Tube and if you want measure by pure traffic levels, they can hardly be touched. Youtube is far from the only player in the market though and if you are looking for other features like an embeddable player list for example, there are better places to upload your videos. Here are a few of my favorites and a few that suck and should maybe re-think their service.
V Social: .See the player in action here.
This website has a ton of cool features including a number of ways for the videos to display.I’m a big fan of the scroll bar below where you can advance the videos or play them all. Great looking UI and ease of implementing makes these guys one of my favorites.
Daily Motion: See the player in action here
This is an awesome player and so easy to make. The tabs you see below are just check boxes which create whole line ups either from your account or from the site’s favorites. These guys are based in France (or somewhere in Europe?) so you can load up full movies. I watched the movie "300" on here the other day. I could write another article on why that movie sucked so bad, but it's pretty cool that I got to find out for free. There is a big downside to Daily Motion though (literally). This Jukebox is frickin' huge! Who wants to embed this gigantic thing in their Blog. Does it even fit?
Grouper: See the player in action here
If this article is just about embedded players and nothing else, this doesn’t cut it for me. It’s just OK, but not bitchin’. There was a time when having something like this that simply "worked" was fine but that time has come and gone. These guys need to catch up to the people who are getting it right.
Veoh: See the player in action here.
These guys are in the top 5 on the web today in my opinion. I don’t like everything they have, but from the video quality and the embedded player side of things, they are rock solid. Keep an eye on this company, they “get it” and they will be a big player in the “Internet videos on your TV” game.
These guys can eat a BFD, seriously. They changed their UI and strategy recently and when they did they just erased all the videos and pictures I uploaded on there previously. That's pretty high up there on the "might lose some current users for that one" scale. Now, they've become a completely different company. They scour the major video sites and make you a player from all of them, (but they only have agreements with 4 or 5 sites). There’s another company VodPod that’s doing the same thing (shown later). Wasn’t there some Country song called “That don’t impress me much”? Well, the woman was for sure talking about UGC Video sites that aggregate content from other UGC Video Sites, right?
Brightcove: See them in action here.
Brightcove is great for a lot of reasons, but for most people they are overkill. You pretty much have to take a class on how to use them, but if you’re a semi-serious publisher, they are the best choice, hands down. Now that they’ve hooked up with Tremor Advertising, they are positioned to take it to the next level with monetizing UGC video. Like I said though, this is not the place for you to upload 4 videos of your kid saying hi to grandma or that video you shot of the dog chasing a squirrel and hitting the tree, this is serious stuff here people! I could write another separate article on them (and maybe I will), it’s who we use at MetroWize so we’re obviously into them.
GoFish See this player in action here
Recently this site went through a pretty massive design change. I think their design has a lot going for it. Plus, you can modify the colors, add logos, etc. and it comes in two sizes. I also like the fact that you can custom your url. That doesn't seem like a crazy feature but only a few sites do it.
Vod Pod See the player in action here
I have issue with those smiley faces on the bottom right. Why do I need all those cartoon icons? Also, why do we need another company that scours the web for good videos to put into a player? If they were pulling from every site, OK, I get that. But when you say that the best of MetaCafe, You Tube, Google and Daily Motion can be yours, the differences are only in the search technology, the results are pretty much the same. To their credit, they make it easy to jam your line up into your IPod and that's a decent feature.
For a major player in this space, these guys could do better. This filmstrip is all you get and its not totally intuitive as to how you make it either. Revver never said they were the end all, be all for features though, their goal is to help people monetize their videos. For those of us that aren't Ask A Ninja though, I see no reason to use this site. The revenue scheme is kinda bullshit, but that's a topic for another post.
You Tube: See the player in action here
See what I mean? If we’re talking pure aesthetics here, this player sucks ass compared to the other ones out there. It’s not surprising though, that's not their game. You Tube is the place where you are gonna see Hasselhoff drunk and eating a burger on the floor while his daughter chews him out (which is pretty frickin funny by the way). These other sites need to pick their battles and if there is a segment that really want to have a cool looking player with 4 or 5 videos on their blog, then they might go with one of the little guys.
… in closing.
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