At VidCompare we try to paint a high-level yet detailed picture for purveyors of Online Video solutions, offering them a place to start their research into what could be a confusing space. Our target audience is the VP of Marketing or busy CEO looking to add functionality to their web site that will increase their exposure, educate their viewers, increase site stickiness, and/or promote their services via online video. By targeting the strategic purchaser we address the top-line issues on VidCompare; what are the options, what are the categories, the use cases, the main features, and lay it out in several different UI’s to appeal to unique shopper’s preferences.
All that said, each OVP has unique feature sets, pricing, and core offerings that set them apart from their competition. Ooyala for example has a robust video content exchange where customers can upload and licence content from one another. They also have very deep analytics showing where viewers are accessing content, when they pause, rewind, or stop video playback. Very useful tools to the online marketer offering them insight into when they should pop an advertisement, or how long their content should be before users stop viewing.
Wistia on the other hand has a unique internal video solution offering businesses deep tools to control content, users, and viewership. For example, if a corporation wanted to set up video tutorials within their intranet Wistia can provide unique log-ins for everyone and expose specific content to each log-in. User can communicate with one another within the control panel asking questions and discussing the content as is plays back. Admins can control who sees what content and time the exposure of certain videos with ease.
Aside from their open source core, Kaltura has one of the most robust video collaboration tools I’ve seen. It allows multiple users to upload bits of video content which can be edited into one video which can then be annotated, tagged, and commented upon. Users can add video, images, audio of their own or choose from a group of preselected content to bolster their collaboration.
And Magnify.net provides what is proving to be an increasingly popular service, content aggregation and curation. Their users can search by key word for video and image content across the Internet that, with a click of a button will be sought out and brought into their control panel. This content can then be used to develop a channel and published to the world to view. For example, if I wanted to start a Skateboarding Dog Channel I could search for “skateboarding dog”, “Rover on wheels”, “kick-flip mutt”, etc. and have a wealth of content arrive in my admin from YouTube, Metacafe, and several other popular video sites.
While VidCompare doesn’t offer this level of detail within the site yet (working on it), you can find it here at the VC blog or you can always ask us.
Peace OV.
Some great ideas for video platforms, which is something i am looking into to attract greater traffic into my Claude Monet site. Video is certainly the now, and the future for online marketing, particularly as broadband access expands.