By Steve Rosenbaum, Magnify.net CEO

(Article originally appeared in the The Huffington Post)

Each year, the milestone moments remind me that things are changing fast, and digital is emerging as the new way we learn, share and engage the world around us. Now, Thanksgiving may seem like the least likely of the Digital Holidays. After all, for Christmas we've been tracking Santa on the Web for years, and e-commerce has replaced the slog to the mall for many of us. But Thanksgiving, how can that be digital? After all it's about tastes, smells, family and food -- right? Well, for those of you just discovering a Digital Thanksgiving, here's a beginners guide to going digital for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

1. The Food Unless you're one of those folk who's going to eat Thanksgiving dinner at the local diner, chances are you're going to end up cooking something. For some tha...

Magnus the friendly Magnify Mascot has resurfaced! He made an unexpected and triumphant return to the spotlight for the Web 2.0 expo in New York. (After his last trip to Madagascar, many believed he wouldn't have the energy to get back to his globetrotting ways.)

Magnus spent the last couple of days attending events, meeting new fans and visiting old friends around New York. Make sure to check out the pictures of his recent adventures and even better, the below video. It has also been announced that Magnus is looking for the next location of his World Tour adventure. If you would like to host him for a couple days, write into to Billy (at) Magnify.net for details.

Magnify.net partner The Weather Channel just unveiled The Guaranteed White Christmas video contest and it is awesome! Out of all the video contests we have run on the Magnify platform, I have got to say, this one might take the cake in the originality department...

The contest gives participants the chance to upload a video telling The Weather Channel why they have been good for goodness sake with the winner getting their house turned into a winter wonderland (for those of us from warmer locals, the thought of The Weather Channel bringing in snow machines to cover our house in snow during the holidays is what dreams are made of). The Weather Channel will also broadcast live from the winner's home and get their video in front of a huge audience. 

Beyond the grandprize, The Weather Channel will also be giving away a bunch of smaller prizes for the contest - there's some good stuff, so get those cameras ready and start shooting.

You can see the official contes...

Today is Veterans Day in the United States and to honor the men and women of the armed forces, we thought we would take a moment to share a couple of Magnify.net channels that focus on the brave soldiers, both past and present.

I have to say that after looking through the network to find channels to feature, I was plesently impressed with the different ways channel owners are using video aggregation and curation in the space. It always makes us happy to see original and innovative work from you guys!

greatamericans.com

video.vfwwebcom.org

vetfriends.magnify.net

veteransday.magnify.net

Have a channel you want us to feature? Send me an email at Billy (at) Magnify.net

We have an impressive new group of interns at Magnify and now that they have gone through the hazing period, we wanted to take a moment out to give them proper introductions. As usaul, we let them write out a couple words about where they came from, what they've been doing and well, anything else they wanted to tell the Magnify community....

Hi everyone, I'm Lewis Rapkin. Upon graduating the University of Vermont, I left the heady organic mountains of groovy UV and headed to the neon-saturated mega-metropolis of Tokyo to shoot a documentary on the underground music scene. Next stop was New York City where I continued with documentary productions. On top of helping out at Magnify, I also work the night shift at a documentary production company assisting PBS television series and HBO documentaries.

I don't have cable TV in my apartment, but I do have the Internet and the potential for online video seems pretty clear. Without being longwinded about my optimism towards the future, ...

By Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net

If you remember a time when telephones had a rotary dial, then you remember the phrase, "Shhh, he's on the phone looong distance!" Long distance was expensive, and precious, and needed to be rationed and treated with care.

That was then.

Today - long distance, short distance, global distance - it's all the same thing: cheap. Because as the network has matured, competition came in and costs came down. And today almost everyone is on a fixed price plan and many folks are using their broadband connections for free audio and video conversations.The simple point is: bandwidth continues to get cheaper and faster, and that means you need to be looking at the cost of video on your Web site in a whole new way. Video should not cost anything. Rather, it should power revenues, pages, engagement and profits. If it isn't, it's time to rethink your bandwidth bill and turn video from a cost center to a profit center. Folks are doing just that.

So here's a quick...

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays here at Magnify and beyond making everyone in the office wear a costume for the month of October, we also like to put together a channel and have a little contest.

This year, the Magnify Halloween channel halloweenchannel.magnify.net features collections of some of our favorite Halloween videos from the web, including costume tips and ideas, scary movies, music and more.

The contest asks users to upload their favorite costume for a chance to win a Magnify Prize Pack - consisting of a bunch of Pro goods and some cool schwag. So lets see those costumes!

And of course lets not forget that Halloween is Magnus, the Magnify Mascot's favorite holiday (they both excusively feature orange). Anyone who can dress up as Magnus and send in a picture or video to the channel will automatically win a prize.

...

NYmag.com, the winner of the American Society of Magazine Editors' 2009 Award for General Excellence Online, chose Magnify.net in the spring of 2009 to implement a web 2.0 video aggregation solution. After reviewing a number of alternative services, including their provider at the time, Feedroom, General Manager Michael Silberman and his team made the decision to go with Magnify.net. Here is what they've learned from the process of making the shift from simply uploading a few videos a week to aggregating and curating hundreds of videos a week using the Magnify Curation Platform.

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We've been preaching curation since the beginning of Magnify and it is great to see the concept receiving more and more media attention as of late.One article we wanted to share is the recent piece by Naomi Reiter (right) of eMedia Vitals, who brings to light some great numbers about the growing video space and positives of curation. Reiter also takes a few quotes from none other than Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum. 

Make sure to read the article here.

By Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net

(Article Originally Appeared at JackMyers.com)

It's almost Halloween. A time to face scary demons and put a stake in their heart. So I thought I'd use this time to scare up some frightening video "Boogeymen" and see if we can bury them once and for all. When I talk to website owners about video, they generally have three reasons that they haven't embraced video. I hear them every day; too expensive, too hard to manage user-content, and web content is too low quality.

- Video Content is too expensive to make at scale.

- User-Created Content will damage my brand.

- Sorting and filtering web-wide content is too much work.

The issues are pretty simple: can I get an ROI on my investment? And can I leverage my niche and my visitors so that I can embrace outside sources but protect my brand? And, is all this effort around video worth it?

Well, there's good news to share in regards to these three questions, and in particular there's new data and new solutions that make the ROI on video less murky overall.