What they're saying about Magnify
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April 2009
NY-based Magnify.net has created a news and information portal around the swine flu outbreak. The portal includes videos from CNN, news from the AP, Twitter search results, videos from MSNBC, videos from around the Web and the Twitter stream from the CDC. They also include the swine flu map we posted yesterday.
It’s a smart move for Magnify as it gives the service some broad, mainstream traffic where users can see how the technology works. Other services should think about this and how they too can play off all important news events with their startups.
Not sure I would prioritize a general Twitter search so high on the page as the information is typically not researched and could provide poor information. Would rather see “official” news higher up on the page. [MORE »]
It’s a smart move for Magnify as it gives the service some broad, mainstream traffic where users can see how the technology works. Other services should think about this and how they too can play off all important news events with their startups.
Not sure I would prioritize a general Twitter search so high on the page as the information is typically not researched and could provide poor information. Would rather see “official” news higher up on the page. [MORE »]
The Susan Boyle Bubble
By Andrew LaVallee
April 16th, 2009
If you’ve had Internet access over the last 24 hours, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen the jaw-dropping performance of Susan Boyle, an unassuming-looking, late-40s woman auditioning for “Britain’s Got Talent.”
If not, you just have to see it.
Ms. Boyle, who says in the video that she’s never been married, never been kissed and lives with her cat Pebbles, went on stage to skeptical looks from the audience and judges. She then sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables” to wild applause and even charmed “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell.
As of Thursday 11 a.m. EST, the YouTube video showing her performance has been viewed more than 12.3 million times.
Her sudden popularity has reality-show watchers, bloggers and marketers parsing What It All Means. Advertising columnist John Rash says the video “encapsulates the power of everyday people becoming overnight sensations.” Business Insider calls her “the next Puppy Cam.”
“When a dowdy, homely 47-year-old woman sings beautifully, it is headline news,” writes Tamar Abrams, in a Huffington Post article headlined “Susan Boyle: Talent Without Judgment.” Jezebel writes: “Many news reports — including that of the Sun, which titled its story ‘Virgin Atlantic’ — have focused on Boyle’s admission that she’s never been kissed, as if it’s somehow shocking that a woman who hasn’t found ’success’ in ‘traditional’ feminine pursuits could have such a beautiful voice.”
An enterprising fan has already launched a fan site at susan-boyle.com (susanboyle.com, sans hyphen, is occupied by Susan K. Boyle, an Arizona artist) with more than 5,000 members.
Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, which hosts susan-boyle.com, said the domain was registered on Saturday, after the show aired in the United Kingdom. Traffic surged from more than 27,000 page views Monday to 167,000 Tuesday and 461,000 Wednesday. “We’ve never seen a site take off as quickly,” he said.
Other YouTube users are getting hundreds of views just by posting videos of themselves watching Ms. Boyle’s video (a phenomenon usually reserved for clips that aren’t allowed on YouTube).
According to TweetStats, a service that monitors recurring terms on Twitter, the phrase “Susan Boyle” has been a top trend for the last nine hours. A recent tweet: “cant stop watching susan boyle, shes fantastic.” Someone else has created a Susan Boyle account on Twitter, replying “thankyou for your support!” and “please follow me!” [MORE »]
If you’ve had Internet access over the last 24 hours, there’s a good chance you’ve already seen the jaw-dropping performance of Susan Boyle, an unassuming-looking, late-40s woman auditioning for “Britain’s Got Talent.”
If not, you just have to see it.
Ms. Boyle, who says in the video that she’s never been married, never been kissed and lives with her cat Pebbles, went on stage to skeptical looks from the audience and judges. She then sang “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables” to wild applause and even charmed “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell.
As of Thursday 11 a.m. EST, the YouTube video showing her performance has been viewed more than 12.3 million times.
Her sudden popularity has reality-show watchers, bloggers and marketers parsing What It All Means. Advertising columnist John Rash says the video “encapsulates the power of everyday people becoming overnight sensations.” Business Insider calls her “the next Puppy Cam.”
“When a dowdy, homely 47-year-old woman sings beautifully, it is headline news,” writes Tamar Abrams, in a Huffington Post article headlined “Susan Boyle: Talent Without Judgment.” Jezebel writes: “Many news reports — including that of the Sun, which titled its story ‘Virgin Atlantic’ — have focused on Boyle’s admission that she’s never been kissed, as if it’s somehow shocking that a woman who hasn’t found ’success’ in ‘traditional’ feminine pursuits could have such a beautiful voice.”
An enterprising fan has already launched a fan site at susan-boyle.com (susanboyle.com, sans hyphen, is occupied by Susan K. Boyle, an Arizona artist) with more than 5,000 members.
Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, which hosts susan-boyle.com, said the domain was registered on Saturday, after the show aired in the United Kingdom. Traffic surged from more than 27,000 page views Monday to 167,000 Tuesday and 461,000 Wednesday. “We’ve never seen a site take off as quickly,” he said.
Other YouTube users are getting hundreds of views just by posting videos of themselves watching Ms. Boyle’s video (a phenomenon usually reserved for clips that aren’t allowed on YouTube).
According to TweetStats, a service that monitors recurring terms on Twitter, the phrase “Susan Boyle” has been a top trend for the last nine hours. A recent tweet: “cant stop watching susan boyle, shes fantastic.” Someone else has created a Susan Boyle account on Twitter, replying “thankyou for your support!” and “please follow me!” [MORE »]
HD Cloud Puts Video Formatting In The Cloud
by Leena Rao on April 14, 2009
Producing and editing compelling video is only half the work involved in publishing video content to the web. Once finalized, video needs to be formatted and converted to the proper version, or transcoded, to adapt content to the proper format.
Startup HD Cloud, a video encoding and transcoding business, wants to become the “the FedEx of web video” is offering automated, high-definition video encoding in the cloud for large-scale media firms. The SaaS allows video content owners to automatically encode and distribute videos, with HD resolution, to a range of web sites.
HD Cloud has also already signed on a big name customer, Magnify.net, a video publishing platform and social network. HD Cloud’s services will be used to transcode videos for Magnify.net’s 52,000 enterprise clients, including Weather.com, New York Magazine, Zappos.tv, LiveEarth, and BlogHer.com.
HD Cloud is part of the expanding trend of eliminating hardware services in favor of using server-based “cloud” services. In this case, the cloud server’s capacity helps clients run thousands of video encoding sessions at the same time. And HD Cloud then automatically distributes videos to a variety of desinations, including content management systems, local drives, and syndication sites.
HD Cloud has other encoding services utilizing the cloud, including Encoding.com, which also offers a cost efficient and scalable encoding service that leverages cloud computing. [MORE »]
Producing and editing compelling video is only half the work involved in publishing video content to the web. Once finalized, video needs to be formatted and converted to the proper version, or transcoded, to adapt content to the proper format.
Startup HD Cloud, a video encoding and transcoding business, wants to become the “the FedEx of web video” is offering automated, high-definition video encoding in the cloud for large-scale media firms. The SaaS allows video content owners to automatically encode and distribute videos, with HD resolution, to a range of web sites.
HD Cloud has also already signed on a big name customer, Magnify.net, a video publishing platform and social network. HD Cloud’s services will be used to transcode videos for Magnify.net’s 52,000 enterprise clients, including Weather.com, New York Magazine, Zappos.tv, LiveEarth, and BlogHer.com.
HD Cloud is part of the expanding trend of eliminating hardware services in favor of using server-based “cloud” services. In this case, the cloud server’s capacity helps clients run thousands of video encoding sessions at the same time. And HD Cloud then automatically distributes videos to a variety of desinations, including content management systems, local drives, and syndication sites.
HD Cloud has other encoding services utilizing the cloud, including Encoding.com, which also offers a cost efficient and scalable encoding service that leverages cloud computing. [MORE »]
New York magazine, the go-to-source for in-the-know New Yorkers, has relaunched the video section of its web site using the Magnify.net platform. What separates the magazine's effort from others is its plan to actively augment video it produces itself with other video sources, including users. By "curating" others' video, New York is looking to beef up the video section of its site by tapping into others' energy. Michael Silberman, the magazine's GM, Digital Media, explained more to me last week.
Michael said that as a print publication, New York was unlikely to ever have a large staff devoted to video production (it currently has just one dedicated person). However, the New York team has been watching broadband video's surging popularity and wanted to capitalize on this by making video an integral part of its web site. A key goal was to cost-effectively bulk up the volume of video it offered. That led the team to focus on how to aggregate and intelligently curate video from other sources so that the magazine's sensibility would be maintained. And all of this needed to be done in a "Hulu-like" user experience with accurately tagged videos presented in a logical flow.
In a prior post about Taste of Home magazine, I wrote about curation and how it can be a powerful editorial lever for print publishers' sites that have lean video budgets. The reality is that there is a lot of really interesting video being created that would be quite valuable to mainstream publications. In the Internet era, timeliness and omnipresence are important calling cards. Tapping into video-enabled readers, who often find themselves at the right place at the right time with their cellphones, digital cameras and Flips on hand, can produce real value if incorporated the right way.
Curation has been a mantra of Steve Rosenbaum, CEO and founder of Magnify.net, which I originally profiled here. The company has been continuously augmenting its video platform features while maintaining a focus on curation as a differentiator. This clearly paid off with the New York win; Michael said that of all the video platform companies it investigated, Magnify was the only one that could fully support its curation objectives. He also cited Magnify's robust customization tools using mainly CSS and Javascript that allowed his team to migrate the entire video section over in just 5 weeks.
New York plans to bring on a producer who will, among other things, run the curation process. No doubt there will be plenty of trial-and-error in the hunts for and includes appropriate 3rd party video, including users' submissions. But as I explained in the Taste of Home post, curation's potential suggests the emergence of a new editorial model for video that is particularly relevant in these penny-pinching economic times. It's the kind of break-from-tradition that may be jolting to editorial purists, but which reflects pragmatic - and strategic - thinking about how print publications can evolve and succeed in the broadband video era. [MORE »]
Michael said that as a print publication, New York was unlikely to ever have a large staff devoted to video production (it currently has just one dedicated person). However, the New York team has been watching broadband video's surging popularity and wanted to capitalize on this by making video an integral part of its web site. A key goal was to cost-effectively bulk up the volume of video it offered. That led the team to focus on how to aggregate and intelligently curate video from other sources so that the magazine's sensibility would be maintained. And all of this needed to be done in a "Hulu-like" user experience with accurately tagged videos presented in a logical flow.
In a prior post about Taste of Home magazine, I wrote about curation and how it can be a powerful editorial lever for print publishers' sites that have lean video budgets. The reality is that there is a lot of really interesting video being created that would be quite valuable to mainstream publications. In the Internet era, timeliness and omnipresence are important calling cards. Tapping into video-enabled readers, who often find themselves at the right place at the right time with their cellphones, digital cameras and Flips on hand, can produce real value if incorporated the right way.
Curation has been a mantra of Steve Rosenbaum, CEO and founder of Magnify.net, which I originally profiled here. The company has been continuously augmenting its video platform features while maintaining a focus on curation as a differentiator. This clearly paid off with the New York win; Michael said that of all the video platform companies it investigated, Magnify was the only one that could fully support its curation objectives. He also cited Magnify's robust customization tools using mainly CSS and Javascript that allowed his team to migrate the entire video section over in just 5 weeks.
New York plans to bring on a producer who will, among other things, run the curation process. No doubt there will be plenty of trial-and-error in the hunts for and includes appropriate 3rd party video, including users' submissions. But as I explained in the Taste of Home post, curation's potential suggests the emergence of a new editorial model for video that is particularly relevant in these penny-pinching economic times. It's the kind of break-from-tradition that may be jolting to editorial purists, but which reflects pragmatic - and strategic - thinking about how print publications can evolve and succeed in the broadband video era. [MORE »]
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