| Consumer expectations for control
are driving new heights in rich media technology to support
and empower consumers with the control they seek. Video tagging
is a powerful step in this right direction.
Social Media Control
With todays market, user control is the key driving factor.
This is what has driven social sites and bookmarking to dizzy
heights in such a short time.
Along with control, the market is grappling for instant
gratification, a sense of community, dialogue, and participation.
The web now provides that, and individual websites need to
keep pace.
Although we can now assemble video clips into a playlist,
there is still limited user control.
Video tagging begins to solve some key challenges around
maximizing video distribution and consumption. Video is no
longer a one-way broadcast medium, without interactivity.
Video Tagging
The search experience around data and text-based content
needs to expand into multi media content. Unfortunately, although
online video content has exploded, video search has not.
This is where video tagging comes into play. Video tagging
is where the media producer has written tags and comments
corresponding to certain points along the video's timeline.
The effectively creates a set of meta data that can be read
by search engines to give more relevant search results for
a particular video asset. It also provides deep-linking to
certain points within the video, just like to pages inside
a website homepage.
A well tagged and indexed video also adds significantly
to the user experience. It allows them to watch the video
in short bursts, or zero in on the one clip they are interested
in without having to endure the whole stream. It also makes
it much easier to share bits and pieces of video.
Video Tagging Technology
For an insight into what is happening in video tagging, have
a look at Click.TV has built a really interesting demo; try
these actions:
- Look for the blogging/tagging content under the video.
- Mouse-over the video window, a timeline with multiple
sources appears.
- Hover over any of the little squares to see the first
few words from the associated tag, then click to immediately
jump to that point in the video.
- Search for "Zidane" , and a playlist is added
to the source listing and automatically start playing only
the portions of the video that contain the Zidane name in
the associated tag.
- E-mail the playlist to friends, and your embedded playlist
gives them direct access to your highlights.
Other systems with video tagging capability include :
- Viddler - uses
timed tags and timed comments. Sharing the files is a bit
of a mystery and not easy to do.
- Motionbox - very
fast loading and better sharing features than Viddler. My
personal favorite as far as user experience.
- Veotag - aiming
more at the business market, than a video sharing site but
allows a 'trial' [gee thanks guys!]
- Microsoft
- a rather clumsy attempt by MSN compared to the above.
Using tagging clouds and filters to trim video content,
it just doesn't quite get - but I will wait for version2.0.
And in true MS style, the page takes forever to load
Video tagging is transforming a once linear experience to
a very free-flowing and nonlinear one.
The social power of being able to create dialogue around
certain points within a video timeline, and email this playlist
to friends, meets the new social media criteria.
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