Magnify.net, a peer driven video broadcast platform for
businesses, groups and individuals, has rolled out a new video curation
platform.
Magnify already contains over 15,000 content channels and has
at least 10 million page views a month.
This latest upgrade essentially turns every
Magnify user into a self contained content curator of personal and
web-wide video.
This latest upgrade also contains a customization kit for
easily creating and branding channels, finding and integrating Web
video and analyzing visitor stats and activities.
Magnify is a
fantastic tool for aggregating and branding targeted video for content,
quality and purpose.
View A Different Angle
YouTube and other video networks contain vast numbers of
videos
(good and bad) categorized loosely for search and locate for viewing.
Magnify is a much more “exclusive” and tailored platform that searches,
sorts and renders video selections based on a site or user’s unique
criteria.
The interface allows users to review and approve video that
meets their specific need for content and quality too. Essentially,
every user at magnify can create their own branded YouTube. Magnify is
designed for adding a video aspect to sites and for creating stand
alone networks.
Magnify.net is being deployed with partners like QuePasa – a
large Spanish language community, QPNN
– a user generated news service built on the Magnify platform,
RCUvideos – a huge
radio controlled aircraft community and YouSurfTubes
– a rapidly growing surfing community.
These are just some examples of
the communities already existing on Magnify, but the potential is
obvious. Magnify is also releasing the following new technology to add
value to their platform:
- Magnify This – A video grabber
that admin and visitors can use to embed video from many popular sites
- Curator Logins – Allows
expanded editing, sorting and managing for multiple users
- Icon Customization – Standard
and Magnify logos can now be replaced with custom preferred logos
- Thumbnail Images – Users can
now replace default graphics on video
- Home Page Mini Player – Allows
admin to show selected video and all video to visitors on home page
- Latest Activity – Displays
recent visitors, recent playlists and activity for visitor preferences
and habits
- Cross Networking – Allows
admin to tie together networks and cross promote from various channels
- Enhanced Statistics – Deep
analysis on video views, page views, unique users and a new bar chart
- Video Counters – Displays view
counts in thumbnail for all users and visitors to see
Step 3 of the Magnify network creation UI – templates
My spanking new Heavy TV Network – No customization added
Pros and Cons
I did a quick test of the discoverability aspect of Magnify
and the
service is fairly flawless and simple to use. I think the potential of
this vision of custom video channels is fairly obvious and as you can
see I created my rather simplistic “Heavy Channel” in about 10
minutes.
The advanced customization of the site is very good but could
use a
little more “non-coder” usability. The site design templates are very
good as are the internal and external video search tools. Magnify also
provides for feedback, community, email alerts, upload and sharing and
the network tools mentioned.
From the site and information I received
the service is about to release shared video ads, which will be a huge
incentive to create some killer channels and networks. Ad revenue is
already shared and some of the existing networks are already doing
quite well apparently.
There is no real down side to Magnify other than
the need for more incremental improvement. The site is still in beta,
so we expect to see even greater improvement to come. The addition of
resident searchable video sites is really a must for magnify are some
more customization tools.
Conclusion
Magnify goes way beyond making a playlist or channel on most
video
sites. The service is not complete and by no means rocket science, but
like my new “Heavy Video” creation any segment of interest can be
demonstrated through video.
How can anyone not like something so
logical, creativity based and simple? Magnify has added much greater
control and value for Magnify network owner/curators with this
upgrade.
The upcoming ad sharing scheme and the initial vision of this
service
are solid pluses for anyone into video. Magnify is a cool development
with the right focus – allowing users to create and actually add value
to their work.
Surf’s Up Network
Phil Butler is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, his work can be found on Profy.com
