Reddit is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites along with Digg, Mixx, and StumbleUpon. After years of keeping everything simple, the site has now launched a new video site. It seems Reddit has found its multimedia muscle at long last.
Multimedia Maneuver
I like Reddit for many reasons. It may not be as huge or well-populated as Digg, be as clever as StumbleUpon, or have the glitzy new Web 2.0 elements Mixx has, but it’s simple and very easy-to-use. The clean lines and no-fuss interface is fine but it does mean multimedia such as photos and video are kind of shunned to the background.
But no longer. Today saw Reddit launch Reddit.tv, a separate entity from the main site which shows videos being voted for in a continuous stream. It’s an idea that isn’t particularly original, having already been done by Stumble Video and Twitmatic, but it’s great nonetheless.
Reddit.tv Demonstration
How It Works
As you can see from the video embedded above, Reddit.tv pulls the video content from the host site and embeds it. There are thumbnails and previews available for other videos, as well as a big ‘Show me more’ button so that should you get bored you can easily switch to a new recommended video clip.
There are a host of different categories which you can use to filter your selection of clips. Videos cannot currently be voted up or down from Reddit.tv, instead you are directed back to the main page. However, there is a nice bit of Twitter integration, with a click on the bluebird taking you to your Twitter account and auto-generating a tweet recommending the video you were last watching.
Sorting The Wheat From The Chaff
As Alexis on the Reddit blog suggests, “there’s no shortage of new video content online.” The problem, however, is trying to organize this video content and sort the wheat from the chaff. My first port of call for this would obviously be Web TV Hub, which has real people, including myself, choosing the clips which we feel deserve a bigger audience. But Reddit.tv also does a fine job of achieving the same thing.
I cannot work out why Digg hasn’t done something similar to this before now. The StumbleUpon method of finding and recommending sites means Stumble Video would always work, but Reddit.tv proves a similar style of video content organization and delivery can also work for text-based social bookmarking sites as well. Digg has been left wanting on this occasion.
Conclusions
There are some early technical difficulties. ReadWriteWeb reports that Safari is having trouble accessing the site, and I personally am having similar problems using Firefox. But issues such as these are to be expected on launch day, and so long as they are fixed in good time it shouldn’t harm the site too much.
As video content grows, these kinds of sites will become invaluable to those of us only interested in the very best of the Web. The only problem being, of course, that the recommendations are only ever as good as the people doing the voting. It would seem that if you’re a fan of the Reddit homepage, Reddit.tv will do just nicely.
