Yahoo! currently seems to be on a mission to take over the world of online video, despite facing the immediate threat of a hostile takeover bid by industry giant Microsoft. They say all good things come in threes, and Yahoo! seem intent on proving that at the moment.
Last week saw the unveiling of Y! Live, a lifecasting site to compete with the likes of uStream, Mogulus and Operator11. As those sites do, Y! Live enables ordinary members of the public to become broadcasters in their own bedroom, setting up a video channel, and showing whatever footage reels off from their webcams.
Then a few days ago, we saw Yahoo! acquire Maven, an online video platform which could see the company up the ante on the advertising and monetisation side on web television.
The Relaunch Of Yahoo! Video
Now the trio of Yahoo! video related goodness has happened, with the relaunch of Yahoo! Video. But has the redesign made the service any better, and will the new features help it compete with YouTube on a more level playing field?
The redesign isn’t bad, with everything still being fairly easy to navigate, and very neat and tidy, but that’s about it, functionality seems to have been the watchword, and concentrated on maybe at the expense of experimentation.
In terms of features, there are a few nice additions and improvements to take a look at. Firstly, Yahoo! Video now supports 16:9 wide screen videos, with its flash based player getting a revamp. To go with that, file size limits have now been increased to 150Mbs.
These are both nice ideas, and do offer something different, and maybe even better than market leader YouTube currently does. The larger file limit should mean higher quality videos are on offer, although at the moment, it seems to be about the same as it was before.
Fully Embeddable Player
The player is also now fully embeddable, a feature which should have been offered as standard years ago, but which now seems out of date, seeing as everyone else has been doing it for what seems like ever.
It could help Yahoo! Video grow from its current third place behind YouTube and Fox Interactive Media for traffic, as embedded videos tend to be great hooks for viewers.
Fragmented Networks
We now also get networks, which are a more basic way to browse video content by genre. Although nice in theory, the whole thing has a very fragmented feel to it, drawing content from various Yahoo! properties.
Personal profiles have also been given an update, and Yahoo! Video users can now create playlists of videos they want to watch time and again. Nice, but again, not something which hasn’t already been on offer elsewhere on the web for a long time.
Conclusions
The newly relaunched Yahoo! Video isn’t bad, and is a vast improvement on what it was before. But to me, it feels more like a company trying to catch up to its competitors rather than trying to lead from the front with innovation and ideas springing forth.
There’s a full list of all the new features, and improvements on the Y Video blog, and promises of “more cool features” to follow. Maybe now that it’s caught up, the next step is to try and take Yahoo! Video on to the next level, at least until Microsoft take over and ruin everything.
