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Continuing the "Five Things" trend, today we take a look at Viddler. Viddler is currently my favorite video sharing service. They kick YouTube's arse in every way, from their innovative timed tagging/commenting to larger-sized videos. The community aspect of Viddler is what helps it stand apart from other video sharing services. The community they have is like a family, and everyone supports each other. They have several "big brands" including WineLibraryTV and iJustine. There are a few areas for improvement and here are five things they could improve on:

Suggestion #1 - Shorter links

The Viddler staff have this great viral program where they hand out business cards with the links to videos that are shot live (i.e. at a conference). It's very cool, but the links are a chore to enter into the machine. Here is a simple example: "http://www.viddler.com/explore/chrisclark/videos/35/" - who wants to enter all of that?!?! At a minimum it could be: "http://www.viddler.com/chrisclark/35/". I wonder how many people just go to Viddler's main page and try to search for the video?

Suggestion #2 - Jump off point widget to create streams

This suggestion comes from James Thomas at Skinnyr. He would like to see a widget that will offer his site visitors the opportunity to watch more videos from him in a stream. This way he could embed it onto MySpace or Facebook and a user can see not just the current video but any videos he includes. Actually any type of streams would be great. Save videos into your favorites, then select any combination and create a stream. This would be similar to the way SplashCast handles media.

Suggestion #3 - Advanced Embed Code

One of Viddler's strengths is larger video sizes. So why not let me set an embed size when I pull the code from Viddler and place it on CN? Perhaps I set the width and it sets the height automatically. Furthermore, what does the "Original Size" button do? Never does anything for me, I think it's a trick of some sort!

Suggestion #4 - Custom Branding

I struggle with branding in video players. Let's assume I create this great video and 20 people embed it on their site. Except for an intro screen, there is no CN branding at all. I want to drive people to CN to learn more, etc. What about if Viddler offered a premium option (perhaps paid?) whereby I could insert my logo in the corner and make it clickable? That'd be hot!

Suggestion #5 - Misc site updates

• Put the date on the page so we know when the video was created
• Let me see previews of other videos by the same producer without having to leave the page

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 11:30 am and is filed under Insights, Viddler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.