jwampler

Most sites don’t actually publish their metrics, but we like the transparency, and think that it’s a cool way for the community to see how we’re growing.

Thanks for the feedback.

spencer

how can a site come out of “alpha” version with 472 members and 1379 videos?

Unless numbers are fake, how the hell is possible to have all those users? Admitting the vodpod staf is something like 20 persons, they should have convinced more than 20 friends to test the site, submitting more than 3 vids each…

Or is there any company specialized in betatesting services AFYK?

Comments apreciated ;P

cheers

if i create a collection of videos, i want the ability to title, tag and share my collection of videos.

vodpod let me do just that. voila!

http://reflections.vodpod.com/

how much more useful and dare i say “fun” do i need?

As for the social networking angle, I prefer sites that combine networking within my own contacts ( friends of friends of friends) in addition to videos that i’m simply “a fan” of. That’s what keeps me coming back to MySpace, Webshots, http://www.pickle.com, and others.

http://google.vodpod.com/

Natali, appreciate the focus in your post on the social aspects of the service.

Labeling VodPod “video sharing” might have caused the wrong perception among some of your readers. We’re not one of those, really. We let people aggregate videos from dozens of video sharing sites (soon it will be hundreds, and thousands, of these soon as media co’s launch their own video sharing sites).

If people are aggregating, collecting, and organizing videos on vodpod, from all these many video sharing sites, seems to me that makes us a different beast. Maybe we need a new name for this kind of thing. A people-powered aggregator?

Boolah & Mike Y– Lot’s of birding videos on the site because one of best and biggest pods built during our testing the past few weeks was by an avid birder and filmmaker. He’s made a great birding Pod, and a lot of birders came in to check it out over the past couple of weeks. It’s a great example of what these Pods can be.

As more people try out the service, I’m sure you’ll see a much wider variety of video programming. In fact, it’s changed quite a bit just the past 6 hours. But the real point isn’t what is on our home page, it’s whats on your Pod.

Patricia — We agree, one of the things were trying to do is to help filmmakers build out their own communities with their Pods.

Alan– Thanks for the reminder, the blog widgets are pretty cool, letting you easily aggregate videos on your blog from lots of different video sharing sites. Bloggers, check it out.

John — We call videos “videos.” Not pods. A Pod is what we call your collection of videos.

Anita — We agree with your point. Pods (collections, not videos!) are all about helping groups of friends, or communities of people with similar interests, find the good stuff from across hundreds of video sharing sites and tens, maybe hundres, of millions of clips on the Internet.

It is amazing how everyone is tech savvy to some extent today. In the old days people were of afraid of braking gadgets but today they are fascinated with the possibilities opened to them. If Zune can compete with iPod, then VodPod should also try to compete with YouTune.

http://www.gofish.com

‘Nuff said.

The biggest problem with all these video sites is finding quality content to watch. I can sit down in front of comedy central and know I’ll be entertained. If I want to be entertained on YouTube, I end up spending an hour skimming videos and 10 minutes in fits of laughter (I write a silly humor blog, so my searches are typically pretty narrow on some topic-of-the-day).

YouTube seems to have the best potential, but their search function is lacking and it’s too easy to game it (e.g. many people setup a computer macro to click refresh all night just to land on the daily most popular pages … as of a few weeks ago YouTube didn’t filter these clicks out).