Social video has exploded into a wide variety of sites letting anyone share their videos across the net, bringing with it a great deal of fragmentation. Video search engines and bookmarking sites are trying to help sew those pieces back together, letting users draw from video content from across the web.
Mesmo.tv is social video bookmarking tool launching today that lets you tag videos you like and throw them into a personalized content stream and group channels. You can add videos and podcasts from social sites or individual TV network homepages by submitting links directly to the site, RSS, and using their bookmarklet. It’s like VodPod’s video bookmarking service, but with more of a focus on video discovery than sharing. Like VodPod, they also have a Facebook application. The application, however, comes preloaded with a database of TV shows drawn from the top network sites.
The key difference from VodPod is that Mesmo helps you discover new video content you like based on how you like the videos you’ve already seen. Each video you add or view on Mesmo can be voted up or down. Mesmo takes these preferences and matches you up with individual videos, channels, and users sharing similar tastes.
These social video bookmarking sites seem to be tapping into a need unmet by even the traditional bookmarking services like Blue.us, which include videos as a category. VodPod and their four man team has accumulated over 52,000 registered users since launching last December.
Please delete this if considered off topic, but I think it would be interesting if there was a ‘fantasy football’ gambling market on TC: Register to get a budget to spend on startup financing and as the companies succeed or fail people would climb the published league table.
Of course it needs a panel of people to decide the success of startups, but it might be more interesting than reading people posting comments like ‘This is not a business – I give it 6 months’.
I wanted to be the first comment. That’s all.
After reading this, I thought that such a simple concept would’ve been done by the other major video players already. Since some or all of them don’t, I realize that it’s probably one of the reasons why i don’t watch as many videos as others. Relevancy is becoming more important these days with the influx of UGC [content] being released.
I think Scouta (www.scouta.com) is doing something similar if I’m not mistaken. In any case, I think recommendations will play a huge role in the evolution of the new media web. Pandora and Last.fm have already proven the model in the music space. I look forward to seeing future applications in other niche areas.
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
I’m usually skeptical of stuff like this, but I actually think this could be a useful for users. I saw something very similar to this at a show not long ago, but it created the same type of visual environment as the channel that scrolls programming on traditional cable tv – it was cool, and users always respond best to what’s familiar to them. I can’t recall the functionality but I remember you could drag and drop shows into your own personal timeline/schedule – it was cool, cool stuff.
Mesmo looks really cool, it is a refreshing departure from the confusion of over supply at some other sites. I am lazy and like to use other users searches and expertise to point me in the direction of good content. Is this the beginning of a change in the way video is delivered on the web?
I’m impressed by Mesmo’s ability to find quality content. By checking out what other users have “loved” I found a steady stream of entertaining videos. This could be scary addictive.
looks pretty good-
– but if it gets popular it will have to be gamed by and prominent Marketing exec
Doesn’t google already have that – they request you give tag to videos you wacth? not that many people use google video, I personally like it cuase it doesn’t throw the viewer any other videos to distract them from my site.
Sounds very similar to StumbleUpon’s Video. I think I’ll stick with StumbleUpon.