Magnify Update - Network Curation

Posted by Phil Butler on October 3rd, 2007

Magnify.net is rolling out a new video curation platform today. Magnify is a peer driven video broadcast platform for individuals, businesses and groups. Magnify currently has 10 million page views per month and contains roughly 15,000 content channels. This latest upgrade essentially turns every Magnify user into a self contained content curator of personal and web-wide video. This latest upgrade contains a customization kit for easily creating and branding channels, finding and integrating Web video and analyzing visitor stats and activities. Magnify is a fantastic tool for aggregating and branding targeted video for content, quality and purpose.

View A Different Angle

YouTube and other video networks contain vast numbers of videos (good and bad) categorized loosely for search and locate for viewing. Magnify is a much more "exclusive" and tailored platform that searches, sorts and renders video selections based on a site or user's unique criteria. The interface allows users to review and approve video that meets their specific need for content and quality too. Essentially, every user at magnify can create their own branded YouTube. Magnify is designed for adding a video aspect to sites and for creating stand alone networks. 

Magnify.net is being deployed with partners like QuePasa - a large Spanish language community, QPNN.com - a user generated news service built on the Magnify platform, RCUvideos - a huge radio controlled aircraft community and YouSurfTubes - a rapidly growing surfing community. These are just some examples of the communities already existing on Magnify, but the potential is obvious. Magnify is also releasing the following new technology to add value to their platform:

• Magnify This - A video grabber that admin and visitors can use to embed video from many popular sites

• Curator Logins - Allows expanded editing, sorting and managing for multiple users

• Icon Customization - Standard and Magnify logos can now be replaced with custom preferred logos

• Thumbnail Images - Users can now replace default graphics on video

• Home Page Mini Player - Allows admin to show selected video and all video to visitors on home page

• Latest Activity - Displays recent visitors, recent playlists and activity for visitor preferences and habits

• Cross Networking - Allows admin to tie together networks and cross promote from various channels

• Enhanced Statistics - Deep analysis on video views, page views, unique users and a new bar chart

• Video Counters - Displays view counts in thumbnail for all users and visitors to see

Step 3 of the Magnify network creation UI - templates

My spanking new Heavy TV Network - No customization added 

Pros and Cons

I did a quick test of the discoverability aspect of Magnify and the service is fairly flawless and simple to use. I think the potential of this vision of custom video channels is fairly obvious and as you can see I created my rather simplistic "Heavy Channel" in about 10 minutes. The advanced customization of the site is very good but could use a little more "non-coder" usability. The site design templates are very good as are the internal and external video search tools. Magnify also provides for feedback, community, email alerts, upload and sharing and the network tools mentioned. From the site and information I received the service is about to release shared video ads, which will be a huge incentive to create some killer channels and networks. Ad revenue is already shared and some of the existing networks are already doing quite well apparently. There is no real down side to Magnify other than the need for more incremental improvement. The site is still in beta, so we expect to see even greater improvement to come. The addition of resident searchable video sites is really a must for magnify are some more customization tools.

Conclusion

Magnify goes way beyond making a playlist or channel on most video sites. The service is not complete and by no means rocket science, but like my new "Heavy Video" creation any segment of interest can be demonstrated through video. How can anyone not like something so logical, creativity based and simple? Magnify has added much greater control and value for Magnify network owner/curators with this upgrade. The upcoming ad sharing scheme and the initial vision of this service are solid pluses for anyone into video. Magnify is a cool development with the right focus - allowing users to create and actually add value to their work.

Surf's Up Network 

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