ReadWriteWeb

I use the service Wistia.com to embed videos on my blog pages: I have covered the company before here and mentioned their analytics and video player. Today the company announced another series of improvements to their player on their blog here that are worth considering. The new features go way beyond what most video hosting sites offer.

For the last few years, many everyday folks who've been asked in surveys, "What is a cloud application?" have either guessed wrong or said they don't know. Folks don't know what "the cloud" is, and for the most part, that's not their fault. Unlike the Internet, which truly is a single network of interconnected resources, "the cloud" is more of a concept, one which can be leveraged by marketing departments to mean just about anything.

For this year's ReadWriteWeb list of the most important and influential consumer-grade cloud computing apps of the year 2011, we focused our gaze on services that truly fit the formal definition: specifically, services that 1) utilize a remote resource of 2) variable capacity 3) which the user can provision for herself, 4) which is mostly or totally independent of programs installed on the user's devices or PCs, and 5) which is not just a Web site with a big server. You may have seen Facebook on some publications' Top Cloud lists already; by our definition, Facebook is not a cloud service. But we did look for providers that perform innovative, discrete functions built around their services.

I've written about Wistia before, an enterprise video hosting and analytics vendor. This week they have made big improvements to their embedded video player, including more customization of controls, a cleaner look, and some other small touches. What was once a solid player is now a great player. If you are looking around for a place to host your videos, this should be on your short list. They provide terrific customer service and analytics features too.

For the past three years, I have been doing custom-made video screencasts for private consulting clients. These are moving captures of the images on a PC screen with my own voice-over narrations about IT-related products (you can see the entire collection here). And lately, more vendors have stepped up their own efforts to produce their videos as a way to explain what their products do, or as Mike Lee has said, what they might eventually do. There is also a growing awareness that these screencasts can be used as way of product documentation and support.

Let's talk about what tools you need, some best practices that I have gleaned, and some other places to learn more about this craft.

Encoding.com has been around for the past several years, and they have yet another turnkey video encoding service called quick catchingly, Vid.ly. The product, which has been in beta since February, was announced today and so far has had more than five million video views already.

While YouTube dominates the online video space, a new entrant is trying to compete on price and features and may have an opportunity. Vidyard.com announced it is offering a wide array of features, including a choice of embedded players, social sharing and ad-free playback. There are several pricing plans announced on its site, including a free plan for a single video and some basic analytics and a $50 per month plan for unlimited videos.

We've already covered Wistia.com here, which offers somewhat similar services, including the ability to track originating IP addresses, and how much of any given video a viewer has actually seen. Wistia's monthly plans start at $79 per month. And there are certainly plenty of other choices for video hosting sites, including Vimeo which has both basic and plus accounts. For $60 per year for the latter, you get analytics and the ability to upload unlimited videos (the free account provides for a single weekly HD upload).

If all you want is a bunch of people to see your latest video, go ahead and post it on YouTube. If you want a lot more people to see that video or you want to embed it in your Web site or use it to bring mega-traffic to your site, you need to look at other hosting services, not just YouTube. And if you use multiple video hosting sites, you'll want a super-fast, simple way to upload your video to multiple sites. No problem. We'll show you how to do that, too.

As Web-based video becomes more prominent and more useful for businesses, the biggest issue is figuring out what resonates with your audience. You post a video and then what: how many people watch it all the way through? Should you have broken it up into shorter segments? Did you need additional details? Did people like the video and link back to it? Depending on the video site you use to share your content, you have a number of analytics and tracking tools at your disposal.

Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We're fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them; about who they are, what they do, and what they've been up to lately. We hope you'll pay them a visit as a way to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site.

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Over the past two years, we at Wistia have spent a great deal of time helping businesses effectively use web video. We continue to be amazed at the innovative ways people are using web video to help their companies. The vast majority of these companies, surprisingly, are not media companies: they're businesses that incorporate video into their sales, marketing, or training to help scale those processes more efficiently.