With
the proliferation of online video (yes there is more than just YouTube out
there!), the opportunity has arisen for portal players that provide a ‘one stop
shop’ for online video. One such service is PureVideo,
which has just released some new features. In fact it almost has too many
features, because it’s hard to get a grip on what the site offers when you first
go there. It’s main offering though is a search engine for video and an
associated portal frontpage, which lists popular videos at destinations such as
YouTube and GrindTV.com. PureVideo launched in October 2006 and gets over 2.2
million monthly visits, according to comScore.
They’ve also just released a start page offering, called My.PureVideo
(Beta). It’s an Ajax-powered, custom video startpage that enables users to
keep track of their favorite video sources and subjects – via RSS. Users can
select feeds by media source (e.g. StupidVideos.com) and/or by keyword (e.g.
“mentos”). There are also categories (called “channels”
here) and users can of course input their own feeds. Interestingly, PureVideo
says that it “tallies the popularity of every user-submitted feed, for
considered inclusion in the featured menu”. This is something the likes of
Netvibes and Pageflakes would do well to implement. The My.PureVideo page
supports drag-and-drop and soon there will be video-related widgets (ahh, the
magic ‘w’ word!).
Regarding their search index, it is selective – they currently have video
sites such as AtomFilms, Brightcove, Grouper, Music Nation, and Machinima.com
in there. The heavies, like youtube and revver, are represented too. On the
right there is premium placement for PureVideo’s ‘media partners’.
PureVideo has also just released a toolbar
and a research channel.
Overall it’s a comprehensive service, although it lacks the more sophisticated
community features that the big guns like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have. For
example Yahoo Video has ratings, tags and
is a lot more user-friendly for mainstream people.
But then PureVideo is a true portal, in that it isn’t limited to one
source like the video sites of the Big 3. So in that sense there is a place for
the likes of PureVideo – and the ‘start page’ feature is a nice value add.
