VodPod: Part I – A Free Innovative Service to Manage Your Video Collections

REVIEW

Vodpod is a cool website for managing video collections.  It provides innovative services to organize and share your videos, with sheer simplicity. Membership is free.

Collect Videos from 1000’s of Sites

Vodpod was launched in December, 2006.  Since then, Vodpod members have collected videos from over 10,000 different video sites!  Members are allowed three free collections, enough for most people to efficiently organize their videos.

You can search for videos right from the VodPod home page.  You’ll find tons of videos collected by VodPod members from popular video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion. There is also a growing proliferation of videos being collected from niche video sites such as ScienceStage, KidsTube, and CarHubTV.

Video Trends and Popularity

Follow video trends and popularity at VodPod.  Notice the category tabs just below the VodPod logo.  Click on “Popular” to see which videos are “Most Collected,” either recently or for all time.  Explore “Most Discussed” and “Most Watched” videos.  You can also click “Right Now” to see what members are collecting in real-time.

VodPod Button

The quickest and easiest way to save a video to your collection is with the Vodpod Button, which installs in your browser’s toolbar.  Simply click on it whenever you want to add a video to one of your collections, and VodPod copies the video embed code and thumbnail image for you.

Organize Your Videos

VodPod provides an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop organizer to help you manage your video collection.  To find the organizer, first sign in, then go to your home page (click on your user name in upper right), and click on the “organize your videos” link.

The VodPod organizer lets you copy a video to any of your collections, or delete it. You can also edit the title, description, tags, or your own comments.  This is where you prepare videos for widget publication by assigning a specific tag or moving them to a particular collection.

Socialize Your Videos

You can follow other VodPod members to see what they are collecting, and they can follow you.  Members can search and view video collections, and add a video to their own collection.  They can also share, rate, and post comments.

VodPod provides social statistics for your video collection.  You can see for the last 30 days how often your videos have been viewed, how many videos you have discovered, and how many videos you have made popular (that is, how many videos you were the first to collect at VodPod that went on to be collected by five or more other people).

You have the ability to post select videos to social networks.  Whenever you save a video to one of your Vodpod collections, you are given the option to post it to your Facebook, Myspace, or Twitter accounts.

Vodpod and Your Blog

While you’re collecting, it’s super easy to add videos directly to your blog or website with a VodPod widget.  Notice the VodPod widget right here in the àlaBuzz sidebar. We use it to offer readers video resources relavant to recently posted topics.

Conversely, when you include a video in a blog post, you can use the VodPod Blog Importer to post it automatically to one of your VodPod collections.  This is useful for bloggers who have already established a workflow for inserting video into posts that doesn’t involve the VodPod Button.  It’s a great way to archive all your videos in one place; and you can import videos from past posts, too.

If you don’t have a blog, you can set up a VodPod-hosted VodSpot blog.  Learn more about this in Vodpod: Part II – Vodspot, a Free Vodpod-Hosted Blog to Present Your Video Collections, which àlaBuzz will soon publish.

Final Summary:  Vodpod Site Pros and Cons

VodPod is an excellent video management service.  Try using it along with a good search engine (like LeapFish) that highlights relevant videos.  You’ll be able to collect videos, or post video content to your blog, with just a few clicks.

Pros

• Lets you store and organize videos collected from all over the Web in one place
• Offers a variety of tools for discovering, collecting, and publishing videos
• Innovative, regularly offering new and exciting video tools
• Socially integrated
  • Online community for video collectors
  • Ability to share videos at major social networking sites

Cons

• Finding information regarding VodPod features is a bit bewildering – be sure to look in the site footer for links to feature information (the search box works only for video content)
• The VodPod Blog is a good source for feature and site information, but cannot be searched

Watch Mark Hall talk about VodPod.com on BeetTV:

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