Viddler

Last week Viddler launched what has been our most extensive redesign, both in terms of our underlying codebase and our site’s layout, since 2007. In just the first week we have seen a massive impact on the effectiveness of our site.

Many of Viddler’s new customers find our site through search engines, an ad campaign, or by word of mouth and – once they’ve visited our site – sign up and get started all on their own. We call these self-select customers.

On our previous site we found that a certain percentage of these potential customers ended up confused with our message, couldn’t understand the value of Viddler, and ended up leaving. Since our redesign we’ve noticed a substantial increase in both potential and self-select customers. In other words, the redesigned site makes more sense to our customers than ever before.

How many more? How about over 30% more! The Viddler team has been blown away by the increase in the number and quality of free-trial sign ups and also in self-select customers that have chosen Viddler all on their own. We’re so happy that more businesses understand what Viddler does and how we can help them with online video.

We consider Viddler’s redesign a massive success and we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for a lot more from team Viddler.

The Viddler team is extremely passionate about providing you with the very best online video platform. Our goal is to provide you an easy-to-use service that helps grow your business through video. Our devoted team works hard everyday to maintain our high level of customer service, while continuously developing new features and functionality so that you can stay ahead of the curve with your online video strategy.

Rethink, Rebuild, Redesign

Viddler used this transition and time to clear up the messaging, navigation and user interface on our website. Hopefully you’ll find this new look to be more efficient and direct. We trust you’ll also find this to be a much cleaner, professional look and feel for your business.

We looked back feature by feature, and really examined how our customers were functionally using Viddler. Those aspects of our service that were not being utilized were minimized in order to focus on and improve on all that you’ve been using.

New functionality includes:

• New Dashboard with easy access to all of your settings and features
• Easier video management and organization including upgraded search capability
• Direct access to uploading and webcam recording from the Videos page
• Improved management of your video privacy settings for easy control of who can view one or all of your videos
• Searchable Help arcticles and an integrated customer support system
• Easier access to Add-ons including Subscriptions, Advertising, and Partners
• Improved API security and features

We would love to give you a live tour of your upgraded Viddler platform. Register today to have a Viddler team member to give you a live walk through. We look forward to speaking with you soon.

Please stop by and check out the new Viddler!

To better serve our customers both in functionality and security we have made some browser support decisions for 2012. While you can always access Viddler from a PC, Mac or Linux we have tightened up a support plan for browsers.

Viddler will support the current stable release of a browser and the prior version. This will start 6 months after the newest stable release has been published.

Example: if IE version ‘x’ comes out tomorrow, we will continue to support and test the previous version of IE for the next 6 months and we will make sure our site works in full in IE version ‘x’ by the time we drop testing for the previous version. This does not mean the site will cease to work with the previous version, just that we are not fully testing the previous version any longer.

We have made these decisions so that we can provide our customers with the best platform in all current major browsers.

* We recommend using a supported browser to get all of Viddler’s newest features:

• IE 8+ | Windows
• Firefox 3.6+ | Windows Mac Linux
• Chrome 12+ | Windows Mac Linux
• Safari 4+ | Mac Windows
• Opera (We do not test in Opera but believe our site should fully work) | Windows Mac Linux

* These were the current browsers and versions as of January 9th, 2012.

As anyone who works on software knows – maintaining seldom-used features is a distraction from the features that matter most. Our team would never want the Viddler platform to suffer because we’re not willing get rid of the parts that aren’t used even if we worked really hard on them.

For this reason we’ve gone back to the drawing board, reviewed our usage statistics in detail, and have worked hard over the last few months to rethink, rebuild, and redesign the most important parts of Viddler. We’re really excited to share with you exactly what is in, what is out, and what is new – but we’re still a month or so away from launching the next version of Viddler.

To show you how excited we are we’ve created a short video explaining some of our thinking behind the next version of Viddler. Over the next month we’ll be explaining some of our decisions right here on the blog and how all of our customers can prepare for the changes ahead.

It has been quite a while since I’ve graced the blog with my presence. Today, I sent out a newsletter to our Personal users that signed up prior to 2010. I’d like to share it with everyone else, so we’re all on the same page.

Discount offer omitted as it’s exclusive for those that received the email.

Howdy Viddlers,

Many of you are the reason Viddler has risen to where it is today. You are the ones that dedicated hours everyday creating videos, viewing and commenting on the videos of others, and participating in the many community adventures. There’s been countless smiles, tears, frolics, artworks, deep thoughts, kids, birthdays, unboxings, and marvelous accents.

Gosh, this is looking like one of those farewell letters you receive from a company that got acquired and then gathers dust (*ahem* Jaiku). This is certainly not the case.

It’s no secret that Viddler’s community of free users hasn’t been as active in the past couple of years. You guys and gals have grown up, changed hobbies, switched jobs, fallen in love, or just miss iJustine. That’s understandable, but we still love you, so we’re giving away a return trip to AUSTRALIA if you login and upload a video.

Okay, not really. Maybe one day.

In all seriousness, we do love you, and we just want to let you know that we’ve decided to remove the option to sign up for a Personal/Free account. This will not affect any of you, but it will mean that new users will be required to sign up for a Pro, Business, or Enterprise account.

This decision was made because a good portion of new user sign-ups are spam or businesses wanting to trial our service without using the free business trial (which previously required a credit card, but now don’t).

Since this is a fairly significant change, there will be changes to the website which might confuse some of you who haven’t been back in a while. Rest assured, your videos, comments, tags, and more will stay intact.

If you have any questions or handy feedback, then you’re welcome to contact me via email, @viddler, or leaving a comment on this post.

I look forward to seeing you around Viddler, and the next time we meet in person.

Huge thanks and many hugs,
Derek Steen
Community Participant since 2007
Community Leader since 2008

P.s. This message was shown to several of our Personal users and they approved of its contents. I hope you all feel as accepting as they did.

The entire Viddler HQ team is extremely excited to move into our new digs. We are staying in Bethlehem, PA but moving to a bigger space as our team continues to quickly grow. I recently went over to check on the progress of our new office and took some pictures to share with you all. As soon as we get settled we will shoot a video giving you all the full tour.

It is a very exciting time at Viddler as we continue to develop and upgrade our features and service. We continue working to provide all our Business clients with the best online video platform to help grow your brand.

RTMP Streaming is now in beta-testing phase and available to all our Business clients. RTMP, real time messaging protocol, is not to be confused with live streaming. RTMP streaming will allow your viewers the ability for smoother navigation within your videos and will also provide you with a higher level of security over the ownership of your video content. This is only for the flash player and not available on mobile devices.

Advantages

• With RTMP, viewers can seek to not-yet-downloaded parts of a video. This is especially useful for longer-form content (> 10 minutes).
• Videos delivered over RTMP are harder to steal than videos delivered over regular HTTP.

Disadvantages

• RTMP is a different protocol than HTTP and is sent over a different port (1935 instead of 80). Therefore, RTMP is frequently blocked by (corporate) firewalls.
• RTMP is a true streaming protocol, which means that the bandwidth of the connection must always be larger than the data-rate of the video. If the connection drops for a couple of seconds, the stream will stutter. If the connection bandwidth overall is smaller than the video data-rate, the video will not play at all.

If you are interested in becoming a beta-tester for RTMP Streaming or if you have any questions, please contact netsupport@viddler.com.

Viddler in collaboration with TechMedia is excited to present the Digital East 2011 Community Video Page.

The Digital East 2011 conference, taking place just outside Washington DC on September 28-29th, promotes thought leadership on the latest digital marketing and business best practices through presentations from over 100 industry experts representing brands such as Google, Yahoo!, LivingSocial, Gowalla, Yelp!, CNN, AdAge, and Cisco among others (including Viddler!).

Visit the Digital East 2011 Community Video Page to record your thoughts on the hottest topics in digital media including online and mobile advertising, analytics, e-commerce, and social media. Every week we will ask the community a question. Record your answer and become a part of the Digital East community by interacting with thought leaders and other conference attendees.

Read the weekly question and click the “Record your answer” button. Enable your webcam. Record, save, and upload your answer to the video page. Interact with other videos through Viddler’s in-video commenting feature by clicking the + icon within the player or just click the “Like” button. Check back every Monday for a new topic of discussion and new question. Please make sure to state who you are and where you are from!

For those who can make the Digital East 2011 conference, Viddler is offering an exclusive VIP promotion code to all of our users to receive $25 off registration. Enter VIP code: VIDDLER25 when you register!

Click here to register!

While you’re there be sure to check out Viddler co-founder Donna DeMarco’s presentation in the online video strategy session.

If you are interested in building a custom video page for an upcoming event please email ian@viddler.com.

Viddler provides 3 different player styles for you to use when embedding videos on your site or blog. Each player has a different look and slightly different functionality. Check out the video below in each of our 3 player styles. Get a complete rundown on the different features each one of our players provide and see how some of our clients utilize the different player styles.

Mini:

Simple:

Full:

Let us know which player style is your favorite!

We hope that everyone has had the opportunity to take a look at the Upgraded “Your Videos” Page that was released earlier this week. We have made many organizational and functionality changes in order to enhance your Viddler Business Account service.  It is very important to us that you are able to take full advantage of all of the upgraded features.

On Tuesday August 2, 2011, Bernie Selvey, Director of Customer Support, will be holding a full in-depth walk through of the entire upgraded “Your Videos” page for the Viddler Business Community. Bernie will display in full detail all of the new functionality that was developed to enhance your online video experience with Viddler.  We hope that you have the oppoturtunity to join us.  If not, please view the help article to gain a better understanding of all the upgrades and there capabilities. The help article also contains a video that gives a full overview presentation of the upgraded page.

Registration Details:

Opens: July 28, 2011

Closes: August 1, 2011

Webex Date: Tuesday August 2, 2011 @ 2pm EST –> Click to Register*

If you have any questions that you would like to have Bernie address during the presentation please email webex@viddler.com including the subject line “Your Videos Webex Questions”. Please submit all questions by August 1, 2011.

*Webex is for Viddler Business Account clients.  Please do not register if you are a Viddler Personal Account holder.