• Filename, title, description.
  Same as above
• Video Files Metadata
  Same as above
• Keyword “video”
  Same as above
• Links and Backlinks
  Same as above
• Make good thumbnails, first and the last frames.
  A video thumbnail is what users view when they are deciding between which videos to watch. Different video search engines will grab thumbnails differently. Some will use the first frame while others will take a frame from somewhere in the middle. You will need to experiment with each site to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video.
• Branding
  The first and the last frames are perfect for branding. Place your logo there, as well as your URL and any other information you think is applicable.
• Uniqueness
  More than anything, make sure as well that your video is creative and unique. This is the best way to attract backlinks from people who want to share your video.

• Use social bookmarking sites and tools to assist in the visibility of your videos, add backlinks to your videos, and create traffic.
• Train editors to think like video searchers

Optimization in the Future:
As search engines are working to better determine the content and relevance of multimedia content, the methods that we use to optimize websites and in particular, videos, images, and audio in the future may be quite different. Currently optimization still relies upon including Meta data and keyword information in or surrounding the current content.

With search engines like Blinkx.com, who claim to rely more and more so on OCR (optical character recognition), voice/speech recognition, and image recognition, optimization of video content will likely be much more so about the quality of the video itself. For example, if Blinkx.com relies upon voice recognition as an example, it would be important to make certain that you are speaking clearly in the video so as to make the job of voice recognition easier for the search engines.

However, take a look at this interesting post from Danny S. on Search Engine Land. Danny explains that Blinkx and other still rely heavily on meta data for searching. Danny also reviews some tests that he conducted with video searches.

Source:reelseo.com

U.S.A.

Bebo
BlackPlanet (African-Americans)
Bolt (Music and Video)
Broadcaster (Video sharing and webcam chat)
CarDomain (Car lovers)
Care2 (Green living and activism)
Classmates (School, college, work and the military)
Dogears.net (US Universities)
Dogster (uh, dogs!?!)
Eons
Facebook
Flickr (pics)
Friendster
Graduates (School, College)
Golfspinner (Golfers)
Hi5
Joga (Soccer)
Kaneva (3D virtual world)
LibraryThing (Book Lovers)
eSpin (Teens)
Meetup
MiGente (Latinos)
MOG
MSN Spaces
MySpace
MyYearBook
Orkut
Piczo
Palopia (students)
Panjea (music, media player)
Passado
Reunion
Sconex
Tagworld
Takkle.com (Sport)
Travellerspoint (Travels)
Tribe
Vois
WAYN
Xianz (Christians)
Xuqa
Yahoo 360
Yelp
Zaadz (Change the World)
Zorpia
Doostang (Harvard, Stanford, MIT alumni)

Business Networks

CollectiveX (for groups)
Guanxi (China)
Ryze (USA)
Tianji (China)
Xing

Beyond USA

Arto.dk (Denmark)
ASmallWorld (Euro)
Cyworld (South Korea)
Epuls.pl (Poland)
EveryonesConnected (UK)
Faceparty (UK)
Face-Pic (UK)
Fropper (India)
Grono (Poland)
Hyves (Netherlands)
IRC Galleria (Finland)
iWiW (Hungary)
LunarStorm (Sweden)
Mixi (Japan)
Nexopia (Canada)
Passado (Euro)
Playahead (Sweden)
ProfileHeaven (UK)
Rate.ee (Estonia)
Studivz.net (Germany’s Facebook)
Yeeyoo (China)
Yeskee (China)
Yonja (Turkey)

Anti-Social Networks

Isolatr
Snubster

Myspace Add-ons

Blingboo
Coshed
Gotomyproile
Modmyprofile
Myspacehive
Zobbler

Mobile Social Networks

mosh.nokia.com

Microsoft has provided a brief statement this evening regarding the Yahoo deal. Good gosh, will this go on all year? This time it looks like they are pursuing a “transaction” which could mean a million different things. Perhaps an acquisition of the advertising arm of Yahoo and let Yahoo focus on the content and developer side of the business. Perhaps it’s the opposite where Microsoft will acquire the services and Yahoo will remain with the advertising components? My guess is that using the word transaction means Microsoft is looking to acquire some part of Yahoo’s offering. Looks like this story still hasn’t concluded nor will it anytime soon. If you held a gun to my head, I’d bet it’s the Yahoo-Google search advertising deal we’ve been hearing about lately - Microsoft wants to replace Google in the deal.Here’s the statement:

“In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business.  Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!  Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties. 

“There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions.”

Source: centernetworks.co

USA TODAY — May 12 — Facebook and MySpace are valued in the billions of dollars and are considered blueprints for how to build a website. Yet a deeper question lingers: How are they going to consistently produce profits to match their soaring valuations? With online ad spending booming into a nearly $50 billion market this year, there is plenty of money to be had.

MySpace

Since it scored a $900 million, three-year deal with Google in 2006, MySpace has been profitable. And it has given News Corp. a nice turn on its $650m acquisition in 2005. Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, expects MySpace to haul in $700m to $800m in revenue in 2008, mostly in advertising.

Facebook

Facebook hopes to double its revenue to $350m this year. The 70 million-member network has ramped up revenue with the sale of banner ads through an agreement with Microsoft.

LinkedIn

The business-contact site has built a booming business in five years through banner ads from the likes of Porsche and Microsoft; subscriptions; job postings charged to corporations and small-business owners; and corporate sales to Symantec, MTV and others. LinkedIn is developing other revenue streams, including research services to locate experts.

Bebo
Bebo has struck up marketing initiatives with advertisers such as Nike and Apple. That is a key reason it has been profitable the past 18 months.

Xing

Xing, a business-contact list service popular in Europe, says its revenue doubled in 2007 to $30m, from 2006 because of premium subscriptions, an e-commerce marketplace and banner ads.

ZenithOptimedia estimates online ad spending worldwide will soar 26.5% this year, to $47.7 billion. Total ad spending worldwide, by comparison, is expected to grow 4.6%, to $653.9 billion this year, says Universal McCann. FULL ARTICLE @ USA TODAY

Vodafone* today announces that it has agreed to acquire 100% of ZYB, a privately-owned company based in Denmark which operates a social networking and online management tool enabling mobile phone users to back-up and share their handsets’ contact and calendar information online. The acquisition will be made for a cash consideration of Eur31.5 million.

The acquisition of ZYB is a further advance in the implementation of Vodafone’s Total Communications strategy which is delivering new revenue growth around fixed broadband, mobile advertising and a rich set of internet services that integrate the mobile and PC customer experience. ZYB fits into this strategy by enhancing the range of communications services Vodafone can provide to its customers.

ZYB is unique amongst social networking sites as it is designed with the mobile device at its heart, allowing customers to share information and messages between their friends and colleagues who are held in their mobile phone’s address book.

ZYB increases communication choices for customers enabling them to send messages and images from their PC to multiple mobile devices in their mobile community, as well as taking advantage of the functionality of an instant messaging service.

Pieter Knook, Internet Services Director for Vodafone Group, said: “Vodafone understands that the core of any customer’s personal and business network is the set of contacts they hold on their mobile phone.

“Using a web portal as a link between the PC and the mobile device, ZYB provides an interactive way for people to nurture, contact and develop their relationships with their most important friends and colleagues and builds links with those contacts’ wider networks. This is Web 2.0 in action.

“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of delivering products and services which meet our customers’ total communications needs.”

Tommy Ahlers, CEO of ZYB, added: “I am delighted that ZYB is to join Vodafone, the world’s largest international mobile community.

“Vodafone and ZYB share the same vision: to create a new mobile experience that builds on the convergence between the mobile and PC – and one which works on both platforms.

“By joining a company with Vodafone’s global reach, ZYB has more opportunities to bring to the mobile a further advance to the rich and interactive communications experience which people already recognise via the internet on their PC.”

ZYB will remain based in Denmark and upon acquisition will be incorporated into Vodafone’s Internet Services Division.

* The purchaser of ZYB is Vodafone Europe BV, a holding company of Vodafone Group, based in The Netherlands.

Source: www.techcrunch.com

Facebook is all about openess, right? And privacy. It’s a balance, or something. Oftentimes it’s a tricky balance, but Facebook has self-instituted standards to live up to. And those standards say that Google’s new Friend Connect is evil (in so many words).

As Friend Connect supposedly shares user data in a way that circumvents total disclosure to all users involved, Facebook has stated that Friend Connect does not comply with its standards for collecting user data and redistributing it across the web. The result? Friend Connect’s access to Facebook has been suspended.

So much for the web platform coming to fruition in an easy, cooperative manner. Google still has Microsoft and Yahoo to compete with on the search level, but when it comes to the development of open standards, MySpace, Facebook and Google have become the battling trio.

Between Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, and MySpace’s Data Availability on top of existing open platforms, the race is on to become the dominant, most widely adopted platform for such open standards. It’s quite dizzying at this point, and not so cooperative after all. Facebook has stated that it’s reached out to Google in order to find a way in which to reach a satisfactory level of compliance, so hopefully that will happen soon. Google does, after all, have a burning desire to own the universe’s data.

Source: mashable.com

Amsterdam - International wireless carrier Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) announced on Friday that it has acquired Denmark-based mobile social network ZYB, for about $50 million in cash.

ZYB allows users to share information, messages and media from their PCs with contacts in their phone’s address book.

“Using a web portal as a link between the PC and the mobile device, ZYB provides an interactive way for people to nurture, contact and develop their relationships with their most important friends and colleagues and builds links with those contacts’ wider networks,” said Pieter Knook, Internet services director for Vodafone Group.

“This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of delivering products and services which meet our customers’ total communications needs.”

ZYB had to date raised about $4.7 million in venture capital.

Source:www.dmwmedia.com