The Main Differences We Hope You Notice

• Speed - The site now loads 3x times as fast and pages feel more responsive.
• Consistency - The interface works, looks and feels the same on the majority of our 15M pages (or will shortly).
• Usability - Most aspects are working and cleaned up (we do have a bug list a mile long, of course).

New vs Old

People visit MeFeedia primarily to watch video and these changes should make that easier to do.

Structure

We have broken content into 6 main categories:

• Videos- Viral videos, user content, videoblogs and produced content
• TV Shows - Your favorite shows from ABC, NBC, FOX, WB and more
• Movies - A selection of streaming full-length movies, clips, reviews and trailers
• Music - Music videos & music playlists from MTV, MySpace Music, Imeem and others
• News - Most recent news from a variety of sources
• Podcasts - Audio and video podcasts

In addition to the content structure, we fixed a number of underlying scaling & structural issues.

The Listings

Key improvements include thumbnail quality, readability, location on page and extra functionality.

Site Speed Drastically Improved

• Massive reduction in image weight, responsiveness and bandwidth usage
• Reduced HTTP requests by 50% and optimized performance
• Lighter HTML, tableless design - we still have many improvements to make

Usability

• Video player is large (now 640px wide) and higher up the page
• Improved audio player
• Bigger search box
• Organized footer with additional search box
• Contextual sidebars
• “Skip to Content” link brings you right to the content
• “Back to top link” for easier use

Visual Improvements

Visually we have made a far reaching number of changes, while trying to keep hold of the traditional MeFeedia style. We like to think of it as an evolution and hope that our visitors find it easier to use and more pleasing on the eye. Just look at the thumbnails below.

• Improved thumbnail quality, larger format and less banding
• Refined colors and reduced impact of the interface as a whole
• Larger video windows for better viewing experience
• Organization and improvement of sidebars

Company Section

We have created a new company section that includes links to key places which are useful for learning more about us.

• Our Company - Information about MeFeedia as a company
• The Team - Meet the main players on the team
• Press - See what people are saying about us
• Media - If you are a publisher and need information, let us know

Help Section

We have expanded our help section to provide important information to our users.

• Help - A quick way to find helpful information
• The Basics - Discover how to use MeFeedia
• FAQ - Answers to our most common questions
• Profiles - Learn how to manage your profile

The Blog

We have upgraded and moved our wordpress powered blog to blog.mefeedia.com, so subscribe now to keep up with the latest from us. We will be publishing tips for video power users, how to get the most out of the video web and lots more.

Other Stuff

Obviously we can’t cover everything in this post, so here is a mention of a few of the areas we haven’t covered.

• New logo
• More partners
• Thousands more videos
• Search RSS - just add “/rss” to the end of any search page - more about MeFeedia RSS here
• Improved copy
• No sleep, too much caffeine and videos

In The Works

We have a number of features in the works and we’ll publish full details here as they are ready. For now we can tell you that we are working on geotargeting, browser detection and a number of other tools that video watchers and producers should find useful.

So What Difference Has This Made? Well, So Far…

So far we’ve seen a dramatic increase in traffic since the re-launch and we are hoping that means we are going in the right direction so far.

Please let us know what you think via comments or contact us here.

Thanks,

Frank

Some of the TV Shows available:

• Veronica Mars
• One Tree Hill
• The O.C.
• Jack & Bobby
• Babylon 5

Enjoy the great new content!

The depth and breadth of video content available on the Web today is amazing. Today, almost every website HAS to have video as a core offering. Sites such as ESPN.com and TV.com are recent examples of sites re-launching with a video focus. With this increasing focus on video, consumers are demanding tools to make sense of the “Video Web”. MeFeedia is here to help. In addition to continually adding new content, we are constantly improving our video search, personalization, and community tools to help people discover and watch great video (and audio) content.

Accelerating Growth of Video Content
Growth has been accelerating - both in terms of number of MRSS feeds, and number of sources.

Here is a sampling of the types of content available on MeFeedia. This by no means is a comprehensive list:

• Viral Video / Video Sharing Sites
• TV (ABC, NBC, FOX, Comedy Central, and more)
• Movies
• News
• Music
• Podcasts
• Videoblogs (we started as a Videoblog Directory in Dec 2004)

Don’t see your videos in MeFeedia? It is fast and easy and anyone can do it - just submit your video (or audio) feed here.

It is that time of year again - Superbowl time - which, of course, in the online video world means lots and lots of attention on Superbowl commercials.

Advertising is becoming more and more closely tied with content and story lines, so this year we decided just to focus on Video Search and the Memes around the Superbowl ads.

You can already see the banned PETA ad is circulating around the web.

Here is the Superbowl ad video search stream. Enjoy the game.

Here is a recap of some of the highlights from 2008

Audience
Our audience growth catapulted Mefeedia.com to be the #1 fastest-growing, independently-owned video portal in 2008 (source: Quantcast)

• 323% Growth in Unique Visitors (now at 6 million uniques a month)
• 361% Growth in Pageviews
• 490% Growth in Direct Traffic (i.e. directly type-in Mefeedia.com)

Product:

We made some huge leaps forward in terms of our product in 2008:

• Mefeedia Video Search was launched in 2008, and was immediately heralded as “the best multimedia search out there” by CNET and others. Some highlights of Mefeedia Video Search:

• Comprehensiveness – Mefeedia Video Search beats the competition in terms of depth and breadth of content, covering over 15,000 video sources.
• Relevancy – Our social relevancy approach to video search is unique and brings highly relevant results in the first 10 results. Most important, our relevancy algorithm scales as the number of videos on the web has reached hundreds of millions.
• Flexibility – Watch what you want, where you want - easily. Mefeedia Video Search brings the video to the consumer. Mefeedia Video Search is now available on desktop, mobile devices, and via widgets.
• Technology - Mefeedia’s proprietary technology currently handles over 300 different formats of MRSS feeds and over 100 different custom flash players. This enables us to automate the updating, categorization, and playback of hundreds of thousands of videos a day!

Partners:

2008 was a big year for content deals, which included content from 3 out of the 4 major TV networks (ABC, FOX, and NBC). Here is a complete summary of these deals:

• Hulu and ABC were added as TV content partners.
• Revision3, Next New Networks, 60 Frames, and On Networks were added as Internet TV content partners.
• Blip.tv and Revver were added as Videoblogging content partners.
• ClipSyndicate was added as a News content partner, bringing in AP, Reuters, Bloomburg, New York Times, and over 300 news sources.
• 5min was added as a How To content partner.

As we look ahead to 2009 and another great year, please feel free to leave us a comment or send me an email - frank at mefeedia dot com - with any requests for what you would like to see in 2009!

Yours,

The Mefeedia Team

The new content features over 1,000 new “feeds” with some great how-to content in many categories, including these channels:

• Food & Drink
• How To
• Technology

And much more in many categories. The embeds use the 5min “Smart Player” which is a great experience for How To videos in Full Screen. Enjoy the new knowledge!

Check it out now

Highlights:

• Revamped User Experience - fast and simple: “Watch Video from around the Web”.
• New “Channel Surfing” experience (see navigation on left) - Video, TV, Movies, News, Music, Podcasts, and Feeds. Allows for easy channel surfing and watching.
• Movies - Added “Mefeedia Movies” - full-length, free streaming movies from various sources. http://www.mefeedia.com/movies
• User login also changed - login is now conveniently done with the email address that you registered with instead of having to remember your username.

We hope you enjoy the new Mefeedia. Please feel free to contact us at “info at mefeedia dot com” or on the Mefeedia users group if you have any comments, bugs to reports, or questions.

Regards,

The Mefeedia Team

Here is the analysis of the Top 25 Video Sites (numbers taken from Quantcast on Sept 10th, 2008):

Bigger Market Trend: Video Search & Discovery

The bigger trend is that Video Search & Discovery sites were 3 out of the top 5 fastest growing in 2008. No surprise to us at Mefeedia (despite the constant NewTeeVee skepticism), viewers are flocking towards Video Search & Discovery to help them find what interests them in the chaotic world of online video. This is natural as the amount of video on the Web continues to explode.

Thank you again to our users - we hope you continue to enjoy Mefeedia as we expand video search, add more content partners, and continue to enhance social discovery.

As MeFeedia has quickly gained momentum and become the best place to discover and follow the video entertainment that is interesting to you (see my subscriptions) we are pleased to let you, our loyal users, know that we have added a number of content partners - click here for the full list.

Now, on Mefeedia.com, you can Find, Subscribe, Watch, and constantly stay updated on everything from traditional TV to Web Original programming to Podcasts to YouTube videos.

Mefeedia is like your own, personal DVR for Any Video Entertainment - no matter where that video is hosted or what media player is being used, you can always stay updated on your favorite shows as well as discover new content. Here are just a few of the places on Mefeedia.com that you can now discover, watch, and subscribe to our content partners’ great video programming:

• Hulu channels for: TV Shows, Film, and Web Original programming
• ABC channel for TV Shows (Episodes launch into ABC Full Episode Player)
• Revision3 Channel
• Next New Networks Channel
• 60 Frames Channel
• On Networks Channel

Please enjoy the great new video programming, as well as your favorites from around the Web.