By Ken | March 6, 2009
Have you seen it? Youtube has opened up a fun little feature to its members. It’s called Annotations.
Remember watching VH1 back around 1996-2000 when they had ‘Pop-up’ video? It was the biggest thing going for a little while. Basically, VH1 would take music videos from all genres and play them with fun little pop-up cartoon bubbles that showed funny little comments like trivia, wardrobe style comments (or lack thereof), and mocking the plot of the video. It was always very entertaining, sort of like a music video ‘roast’.
In June of 2008, Youtube started playing with the idea of Annotation, based on the same concept as pop-up bubbles except these are INTERACTIVE (if you want). Users who uploaded videos have the ability add pop-up bubbles or invisible ‘hot spots’ to their youtube videos on their youtube channel. Why is this a big deal? It’s INTERACTIVE! Users can create hotlinks from their video to other videos in their archive or elsewhere on Youtube.This is awesome, especially for guys like Chad, Matt, and Rob who used the concept to make a ‘choose your own adventure’ movie. At the end of every clip, you must choose the next destination for Chad, Matt, & Rob via clicking on a interactive bubble. There’s lots of other ideas out there too. Enjoy… Annotations get even better NEXT…
NOW,
you can also invite the world to add annotations to your video or invite specific people too. You have complete control. To learn how to use annotations… watch the video at the bottom of this blog.
The upside is that Google is doing a great job of pushing the envelope of idea’s and giving the creative control to the users, not limiting it. The downside is that this little opportunity could possibly muck-up a lot of videos if they aren’t managed well.
As for me, I love it! It’s a great new playground to enjoy and might even take me back to when I actually watched tv and VH1 pop-up videos (I can still here the jingle…Pop-up vid-eee-ohss…..lalalalla)
Be Bold Minded.
About the authorEntrepreneur at heart if you can see past the gadgets, websphere, and obsession with technology. I've always believed knowledge is power and luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity. Follow me on 'twitter' if you like, '@sdsmartalec'
1 person had this to say about "Youtube, Pop-up Video Annotations"
From Jillian | March 12, 2009 at 6:13 pm:
Ah! I love the Chad, Matt and Rob “interactive adventure”. That is so cool. Great post.