Profile: AOL Video

Most video users wouldn’t believe that AOL Video is one of the leading video sharing sites on the web. According to a study by compete.com, AOL Video makes up about 8 percent of the market share. Mind you, the search engine giant is still lagging behind Google’s YouTube, MSN Video, and Yahoo! Video. 

 

AOL Video hosts millions of free videos for music, news, movie trailers, viral videos, and full-length television shows. Currently under parent company Time Warner, AOL was one of the leading search engines for the World Wide Web and the pioneer for instant messaging. 

 

The offspring of AOL Video is dedicated to amateur movie clips as a creative platform for users. AOL Video is partnered with TubeMogul, a hosting site with integrated video analytics stats on viewership data. Despite the America Online name, AOL Video has outlets in U.K., Germany, Australia, France, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Like Yahoo, AOL plans to boost its AOL Money & Finance section by adding video content to battle its rival’s move into beefing up multimedia content on Yahoo! Finance. Starting this week, AOL partnered with MTV Networks to show promotional clips of Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and VH1 on the Video site.

 

[via CNN.Money]

According to the AOL Help guide, AOL Video supports 3GP, 3GP2, AVI, DV, MPEG, MPEG-4, MOV, MQV, and WMV files. It does not support MPEG-2, a format commonly found on DVDs. To view the movies, AOL Video uses Flash 9 player. AOL Video does not specify optimal audio format or file size.

 

First things first – users of AOL Video must be age 18 or older to upload content. Some sites have a looser cut-off at age 13, but AOL Video-ers must be of legal age. AOL Video bans videos with graphic violence, profane language, sexual content, discrimination, or advertising of illegal products, firearms, lotteries, and alcohol. The site also prohibits posting of personal information of other people without their permission. If the user violates this agreement, AOL can pull the video from the site.

 

One important thing to note is that your screen name may appear with your video, the only part of the agreement that is highlighted in yellow to call attention to that point. Users sign into the account through an AOL IM name which shows up underneath the video if set to public viewing. More cautious users can turn off the IM feature by setting to “private” viewing.

 

Agreeing to End User License Agreement is like signing a permission slip to go on a school field trip. It’s relatively harmless and more like insurance for the teachers to cover their hides if something does happen. If your content goes viral, AOL can distribute the video to other AOL channels or other members can post to any other website without your permission. You still retain ownership rights.

 

AOL Video has a standard feature set with fields to enter title, description, and tags. There is also a field to enter location of where the video was taken, which isn’t so common among other free sharing sites. Viewers can add text-based comments but also video comments. 

AOL Video does not use its own proprietary video uploader. Instead, the site is powered by Video Egg, which means you first have to download the player and can take a few extra minutes.  Users can choose from four buttons to upload files: “File,” Camcorder,” “Webcam,” and “Mobile,” demonstrating AOL’s integration with various media. Uploading is relatively painless and quick. There are some nice sharing options, as AOL Video is integrated with your AOL email account, AIM, and select mobile devices. AOL is compatible with products by Archos, Creative Zen, Toshiba Gigabeat, and the Pure Digital Flip Ultra (Specs, Recent News, $149.99) camcorder. Overall, AOL Video does a good job of integrating the video site with the ways that people already share their content – through email and chatting, but AOL’s lack of its own player and that extra step to download Video Egg might have enough users steering clear of this site.

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The PROFILE series examines all the whatevers of uploading, viewing, and sharing.  We compare the pros and cons of the top hosting websites and some lesser-known sites.  Keep a lookout for more profiles and guides to come.