Add video to your blog with Magnify

Today sees the launch of Magnify, a new website which lets create your own video community which pulls videos from a range of sources including YouTube, MetaCafe and Revver. Users get their own subdomain on the site and receive 50% of the ad revenue from their community (for example, I quickly created bloggingtips.magnify.net). At the moment the service integrates with the Moveable Type and Wordpress blog platforms.

Here is a quote from todays press release (click here for full press release)

A new era of multimedia blogging begins today with the release of the Magnify Publisher application for popular blog platforms – initially rolling out with support for WordPress and Six Apart’s Movable Type.

Magnify Publisher is the first native blog application that enables bloggers to search for video, text, and images, using key words and tags, and also embed the desired content directly into a post without ever leaving the WordPress or Movable Type dashboard. Magnify Publisher also features the ability to shoot and publish videoblog posts using a WebCam.

Building your own community

As I mentioned above, I quickly I quickly created a community at bloggingtips.magnify.net. You have a lot of templates to choose from and you can edit the layout and colour scheme too however I decided to just leave mine the way it is. It does seem like you can brand your area easily though. You have a variety of options for adding videos to your area but I chose the lazy way and simply typed in the keyword ‘blogging’ and Magnify pulled videos from several sites for me. You can also upload your own videos and add specific videos from other sites too.

Once you have your community setup you can link to it directly or by showing the latest videos from it using a widget like the one below.

So is Magnify a good service?

I’ve only had the opportunity to use Magnify for a few hours so I haven’t completely made my mind up on it as yet (which is why this post is in the news section and not the review section). My first impressions was that user communities have way too many ads. There are google adsense ads and there are also a few large banners on most pages too. Magnify’s home page looks great however the icons and general design of your community area seems a little rough around the edges compared to some other video websites.

I have not spent time customizing the design either so I am unsure of the potential to create a successful branded community. That being said, I really don’t see the appeal of a site like this, particularly for people who own a blog. The automated feature which pulls videos from lots of websites is quite cool but I still don’t think anyone with a blog should use this.

I stress once more that I haven’t used this site long enough to have a complete picture of it’s services and functionality so please remember that everything I say here is from a ‘first impressions’ point of view. Perhaps I am missing the point but why would you create, brand and manage a community on another domain and then only get 50% of the ad revenue. Wouldn’t you be better simply embedding videos directly on your blog and giving your opinion on them. That way, you get 100% of ad sales and your blogs value increases as traffic grows. Also, with so many other people creating communities on Magnify, making money with your community obviously gets more difficult.

I’m sure some bloggers will find this service useful but it’s not for me. Check out Magnify and let me know what you think.

Link : Magnify

* Feel free to post a link to your Magnify community in the comment area