By Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net

If you remember a time when telephones had a rotary dial, then you remember the phrase, "Shhh, he's on the phone looong distance!" Long distance was expensive, and precious, and needed to be rationed and treated with care.

That was then.

Today - long distance, short distance, global distance - it's all the same thing: cheap. Because as the network has matured, competition came in and costs came down. And today almost everyone is on a fixed price plan and many folks are using their broadband connections for free audio and video conversations.The simple point is: bandwidth continues to get cheaper and faster, and that means you need to be looking at the cost of video on your Web site in a whole new way. Video should not cost anything. Rather, it should power revenues, pages, engagement and profits. If it isn't, it's time to rethink your bandwidth bill and turn video from a cost center to a profit center. Folks are doing just that.

So here's a quick...

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays here at Magnify and beyond making everyone in the office wear a costume for the month of October, we also like to put together a channel and have a little contest.

This year, the Magnify Halloween channel halloweenchannel.magnify.net features collections of some of our favorite Halloween videos from the web, including costume tips and ideas, scary movies, music and more.

The contest asks users to upload their favorite costume for a chance to win a Magnify Prize Pack - consisting of a bunch of Pro goods and some cool schwag. So lets see those costumes!

And of course lets not forget that Halloween is Magnus, the Magnify Mascot's favorite holiday (they both excusively feature orange). Anyone who can dress up as Magnus and send in a picture or video to the channel will automatically win a prize.

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NYmag.com, the winner of the American Society of Magazine Editors' 2009 Award for General Excellence Online, chose Magnify.net in the spring of 2009 to implement a web 2.0 video aggregation solution. After reviewing a number of alternative services, including their provider at the time, Feedroom, General Manager Michael Silberman and his team made the decision to go with Magnify.net. Here is what they've learned from the process of making the shift from simply uploading a few videos a week to aggregating and curating hundreds of videos a week using the Magnify Curation Platform.

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We've been preaching curation since the beginning of Magnify and it is great to see the concept receiving more and more media attention as of late.One article we wanted to share is the recent piece by Naomi Reiter (right) of eMedia Vitals, who brings to light some great numbers about the growing video space and positives of curation. Reiter also takes a few quotes from none other than Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum. 

Make sure to read the article here.

By Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net

(Article Originally Appeared at JackMyers.com)

It's almost Halloween. A time to face scary demons and put a stake in their heart. So I thought I'd use this time to scare up some frightening video "Boogeymen" and see if we can bury them once and for all. When I talk to website owners about video, they generally have three reasons that they haven't embraced video. I hear them every day; too expensive, too hard to manage user-content, and web content is too low quality.

- Video Content is too expensive to make at scale.

- User-Created Content will damage my brand.

- Sorting and filtering web-wide content is too much work.

The issues are pretty simple: can I get an ROI on my investment? And can I leverage my niche and my visitors so that I can embrace outside sources but protect my brand? And, is all this effort around video worth it?

Well, there's good news to share in regards to these three questions, and in particular there's new data and new solutions that make the ROI on video less murky overall.

If you are in Las Vegas for Blogworld 2009 make sure to get over to the Online Video Monetization Panel Friday at 4:00pm, where Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum will be one of the panelists.  See the description of the panel below and make sure to say hi to Steve!

Panel: Did I Miss The Online Video Boat?

Description: So what happened? Last year everyone told me I should be making Web videos and I’d be rich. I didn’t do it because I was too busy and didn’t know how to start. Did everyone get rich besides me? If so, who and how and is there still time for me to jump on board?

Location: Room 233

Today Etsy announced the winner of the Etsy.tv Handmade Moment Contest -  Congratulations to Dan Kwan, the grand prize winner!

The contest received an amazing 177 submissions and was one of most creative and dynamic we have seen here at Magnify. 

Watch the winning entry here:

Great news for content aggregation and the Magnify community! We have reached a deal with a number of high profile video sites to be included as the newest pipelines in Magnify's branded aggregation service.
 
The New Partners include:
 
- eHow and Expert Village: The combo will add more than 500,000 high quality "how-to" videos 
- Lance Armstrong's Livestrong.com (Demand Studios): Magnify will be the first video platform with full access to Livestrong's catalogue of original content
- Grab Networks: Formed in 2008 by the merger of Anystream and Voxant, the site will give Magnify access to video from more than 75,000 syndication partners
 
The new pipelines will add a huge boost to Magnify's branded aggregation service, giving Magnify powered sites access to a large variety of new content sources. If you have a channel, the services will shortly appear in the search fu...

Magnify Aims the iPhone's Video Camera at Business Use

Could an iPhone be your company's next video camera? Magnify Mobile might just make it so

Troy Dreier - StreamingMedia Magazine
September 24, 2009

Magnify.net, which has already won large clients such as the Weather Channel and New York magazine for its simple video channel creation tools, is now expanding into the mobile world. Naturally, its starting with an iPhone app, Magnify Mobile.

Magnify.net's options let clients choose from three tiers of service: a free account (limited to 20 50MB uploads per week), a pro account (which adds advertising and watermarking options), and an enterprise account. The servi...

iPhone 3GS Now Powers Free Personal Video Channel Publishing

Magnify Mobile Enables On-the-Go Video Upload and Sharing;

RELEASE ON: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009

            NEW YORK - Creating a Mobile Video Channel is now fast, easy, and free. Magnify.net, a leading provider of Social Video Solutions for Publishing, eCommerce, and Communities, today announced the official release of its Magnify Mobile solution, which enables iPhone users to shoot, upload, store, and share their personal videos on a Magnify-hosted channel for free.  Magnify Mobile enables users of iPhone 3GS devices to Instantly submit videos to channels that they create - for free - on Magnify.net and create playlists, make comments, reviews, and integrate design templates, content controls, site reporting, and monetization tools.

"Personal video syndication is now a mobile experience, like taking a still photo, and truly captures the lives and intere...