People who play and watch sports can be some of the most passionate people you will meet. It is no wonder then that some of the best channels on Magnify are devoted to sports. Sports channels on Magnify often have active communities, great content collections and big followings. It has been fun to watch new channels pop up and grow into thriving sites for fans and communities. What I also find cool is the diversity of sports we see on Magnify: there are channels for cricket teams to soccer clubs to kite boarding champions. There are channels for big sports teams like Manchester United down to channels devoted to high school sports teams. There are channels that are purely for fans of teams and then there are channels that are used for teaching, selling gear or just talking shop. I urge everyone to do a quick search on the Magnify home page for their favorite sport. I garentee you will find a channel devoted to your...

Exciting news: Magnify now has Live Support! Whether you are a veteran channel user with a technical question or a newbie who just discovered Magnify and needs tips on getting started, you can now chat live with one of our experts. Simply click on the “Live Help” icon on the front page, type a question and get started with a real time live chat. We love hearing from the Magnify Community, so don’t hesitate. Try it out by clicking here.

As nearly every sector of the economy continues to take a beating and good news is increasingly tough to come by, there continues to be a lot of positive attention on one bright spot: online video. Online Video is not only staving off the recession, but growing at an impressive clip... check out the below article that talks about video becoming an increasingly important part of companies strategies.

Video Expected To 'Buck The Downward Trend'

Online Media Daily

10/22/08

By Mark Walsh

Even as traditional publishers put the squeeze on digital units, efforts to expand online video are pushing ahead. After initial forays in the last few years, magazine and newspaper sites are upgrading video operations with an eye toward reaping the premium rates that video ads command.

Publishers such as Forbes, Conde Nast, The New York Times and The Street.com relaunched their video platforms this fall with plans for further growth in 2009. Whether those ambitions will be realized is in question as all forms of media and advertising face cutbacks in a deteriora...

Q and A: Steve Rosenbaum, Magnify.net

NYCovergence Original

'Tis the season to give -- so, we're giving our channel creators some great new feature updates that you can explore and enjoy in the final weeks of the year.

1. New Color and Font choices
2. Enhanced Email Notification
3. Create Multiple MVP Players

New Design Pages

We've added some more design choices to the administrator's Colors & Fonts page, and at the same time, improved the user interface to give you more creative control over the look and feel of your channel's pages.

http://YOURCHANNEL.magnify.net/admin/design/colors

Along with a new slick color picker, you'll notice a few additional menus, like the new pop-up menus to select background images, which allow you to scroll through thumbnails to select your previously stored images, or upload new ones for various parts of your pages. This allows you quickly switch between different design options, while keeping your files organized and readily accessible.

...

Tomorrow's Robo' DJ Playlist -

6 -7PM

Sweet Soul Music                   2:24    Sam & Dave       
We The Cats (Shall Hep Ya)    3:19    Joe Jackson   
Forget Me Nots                      4:05    Patrice Rushen   
Could You Be Loved               3:56    Bob Marley & The Wailers     
I Can See Clearly Now           3:17    Jimmy Cliff    We all are one: 
Sunshine Superman               4:02    Donovan   
Burning Down the House        4:00    Talking Heads -        
Heaven Must Have Sent You   3:02    The Elgins&nbs...

A few words from our Designer/Resident Judo Master Paul White: At first glance, it might not be obvious how many changes and improvements have recently been implemented into the magnify site design page. While all the familiar tools used to customize your site's look and feel are still there, a closer look will reveal a whole new set of options and capabilities that make it faster and easier than ever to create a great looking site design.

Along with a new slick color picker you'll notice a few additional menu areas -- one of my favorites is the new pop-up window attached to the background image selectors (below), which allow you to scroll through thumbnails and select your previously stored images as well as upload new ones to make your background. This allows you quickly switch between different design options, while keeping your files organized and readily accessible.

...

Magus took the day off from writing code and working on a bailout package for the auto industry to go see the famous tree at Rockefeller Center in NYC. He visited a couple other sites while in the neighborhood, served hot dogs to hungry tourists and hung out with Elvis Costello. See the pics at worldtourblog.magnify.net.

Magnus wants to come spend time with you! If you have interest in hosting him for a couple days, we will send him free of charge with a surprise gift. Send us an email at Worldtour (at) Magnify.net.

Don’t forget that tomorrow, December 9th, from 2 PM to 3 PM Eastern time is the Magnify Community Conference Call-In. Call to ask a few questions to the Magnify Team or just listen in and try to get some good ideas -- we're going to have Steve, Simon, and other members of the product and community team on the line.  The call will be a wide ranging open-line conference call to talk about the product, the roadmap, your plans, monetization ideas, and basically listen and brainstorm. Because there could be a lot of you, we ask that you submit questions prior to the call via email to CommunityConf (at) Magnify.net. (There is still time to send in your questions) --  we are reserving the first minutes of the call for questions we received via email and then, we'll open the floor for discussion and debate.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, December 9th, from 2 PM to 3 PM Eastern time.
To participate, the Conference Dial-in Number is: (218) 844-8230
Participant Access Code: 328288#

See you there.

Magnify powers Thwoop.com

12/8/08
Unique launch by toy e-tailer powers web video.

What is the future of ecommerce and video content?  Well, if the latest data from Comscore is any indication, viewers are flocking to the web from cable and broadcast TV.   And as young viewers change habits, smart retailers and ecommerce site are leading the way, combining commerce and content in a way that reaches consumers where they play on the web.

Today, Magnify.net announced the launch of Thwoop.com -  an online community for featured entertainment content, user-contributed videos, online shopping and social networking that was built on and will be powered by the Magnify.net platform.

Thwoop.com is the brainchild of leading children’s toy e-tailer Brand Performance.  Brand Performance is the parent company of TysToyBox.com and AllAboardToys.com, two of the fastest growing character based independent online toy stores.

Thwoop.com will initially feature unique and sometimes...

Happy holidays from the team at Magnify.net.

In this update, we have a new feature announcement, an invitation to Magnify's live community conference call on December 9, and a link to Connecting India's channel with news from the Mumbai terrorist attacks,

Photo Gallery

Things have been busy here, and we've just rolled out some new code that we wanted to share with you. It's a collection of features that we've been asked for for a while -- all related to photo upload management and presentation.

So, today Magnify.net is pleased to announce the beta release of Photo Gallery support!

Just in time for the most photogenic season of the year, we've got a bunch of new features and functions to make photo uploads easier, photo management easier, and idenity around content items clearer.

Here's how it works:

* User Photo Upload. On most channels, photo support is already enabled, and you are ready to accept photo uploads from your channel members.

To post a photo, just go to your channel's submission page and upload an image file in the same way you would post a video.
...

Making $$$ Online - Part 3

By Steve Rosenbaum

In Part #1,  we warned you these things take time.
In Part #2,  we talked about Community and the importance of Community.

Now, we're going to get to the part that everyone wants to learn about:  Advertising. 

First,  if you haven't played with Google AdSense yet,  now'se the time.  With AdWords, it's credit card simple - so go and spend $20  and learn about how the system works - it will help you understand the AdSense side of the equasion when you go to put ads on your site.  It's good to know, at least in part, where they're coming from. It's self-serve, low cost, and you're off to the races.

We've used lots of ad networks here at Magnify.net, and I can tell you 
 • we haven't found any that perform better,  or do a better job of ad targeting than AdSense. If you don't have an AdSense account set up, do it right now.  It's worth the 10 minutes it takes.  I promise.

So, you've set up your AdSense account,  and if you've got a Ma...