What they're saying about Magnify
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August 2007
BlogNation, August 31, 2007
Interview: Magnify.net's CEO Steve Rosenbaum
"Magnify.net is not a destination," says Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum. "I'm happiest" he continues "when someone comes to us with an existing site with its own content to which we can add our applications enabling users to build their own social media networks."
Talking with Steve is interesting. He's clearly passionate, obviously intelligent yet unlike so many wet-behind-the-ears "new media" CEOs he really has "been there" and "done that". In fact he's one of the few that can say this and actually be telling the truth. To put this in perspective, back when I was just realizing that I needed to quit racing bicycles and do something with my education lest I end up in a career punctuated by the question "would you like fries with that?" Steve was already playing around with user generated content.
Unfiltered, which first ran in 1994 and 1995 on MTV was Rosenbaum's brainchild and the first show truly based on USG. Steve went on to tell me that Unfiltered was the model that Al Gore used to create Current TV. According to Steve the big media model is broken and getting more broken all the time. What's interesting and relevant to some people just isn't going to resonate with everyone.
Ultimately Steve believes that social media is niche media. "It's easy" he says "to sit in New York or San Francisco and judge what we think is interesting to the rest of the world but if you're a 43 year old woman in the mid-west who just has 50 people watch her video about organic roses, that's a perfectly good result.
It's these sort of niches that have highly selective content - content that has been meta searched and then filtered by an interested community to create exquisitely nuanced meta search. Not a machine search engine, not a human search engine but a machine human hybrid with the junction being at the places where a community intersects with a given subject. If one attribute of web 2.0 is leveraging collective intelligence than Magnify.net certainly qualifies.
Thinking that the claim of "highly nuanced meta-search" seemed like a wee exaggeration, I decided to put Magnify to the test. One thing I regularly search-big surprise - is UFO's. Over the years I have seen just about every UFO and related video there is to see so I figured that this would be a good test of Magnify's capabilities.
While not perfect the results were interesting in some respects, disappointing in one and extraordinary in another. I'll explain. There is an active UFO channel on Magnify so there are lots of videos that ranged from the stalwarts that always come up to some old UFO movies that someone must have uploaded. The depth and variety was good. This is what I characterized as interesting.
The problem was that there was also some totally unrelated content. I'm not sure if this is because of unscrupulous meta-tagging by spammers that put UFO on a bunch of crap just to get it in front of people, or if this is the result of reviewers that have their own agenda and are introducing garbage into otherwise healthy communities. This was the disappointing element and I'm curious what Magnify.net will do to control this because it has the potential to severely reduce the utility of their application.
The extraordinary was one video I came across that was amazing, interesting, on target, and right up my alley, but which I had never seen before and probably would never have seen had I not been checking our UFOs on Magnify.net.
See what I mean, a machine would not have known that this was somehow UFO related unless it was previously meta-tagged that way which is something that NASA would never do. This is the magic of an interested human element that can't (currently) be duplicated by a machine, and it's one reason why Steve Rosenbaum might just prove to be prescient in his words about old media. [MORE »]
"Magnify.net is not a destination," says Magnify.net CEO Steve Rosenbaum. "I'm happiest" he continues "when someone comes to us with an existing site with its own content to which we can add our applications enabling users to build their own social media networks."
Talking with Steve is interesting. He's clearly passionate, obviously intelligent yet unlike so many wet-behind-the-ears "new media" CEOs he really has "been there" and "done that". In fact he's one of the few that can say this and actually be telling the truth. To put this in perspective, back when I was just realizing that I needed to quit racing bicycles and do something with my education lest I end up in a career punctuated by the question "would you like fries with that?" Steve was already playing around with user generated content.
Unfiltered, which first ran in 1994 and 1995 on MTV was Rosenbaum's brainchild and the first show truly based on USG. Steve went on to tell me that Unfiltered was the model that Al Gore used to create Current TV. According to Steve the big media model is broken and getting more broken all the time. What's interesting and relevant to some people just isn't going to resonate with everyone.
Ultimately Steve believes that social media is niche media. "It's easy" he says "to sit in New York or San Francisco and judge what we think is interesting to the rest of the world but if you're a 43 year old woman in the mid-west who just has 50 people watch her video about organic roses, that's a perfectly good result.
It's these sort of niches that have highly selective content - content that has been meta searched and then filtered by an interested community to create exquisitely nuanced meta search. Not a machine search engine, not a human search engine but a machine human hybrid with the junction being at the places where a community intersects with a given subject. If one attribute of web 2.0 is leveraging collective intelligence than Magnify.net certainly qualifies.
Thinking that the claim of "highly nuanced meta-search" seemed like a wee exaggeration, I decided to put Magnify to the test. One thing I regularly search-big surprise - is UFO's. Over the years I have seen just about every UFO and related video there is to see so I figured that this would be a good test of Magnify's capabilities.
While not perfect the results were interesting in some respects, disappointing in one and extraordinary in another. I'll explain. There is an active UFO channel on Magnify so there are lots of videos that ranged from the stalwarts that always come up to some old UFO movies that someone must have uploaded. The depth and variety was good. This is what I characterized as interesting.
The problem was that there was also some totally unrelated content. I'm not sure if this is because of unscrupulous meta-tagging by spammers that put UFO on a bunch of crap just to get it in front of people, or if this is the result of reviewers that have their own agenda and are introducing garbage into otherwise healthy communities. This was the disappointing element and I'm curious what Magnify.net will do to control this because it has the potential to severely reduce the utility of their application.
The extraordinary was one video I came across that was amazing, interesting, on target, and right up my alley, but which I had never seen before and probably would never have seen had I not been checking our UFOs on Magnify.net.
See what I mean, a machine would not have known that this was somehow UFO related unless it was previously meta-tagged that way which is something that NASA would never do. This is the magic of an interested human element that can't (currently) be duplicated by a machine, and it's one reason why Steve Rosenbaum might just prove to be prescient in his words about old media. [MORE »]
Inspired by a blogger's complaint, the AdShare Network aims to allow video site creators the flexibility to broker more lucrative deals with advertisers.
By Thomas Claburn InformationWeek August 29, 2007 06:00 AM
Magnify.net, a Web site that lets users build and curate their own video sites, on Wednesday plans to give users control over the ads on their sites in addition to the content.
The company said it will begin testing its AdShare Network, which will offer users a say in how they monetize the video sites that they created using Magnify.net's tools.
Magnify.net sites already include several types of advertising, including Google AdSense ads and, in videos that originated on Revver.com, integrated ads. The company shares 50% of the ad revenue generated from its users' video sites with the sites' creators.
The new AdShare Network aims to allow video site creators the flexibility to broker more lucrative deals with advertisers willing to pay a premium for access to a targeted audience.
Steve Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of the Magnify.Net, attributes his company's decision to create a more open ad network to being flamed by blogger Wayne Porter.
Porter, senior director of special research at IM security company FaceTime Communications, built a Second Life video site and published a blog post complaining about Magnify.net not being open enough with its users, Rosenbaum explained.
"Almost the minute I read it, we took his blog post and put it on our discussion board and asked our users, 'What do you think?'" said Rosenbaum.
Rosenbaum describes the moment as an epiphany. "Why don't we let our most successful channel partners show us where the advertisers are?" he said.
The arrangement has the added advantage of letting those partners have access to their own ad metrics, rather than having to rely on Magnify.net's word on how ads performed.
Magnify.net claims that its users have built over 10,000 video channels since open beta testing began in January 2007, and that it received seven million page views in July.
While that may be a far cry from the 44 million unique users who visited YouTube in July, according to comScore, Rosenbaum isn't trying to catch YouTube. Rather, he expects its audience to fragment and gravitate toward niche sites. "The world is getting more atomized, not less," he said. "There's not going to be another YouTube. There're going to be 10 million YouTubes." [MORE »]
By Thomas Claburn InformationWeek August 29, 2007 06:00 AM
Magnify.net, a Web site that lets users build and curate their own video sites, on Wednesday plans to give users control over the ads on their sites in addition to the content.
The company said it will begin testing its AdShare Network, which will offer users a say in how they monetize the video sites that they created using Magnify.net's tools.
Magnify.net sites already include several types of advertising, including Google AdSense ads and, in videos that originated on Revver.com, integrated ads. The company shares 50% of the ad revenue generated from its users' video sites with the sites' creators.
The new AdShare Network aims to allow video site creators the flexibility to broker more lucrative deals with advertisers willing to pay a premium for access to a targeted audience.
Steve Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of the Magnify.Net, attributes his company's decision to create a more open ad network to being flamed by blogger Wayne Porter.
Porter, senior director of special research at IM security company FaceTime Communications, built a Second Life video site and published a blog post complaining about Magnify.net not being open enough with its users, Rosenbaum explained.
"Almost the minute I read it, we took his blog post and put it on our discussion board and asked our users, 'What do you think?'" said Rosenbaum.
Rosenbaum describes the moment as an epiphany. "Why don't we let our most successful channel partners show us where the advertisers are?" he said.
The arrangement has the added advantage of letting those partners have access to their own ad metrics, rather than having to rely on Magnify.net's word on how ads performed.
Magnify.net claims that its users have built over 10,000 video channels since open beta testing began in January 2007, and that it received seven million page views in July.
While that may be a far cry from the 44 million unique users who visited YouTube in July, according to comScore, Rosenbaum isn't trying to catch YouTube. Rather, he expects its audience to fragment and gravitate toward niche sites. "The world is getting more atomized, not less," he said. "There's not going to be another YouTube. There're going to be 10 million YouTubes." [MORE »]
Video startup Magnify.net will today invite Magnify.net site owners to participate in a beta test of its new advertising program, the “AdShare Network.â€
The AdShare Network gives site owners the ability to earn directly from their video channels, both from the network itself and by allowing users to deploy their own ad inventory.
We first covered Magnify.net in March; Magnify.net allows publishers to create their own video channels, and populate it with videos from other sites, including YouTube, Revver, Yahoo Videos and others. The new advertising network gives current and prospective users a better incentive to create video channels other than by offering a quality service: money. As the site relies on videos pulled from external services, Adshare Network is not offering video advertising, only traditional advertising that can be displayed around videos on the network.
Magnify.net recently passed 10,000 user generated video channels and hit seven million page views in July. [MORE »]
The AdShare Network gives site owners the ability to earn directly from their video channels, both from the network itself and by allowing users to deploy their own ad inventory.
We first covered Magnify.net in March; Magnify.net allows publishers to create their own video channels, and populate it with videos from other sites, including YouTube, Revver, Yahoo Videos and others. The new advertising network gives current and prospective users a better incentive to create video channels other than by offering a quality service: money. As the site relies on videos pulled from external services, Adshare Network is not offering video advertising, only traditional advertising that can be displayed around videos on the network.
Magnify.net recently passed 10,000 user generated video channels and hit seven million page views in July. [MORE »]
Magnify Revamps to Answer Users’ Demands
Magnify.net, a provider of customizable video channels, is moving to become more like white-label social network providers like Ning and KickApps. Tonight the company relaunched its website to de-emphasize video, and opened up access to its new ad-share platform.
Magnify provides hosting and community tools for niche video communities — for instance radio-controlled planes, Sri Lankan videos, and trading cards. The sites are not particularly pretty, but they’re free. Previously, the company had controlled its ad inventory, allowing channel owners to submit their AdSense accounts and split Google ad revenue 50-50.
Following what Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum called a “user revolt†last month, sparked by a blog post demanding that members be able to choose how to monetize their platforms, the company revised its revenue strategy.
Now, the company has shifted the arrangement so it maintains control and revenue of only half the inventory on a channel, while offering channel owners the freedom to monetize the rest and keep whatever they make on the other half.
In the last two weeks of testing, channel owners have already shown they know their niches well enough to broker much more relevant ads than Magnify would ever find, said Rosenbaum. For instance, RC Videos (the radio-controlled plane community) now shows ads for things like battery packs and model helicopters.
This brings Magnify more in line with Ning, which charges $19.95 per month to run your own ads, and KickApps, which gives users control of selected ad slots from the start.
In my experience looking at the various vendors for setting up our Pier Screenings community site (for which we decided to go with Ning), the problem has been too many features, and not necessarily the ones I was looking for.
To be sure, you’ll be disappointed if you expect something to be perfect out of the box. To that end, Magnify (like KickApps also does) will be offering the services of its in-house developers to draw in new customers, and hopes to augment that offering if it can close the funding round Rosenbaum is currently raising. Clearly, the power users are where the money is.
KickApps has raised a total of $18 million in funding, while Ning recently put an astounding $44 million in the bank. Magnify, on the other hand, has raised $1.2 million. Rosenbaum said the company’s network of sites is seeing strong growth, with 3 million unique visitors and 7 million page views per month. [MORE »]
Magnify.net, a provider of customizable video channels, is moving to become more like white-label social network providers like Ning and KickApps. Tonight the company relaunched its website to de-emphasize video, and opened up access to its new ad-share platform.
Magnify provides hosting and community tools for niche video communities — for instance radio-controlled planes, Sri Lankan videos, and trading cards. The sites are not particularly pretty, but they’re free. Previously, the company had controlled its ad inventory, allowing channel owners to submit their AdSense accounts and split Google ad revenue 50-50.
Following what Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum called a “user revolt†last month, sparked by a blog post demanding that members be able to choose how to monetize their platforms, the company revised its revenue strategy.
Now, the company has shifted the arrangement so it maintains control and revenue of only half the inventory on a channel, while offering channel owners the freedom to monetize the rest and keep whatever they make on the other half.
In the last two weeks of testing, channel owners have already shown they know their niches well enough to broker much more relevant ads than Magnify would ever find, said Rosenbaum. For instance, RC Videos (the radio-controlled plane community) now shows ads for things like battery packs and model helicopters.
This brings Magnify more in line with Ning, which charges $19.95 per month to run your own ads, and KickApps, which gives users control of selected ad slots from the start.
In my experience looking at the various vendors for setting up our Pier Screenings community site (for which we decided to go with Ning), the problem has been too many features, and not necessarily the ones I was looking for.
To be sure, you’ll be disappointed if you expect something to be perfect out of the box. To that end, Magnify (like KickApps also does) will be offering the services of its in-house developers to draw in new customers, and hopes to augment that offering if it can close the funding round Rosenbaum is currently raising. Clearly, the power users are where the money is.
KickApps has raised a total of $18 million in funding, while Ning recently put an astounding $44 million in the bank. Magnify, on the other hand, has raised $1.2 million. Rosenbaum said the company’s network of sites is seeing strong growth, with 3 million unique visitors and 7 million page views per month. [MORE »]
There are too many video sharing sites. There’s clearly a bubble in this sector, and we’re tired of writing about me-too companies.
That said, Magnify, is notable for its different take: It lets web publishers create video-sharing sites that aggregate only videos relevant to the publisher’s readers.
Here’s the sexy part: The New York-based company wants to help them make money. It includes a revenue-sharing deal which lets publishers sell their own ads on their video sites, targeting their niche readers, and keeping half the ad revenue. The less sexy part is that publishers have to sell the adds themselves, and selling ads on videos isn’t as easy as you’d think. (YouTube’s ad overlay program, for example, will bring that huge video company a mere $720,000 in net revenue, if you believe the corrected math of Internet analyst Mary Meeker.)
Still, niched relevant video content may be much more valuable. A somewhat similar site to Magnify is Vodpod (coverage), which lets you aggregate videos and distribute them through embeddable widgets. But it doesn’t offer the same ad-sharing scheme, nor publisher-branded sites.
If you’re a publisher using Magnify, you first create a video sub-site for your domain, such as video.bicycling.com for bicycling.com and its biking enthusiasts (see image below, for example).
Then you set up a search for relevant videos from across the other online video sites that Magnify draws from, ranging from YouTube to DailyMotion and Metacafe and others. If you’re bicycle.com, for example, you could set up a search for “bicycle races†and pull in a bunch of videos about bicycle races.
Your readers can upload their own videos as well as grade each video based its quality and suitability for the site. The company offers a drag-and-drop interface of windows where you can display the most popular videos, most recent ones, specific sub-types of videos, such as “Tour de France†videos — and other customized choices for displaying videos.
Magnify launched last January and has grown to 8.5 million page views in this past month, up from 7 million in July, chief executive Steve Rosenbaum told us.
Magnify says it has nearly 8,000 “channels†or partner sites, and is adding 50 sites a day. Users are spending more time on the site, too, averaging seven minutes in June, nine minutes in July, and thirteen in August, Rosenbaum says.
Users can also create widgets for their owns sites that play videos from the publisher’s site, which can lead to more traffic for the publisher. Magnify says its widgets have had 25 million views in the last 90 days, and have led to a surprising amount of traffic back to home sites.
Publisher Wayne Porter started a video site featuring for clips from Second Life: One video, he says, received only 110 plays on YouTube in one week, but over 1200 plays on his Magnify-powered site, including more reviews.
The company is funded by its founders and private individuals. Rosenbaum was formerly a producer with MTV. [MORE »]
That said, Magnify, is notable for its different take: It lets web publishers create video-sharing sites that aggregate only videos relevant to the publisher’s readers.
Here’s the sexy part: The New York-based company wants to help them make money. It includes a revenue-sharing deal which lets publishers sell their own ads on their video sites, targeting their niche readers, and keeping half the ad revenue. The less sexy part is that publishers have to sell the adds themselves, and selling ads on videos isn’t as easy as you’d think. (YouTube’s ad overlay program, for example, will bring that huge video company a mere $720,000 in net revenue, if you believe the corrected math of Internet analyst Mary Meeker.)
Still, niched relevant video content may be much more valuable. A somewhat similar site to Magnify is Vodpod (coverage), which lets you aggregate videos and distribute them through embeddable widgets. But it doesn’t offer the same ad-sharing scheme, nor publisher-branded sites.
If you’re a publisher using Magnify, you first create a video sub-site for your domain, such as video.bicycling.com for bicycling.com and its biking enthusiasts (see image below, for example).
Then you set up a search for relevant videos from across the other online video sites that Magnify draws from, ranging from YouTube to DailyMotion and Metacafe and others. If you’re bicycle.com, for example, you could set up a search for “bicycle races†and pull in a bunch of videos about bicycle races.
Your readers can upload their own videos as well as grade each video based its quality and suitability for the site. The company offers a drag-and-drop interface of windows where you can display the most popular videos, most recent ones, specific sub-types of videos, such as “Tour de France†videos — and other customized choices for displaying videos.
Magnify launched last January and has grown to 8.5 million page views in this past month, up from 7 million in July, chief executive Steve Rosenbaum told us.
Magnify says it has nearly 8,000 “channels†or partner sites, and is adding 50 sites a day. Users are spending more time on the site, too, averaging seven minutes in June, nine minutes in July, and thirteen in August, Rosenbaum says.
Users can also create widgets for their owns sites that play videos from the publisher’s site, which can lead to more traffic for the publisher. Magnify says its widgets have had 25 million views in the last 90 days, and have led to a surprising amount of traffic back to home sites.
Publisher Wayne Porter started a video site featuring for clips from Second Life: One video, he says, received only 110 plays on YouTube in one week, but over 1200 plays on his Magnify-powered site, including more reviews.
The company is funded by its founders and private individuals. Rosenbaum was formerly a producer with MTV. [MORE »]
A couple of weeks ago I read an interview on Anita Campbell's Small Business Trends blog about Magnify.net, a service that lets you create a custom video channel for your website that brings together all the videos from around the web on your chosen topic.
I've been looking for ways to up the "cool factor" of my BikerChickNews blog, and I thought it might be worthwhile to develop a video channel of interest to "biker chicks" - women who ride motorcycles. The Biker Chick News Video channel is now up and running.
My goals were to: 1. Add "something interesting" to BikerChickNews.com - something interactive that would enhance a sense of community, allow for user participation, and require little in the way of maintenance by yours truly; and
2. Keep the focus of the "something interesting" on my audience… while a lot of the folks who find my site are actually looking for pictures of bikini-clad fender bunnies, my intended audience is the women who actually ride motorcycles. Typically, this means a 40- or 50-something middle-class woman with discretionary income and a desire to learn a new skill and enjoy the sense of freedom that motorcycling brings.
Magnify.net has been a pleasure to work with. Here are my favorite features:
1. I'm able to set up automatic scheduled searches using keywords of my own choosing, so that Magnify will go out on cue and search YouTube, Google and other video sites for videos I might be interested in.
2. Even better, though, is that Magnify lets me pick and choose which videos I want to actually add to my video channel. So while the automated search might find all manner of "bikini bike wash"-type videos, I don't have to include them if I don't want to.
3. I was able to customize the look of my channel so it uses the same colors from my blog theme and my own custom banner graphic. There are other options to further customize the layout that I haven't implemented yet.
There are some options for monetizing that might come in handy if traffic should warrant, including Google AdSense and Revver revenue sharing. And speaking of traffic, the video channel is currently getting about 10 percent click-through of total site visitors.
If your business lends itself to the kinds of viral videos found on YouTube and other video sharing sites, you might consider creating a custom video channel for your site visitors to enjoy. Even if it just becomes a branded time-waster, there’s plenty of brand value in becoming the resource for your visitors. [MORE »]
I've been looking for ways to up the "cool factor" of my BikerChickNews blog, and I thought it might be worthwhile to develop a video channel of interest to "biker chicks" - women who ride motorcycles. The Biker Chick News Video channel is now up and running.
My goals were to: 1. Add "something interesting" to BikerChickNews.com - something interactive that would enhance a sense of community, allow for user participation, and require little in the way of maintenance by yours truly; and
2. Keep the focus of the "something interesting" on my audience… while a lot of the folks who find my site are actually looking for pictures of bikini-clad fender bunnies, my intended audience is the women who actually ride motorcycles. Typically, this means a 40- or 50-something middle-class woman with discretionary income and a desire to learn a new skill and enjoy the sense of freedom that motorcycling brings.
Magnify.net has been a pleasure to work with. Here are my favorite features:
1. I'm able to set up automatic scheduled searches using keywords of my own choosing, so that Magnify will go out on cue and search YouTube, Google and other video sites for videos I might be interested in.
2. Even better, though, is that Magnify lets me pick and choose which videos I want to actually add to my video channel. So while the automated search might find all manner of "bikini bike wash"-type videos, I don't have to include them if I don't want to.
3. I was able to customize the look of my channel so it uses the same colors from my blog theme and my own custom banner graphic. There are other options to further customize the layout that I haven't implemented yet.
There are some options for monetizing that might come in handy if traffic should warrant, including Google AdSense and Revver revenue sharing. And speaking of traffic, the video channel is currently getting about 10 percent click-through of total site visitors.
If your business lends itself to the kinds of viral videos found on YouTube and other video sharing sites, you might consider creating a custom video channel for your site visitors to enjoy. Even if it just becomes a branded time-waster, there’s plenty of brand value in becoming the resource for your visitors. [MORE »]
Steven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, sits down with me at the AlwaysOn conference and shows me Magnify.net, which builds a community page. Say, for remote control airplanes. Including video and content from around the Internet. If you are looking for ways to improve your Web site, you should check this out.
[MORE »]
Make Money with a Video Channel at Magnify.net
By Anita Campbell on August 13, 2007
Small Business Trends
Create your own video channel using Magnify.netSteven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, is a man ahead of his time.
In the the mid-1990s he created a show on MTV called “Unfiltered.†The show featured teenagers shooting their own videos about their lives.
Seems vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like a cross between today’s reality TV shows and video blogs.
Fast forward to April 2007. Video has exploded on the Web. Steve launched Magnify.net, a site where people can aggregate videos and turn them into their own online video channels. Five months after launch Magnify.net has 7,000 video channels built by individuals and small business owners.
Steve attended the recent Affiliate Summit, which is where I met him in July. He and I sat down together and he answered some questions that I thought entrepreneurs might want to know. [MORE »]
Create your own video channel using Magnify.netSteven Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify.net, is a man ahead of his time.
In the the mid-1990s he created a show on MTV called “Unfiltered.†The show featured teenagers shooting their own videos about their lives.
Seems vaguely familiar, doesn’t it? Sounds like a cross between today’s reality TV shows and video blogs.
Fast forward to April 2007. Video has exploded on the Web. Steve launched Magnify.net, a site where people can aggregate videos and turn them into their own online video channels. Five months after launch Magnify.net has 7,000 video channels built by individuals and small business owners.
Steve attended the recent Affiliate Summit, which is where I met him in July. He and I sat down together and he answered some questions that I thought entrepreneurs might want to know. [MORE »]
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