Connecting and posting to Facebook

I don’t want to bore anyone the details of Connect (and if you’re familiar with the interwebs, this probably isn’t the first you’re hearing of it…), but it is basically a way for Facebook users to use their profiles elsewhere on the web. In this case, Connect will let users link their Facebook profiles to comments posted on a 23 Video site. This means that they won’t need to key in their name and contact information, that they’ll have their buddy icons posted alongside their comment — and, most importantly, users can re-post their comments on their Facebook walls.

When a user re-posts a comment to Facebook, we’ll even attach your video for playback directly on the user’s wall in order to drive more traffic back to your video site.

We’ll reveal a few more Facebook tricks over the coming weeks, so there’s no link to activate the feature under Distribution yet. If you want to use it on your site though, go to http://your.domain.com/distribution/facebook-app to set it up.

And also… the default buddy icon

When there’s no icon to show for a commenter, we’ll display a simple, default buddy icon. The default icon will change over the coming days (it’s a little generic for our tastes), but you can also set up your own default icon. Simply upload a (quadratic) file called no-buddy.gif under Design → Files to add a little of your own flavour.

I’ve never loved how comments work on 23 Video. Feature-wise they’re pretty awesome — you’ll get three different kinds of spam-protection, content monitoring, post-editing, notifications and more. But comments on 23 Video and Visualblog have always felt — well — wrong. In fact, the comment feature on 23 Photo Sharing just feels better, so I wanted to duplicate some of that feeling. (And, I’ll admit it, add a few extra features just to have something to tell the PR people upstairs: “No no no, the code monkeys aren’t wasting time down here. We’re building the future!”)

After days of tweaking, I still only have a prototype. It does all the same stuff you’ll know from 23 Video: You’ll still be writing your name and email alongside the comment; there’s still different spam-protection mechanisms in the browser; and there’s still a spam filter on the back-end. You can still get notifications and you can still delete a comment after it’s been posted. I’ve removed comment editing though, and there’s no threading or quoting.

There’s some new goodies as well: To lessen the burden of handling spam, users are now asked to complete a captcha to submit a comment flagged by the spam filters. We’ll be displaying user icons from Gravatar alongside comments. And it integrates with Facebook Connect. So you can log in using Facebook to avoid filling in name and email, and you can post a comment to your wall on Facebook.

So far, it’s all just a prototype — none of these improvement have made it into 23 Video yet. Before we go that far, I wanted to ask you: How does the new comment form feel to you?

Try out The Comment Form Prototype and post your impressions here. (And please, please, please. Don’t just try to comment. Try to break it.)

The campaign is a great example of the flexibility you get with 23 Video. First thing you’ll notice is the custom background and header, followed by the link colors. But it’s the details that really made us excited. Notice how the player has been redesigned to include elements from the background graphics as well as the hummel-inspired player button. This is exactly what 23 Video is all about. To help out with the technical parts of the site hummel turned to 23 Video partner Re:, so we called Asbjørn Poulsen to get some more insights on how they customized 23 Video to fit hummels needs and give them a visual online presence.

Control related videos

“The Open Upload function was essential since they wanted to make a video competition for their customers and followers. Next was the rating and comment possibilities as they are very interested in feedback and interactions from the viewers. Distribution through Facebook and Twitter was also very important as they’ve build a great presence there,” says Asbjørn Poulsen and adds that the embedding provided an easy way for hummel partners to be part of the project.

However, those features are all out of the box and easy to implement, so the real challenges for Re: was to include more pages and figure out a way to control the related videos in the player.

“It was important for us to control the related videos in the player, so we worked on the categorization a lot and made a tagging system that hummel can use to control how the videos relate to each other,” says Asbjørn Poulsen.

The possibility to get your fingers deep into the code and control even the smallest details is exactly the reasons why Re: keeps recommending 23 Video to their customers.

“23 Video is great to work with. Most clients require features that 23 Video have out of the box, and the possibility to customize everything makes it easy for us meet specific needs. This means we can get a project up and running in no time. On top of that the extensive analytics adds important value and feedback, which is really important when you are experimenting with video online. I simply can’t point to another platform that includes all those features and possibilities at such a low price level,” says Asbjørn Poulsen

The spring winner has just been announced on Playstadil.com and are now playing in theaters, but the competition continues online with the possibility to win sneakers and a fall cinema spot for the next winner.