To upload your video clips to multiple video sharing sites has been the ultimate dream of many independent online publishers, as the exposure and visibility provided by posting unique, quality clips is among the most effective new ways to draw traffic up for most any a web site.
To surf the word of mouth wave, and achieve viral visibility, your video content need to be uploaded to as many publishing video sharing sites as possible and a new online web-based service, from the superprolific guys at Particle-S, makes this process super easy and completely free.
As the Internet does not offer one unique video distribution site to publish and expose your video content, as an independent web video publisher you need to take into account that not all of your potential viewers will be found on a single video sharing site (e.g.: YouTube). And so, while it certainly it makes good sense to upload your clips on YouTube, you need to be aware of tens of high visibility video sharing and distribution sites available out there.
Whether you want to market your business using social media, promote your website, or make sure that your video blog or Internet TV show lives up to its true potential, the key to success is viral video marketing. Far more effective than simply throwing money at advertising, viral video marketing ensures that your video gets seen, and shared, again and again.
Until now this has involved a tedious process of manually uploading your video to as many services as you have the energy to, which can make for an exhausting and time consuming process if you publish video with any regularity. There have also been some tools to handle this automatically, but they all cost a minimum of one hundred dollars or more.
So it is with some excitement that I review the latest service from Particle-S, a simple way of getting your videos published to a vast range of online video sharing destinations from a single upload.
Hey!Spread is the latest service offered by the Particle-S team, who have previously brought to market the easy video podcasting tool Hey!Cast and the excellent online transcoding service Hey!Watch, as enthusiastically reviewed by Robin Good on these very pages.
This latest addition to a growing range of useful web publishing tools is going to be very thankfully received by those publishing video with any regularity. Whether you want to make sure that all of your friends and colleagues can see your video from their favorite video sharing network, or perhaps more importantly to give your video productions the maximum exposure, Hey!Spread looks like it has the answer.
The service, which is free to use at the time of writing, is all about taking the torture out of spreading the reach of your video right from the word go. As the Particle-S team note of their product:
''For now, spreading videos is something extremely boring and time consuming. Actually, It is not convenient to upload to more than two networks. All must be hand-made, so that limits the distribution potential and the exposure. In one word, the BUZZ. And this lack of visibility considerably reduces the impact of any web campaigns.''
And buzz is what it's all about when it comes to viral video marketing. Whatever your product, service or production, there are few people that are going to want to limit the amount of people that come into contact with it. Last week I looked at Mobuzz TV, an online video channel that have risen to success not least for their excellent provision of multiple video download formats, and use of multiple publishing destinations.
Adding to the already cool capabilities of Hey!Watch, Hey!Spread might well prove to be a must-use service for serious web publishers. I will certainly be adding it to my arsenal of tools.
The process of getting your videos out there using Hey!Spread is very straightforward and will take you through everything you need to do in the space of 4 screens and a few short minutes of your time.
The first screen asks you for the standard title, description, tags and category. Once you have filled in those details, you can set about uploading your video.
Step two is where you fill in your username and login details for the accounts you have up and running. Hey!Spread has a good range of video services up there, and this looks to be expanding at quite an impressive rate.
Obviously if you don't already have accounts with the ten services on offer, you are going to have a slightly longer setting up process the first time around, but obviously this is only going to catch you once, as from then on you will be able to use Hey!Spread as your intermediary.
There is no obligation, however, to send your video to all of the services, and you can use Hey!Spread with as little as one service from the list, even if that does somewhat defeat the purpose.
In step three you give Hey!Spread an email address. Once all of your videos have been uploaded to the requisite services, you will receive a notification email telling you that your upload was successful, and in some cases any services that you failed to upload to.
And that's it. From there, you need to leave your browser window open while the video uploads. I found the process of uploading my video faster than some of the services themselves, which was a pleasant surprise. Obviously this will depend on the size of video you are uploading.
Finally when the uploading process is complete, you receive an on screen notification, which lets you know that you can now close your browser window. Your email will follow, as often the video services involved take a few minutes to transcode your video into their native Flash format.
In short, then, this is a super easy process, which gets even easier once you are signed-up for the different services offered by Hey!Spread. In the space of about five minutes you can have your video clip up and running on ten different services rather than one, which is a great way to save yourself some time in my humble opinion.
It looks as if Hey!Spread is managing to add video sharing networks at an impressive rate, as they have already vastly improved their line-up since the recent launch of the service. Bear in mind that you will need to sign up to any of the services you wish to make use of in the first instance.
At the time of writing Hey!Spread will upload your video to the following services:
This makes for an impressive line-up and covers all of the major bases that immediately spring to mind. Certainly there are always going to be more networks, as the number currently competing out there continues to grow. It looks like Hey!Spread is growing its range at a good rate, however, so it is likely that if your favorite service is not included at the moment that it might well be in the near future.
In terms of supported formats, the range is slightly less impressive. I can only assume, given the huge range of formats supported by Hey!Watch that this is due to a need to comply with the compatibility of all of the services involved, knocking out any contenders that don't translate across to all of the services included in the Hey!Spread line-up.
The supported formats are:
Again, this covers the basics, and while it could be extended will probably suit most needs. The only other limitation to bear in mind - once more likely in compliance to certain video sharing service rules - is that your clips are no more than 100Mb in size or 10 minutes in running time.
Unlike Hey!Watch which is a paid, per-video service, Hey!Spread is for the time being at least free to use.
So how do the developers make money from it? The answer, it would seem, is by charging the video sharing sites themselves a one off fee for including them within the services offered by Hey!Spread.
This seems to be working out for them considering the current line up of services signed up to the service, and it looks as if Hey!Spread is committed to adding more services to their roster in the future, judging by their open invitation for video networks to join up.
I hope that this will prove to be a sustainable business model, as I imagine that Hey!Spread will be seeing some serious use in the coming months.
Hey!Spread is a very welcome service that is going to make regular video publishers and viral marketers very happy indeed. I have personally been waiting for something like this to come along for quite some time, and the fact that it is free to use is great news indeed.
Like Hey!Watch before it, Hey!Spread is likely to be successful because of its combination of simplicity, ease-of-use and the fulfillment of a genuine need in the marketplace. Sure, presentation is threadbare and the interface extremely minimal, but to me this is not so much a problem as it is an issue of focus. By putting all of their energies into making a foolproof tool for achieving a specific goal, the Particle-S team have done an excellent job.
Okay, the limitations imposed by allowing you to upload to a good range of video sharing services are a little irritating - knocking out the potential to upload video in some popular formats, such as MP4, which I tried and failed to use the service with. The limit of 100Mb or 10 minutes running time for your video file, while stated by several sites, doesn't apply to all, but obviously to fulfill the need to upload to all services this has to be applied.
Nevertheless, minor drawbacks aside, this is a small price to pay for being able to get your video published to so many video sharing sites in record quick time.
Video bloggers, Internet TV producers, viral marketers and avid web video publishers are all going to find themselves drawn to this simple, cool service if they know what's good for them. I will personally be among them.
If you would like to learn more about Hey!Spread and Particle-S, you might want to check out the following links:
Originally written by Michael Pick for MasterNewMedia and titled: "How To Upload Your Video Clips To Multiple Video Sharing Sites: Hey!Spread"
| 2007-12-12 14:17:32 |
The only thing you need to know about HeySpread is that it does not work!
I have tried several times, and it will sometimes upload to one of the sites you are trying to upload to, but sometimes none.
There is nothing wrong with the usernames or passwords I am using, and I have double checked them.
| 2007-10-31 07:14:51 |
I was actually very relieved to find Hey!Spread. As it was the solution I wanted for my video uploads.
But I have tried the service with a bit of disappointment. You can see my blog post here to see why http://www.shazlansufian.com/2007/10/31/video-upload-not-spread-well-with-heyspread/
I am going to do another test before I use it more seriously.
I was just wondering if you had better results than me.
| 2007-08-06 04:22:33 |
You also can try video post robot
http://aniscartujo.com/videopostrobot
it support uploading to 21 video sites
| 2007-07-24 04:26:21 |
Will this video site Hey Spread support DivX format as it is very popular and very good quality.
| 2007-07-12 06:18:55 |
Have you seen izimi (www.izimi.com). Its video hosting/sharing service is totally unlimited (any size, any quantity, any file type, any length), plus there is no need to upload your video up to any server, they just sit right there on your own PC. You just right click and izimi instantly gives you a URL, link code and embed code which you use just like you were using youtube, revver, metacafe, etc, etc to embed the vids. You can literally do hundreds of videos in a few seconds. You have to get a bit smart about the format, i.e. make them into small sizes (best also if you convert them to flash video so they stream), but it’s a neat alternative if you want no limits and instant sharing.
| 2007-07-10 06:03:44 |
Hi,
Just one word: Thanks.
It's so nice to see a real FULL review from people who really experienced the service.
Great!
