Lycos adds video, other features to Webon social network platform
Lycos this week announced that users can now add video to their Webon sites without the need for a third-party service. For those not familiar with the it, Webon is Lycos’s first internet application in full support of OpenSocial API (more on this below).
In a statement made on its blog, the company said;
We’re pleased to announce that you can now add video to your Webon sites without the need for a third-party service. If you have a home movie, screen capture, or other video file you’d like
to add, just drag the Video icon from the editing toolbar onto your page. You’ll be prompted to select the video file you want to upload, and then a placeholder will keep you posted on the progress of the upload and encoding of the video. Once encoding is complete, the video will appear automatically just where you placed it, with standard player controls (play, pause, volume, and so on).
Unlike many sites, we don’t put any ads or Webon logos over your videos; they look just the way you want them to. You can also resize the dimensions of the video player to fit your site better.
Free accounts can upload a few short videos. If you want to host more, however, you’ll need to upgrade to a Personal Account, which now includes 100 videos of up to 10 minutes in length. (We do have to pay the bills somehow, after all.)
Webon is targeted toward a wide audience and features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with familiar word processor-like text editing. But don’t let that fool you, with OpenSocial API support, users can build their own add-ons bringing a new level of interaction for the site programmer and options to the casual user, who can take advantage of add-ons designed by others. With the click of a button, even novice users can add blogs, photo albums, maps and other widgets. Webon also supports OpenID, which is quickly becoming the preferred way for many to maintain their identities online.
It’s refreshing to see one of the older companies in our industry adopt standards we’ve come to expect, along with some nice surprises. My favorite features are:
You’ll note that my favorites list, with the exception of the last item, is not technical. That’s because there are a lot of good technical solutions. What’s tougher, is putting together a platform that people will actually want to built on. The list above is a solid foundation.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under In Beta, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
