We are pleased to introduce a new way to organize, watch, and share your favorite video subscriptions from some of your favorite video sites, and iTunes.

Import Subscriptions
Starting today, Mefeedia users can import all of their iTunes podcast and YouTube, Hulu, and Vimeo video subscriptions for viewing on the Mefeedia.com web site. With just a few mouse clicks, users can import every podcast they subscribe to in iTunes and every video channel they subscribe to on YouTube, Hulu, and Vimeo. Once these are imported, your Mefeedia “Queue” will automatically update when new video and podcast episodes are released.  All in one place.

To use this new feature:

1. Join Mefeedia
2. Click on the “Import Subscriptions” button, next to “My Queue” link on the logged in home page.
3. Follow the directions on that page.

Let’s say you are a big fan of the NBC show, “The Office”.  If you wanted to watch full episodes of “The Office” you would need to go to Hulu.  If you wanted to listen to your favorite “The Office” podcasts, you would need to launch iTunes.  And if you wanted to check up on the latest “The Office” fan tribute videos, you would need to go to YouTube.  With Mefeedia, you can get all of that content in one place, constantly updating automatically as new “The Office” episodes, podcast broadcasts, and fan videos become available. It’s like a TiVo for web video.

Also, when you are logged in, you can follow the subscriptions of your friends - both recently subscribed and most popular, as well as favorite videos. Find out what your friends are watching - not just on one site, but across the Web.
Allowing the import of iTunes, Hulu, Vimeo and YouTube subscriptions makes it easy to follow your favorite content. We’re not stopping there.  In the coming months, we are planning on adding a lot more video sites - both subscriptions and favorites/likes - continuing to make Mefeedia an even better place for Video and TV fans to find, manage, watch, and share video and audio from around the Web.See more in:hulu, itunes, mefeedia features, video, vimeo, youtube

We are please to announce support for audio and video podcast subscriptions import! Timely? yes!!! With the closure of yahoo podcasts, what better time to import all of your podcast subscriptions into mefeedia so that you can manage, watch, and share ALL of your AUDIO and VIDEO “show” subscriptions!

To use the import, you will first need to join and sign-in to mefeedia. At that time, on the logged in home page, you will see a link to import your podcast subscriptions - it should be fairly easy, as long as you know how to get an OPML file from your podcast provider… if not, let me know personally and i can help - frank@mefeedia.com. Thanks!

See more in:audio, bloglines, itunes, odeo, opml, podcasts, subsriptions, video, yahoo

We wrote earlier asking why Flickr still isn’t doing video and have done several updates since the news broke (again) that Flickr will be adding video and that Yahoo will be revamping their video site after “losing” to YouTube and Google.

From the sound of it, the new site sounds like it will compete with the likes of YouTube, AOL Video, MSN Video, and the new Joint Venture between NBC and Fox. Ho hum. Deals with all sorts of music labels and content companies just isn’t an important distinguishing factor. Contents companies are very smart nowadays - they realized that non-exclusive deals with as many big portals as possible is the best way to increase viewership.

Let’s hope Yahoo embraces what made Flickr successful in the first place - a great place for the indie photomakers that are passionate about photos and the tech influentials who wanted a collaborative place to put photo streams up around an event or topic. It is this influential and passionate audience that causes these sites to “go viral” and be widely adopted. As Om Malik pointed out, YouTube really became popular and the “winner” because it focused on becoming viral throughout the Internet, not just remaining as a destination site.

Mike Folgner, Yahoo’s general manager for video, said “We’re going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content.'’ Let’s hope that Yahoo really means it. What would truly be a distinguishing factor? From what we have seen at Mefeedia, users want a place to find interesting video content from any destination, and then watch that content when they want it and where they want it. YouTube and others aren’t quite delivering on this promise yet. Mefeedia delivers on this promise today and we are continually improving the experience. Here is some information to back up that claim:

Any Content - over 24,000 feeds from over 14,000 video sites

• Mainstream Video Feeds - ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO, Fox, BBC, NPR, CNN, and more from around the world
• Music Video Feeds - see our music video guide
• Video Sharing Site Feeds
• Video Blog Feeds / Independent Content Producers
• Video Feeds around Events
• Video Feeds that are Local / Location-Based
• News Feeds
• Sports Feeds
• Audio Podcasts
• Video Podcasts

How You Want It - Personalized - Mefeedia allows you to have:

• My Personal Mefeedia Channel
• Social Discovery through your Friends to help find why you like

When and Where you want it - Mefeedia Personal Channels and Category Channels have been watched on:

• Feed Readers
• Media Players
• Mobile Devices
• Set-top Boxes
• Game Consoles
• Widgets
• Second Life Media Kiosks

See more in:flickr, mefeedia, video, yahoo

UPDATE 2: Techcrunch, again, is confirming that Flickr is adding video soon. Maybe they actually are going to do it…

UPDATE: Yahoo again said today that they plan to add video to Flickr. Om Malik expressed concern as to whether this was a good idea or not. I agree.
Back in March of 2005, Unmediated called Mefeedia the “Flickr for video“. Fast forward 2 years to 2007, and we still don’t see video support on Flickr, although back in May, Michael Arrington from Techcrunch wrote that they are working on it. But do we really need it? There are so many options for uploading videos nowadays. Just a run through some of key stats demonstrate that:

• Mefeedia aggregates:

• 24,000 video feeds
• Over 14,000 video sites (i.e. any site that contains some form of video - video sharing sites, video blogs, video news, etc.)
• These video sites include over 300 “video sharing” sites, all major blogging platforms, video blogger sites, and news sites.

This results in a huge volume of video. Some video tracking examples:

• iPhone videos (943 videos currently)
• Harry Potter book release
• There are a lot more examples of tagging videos, creating video playlists, putting together video guides, and creating personal channels.

Would Flickr be better off being a hyper-aggregator for video? Ff they do go that route, they could do the same thing to Yahoo Video that they have done to Yahoo Photos. Of course, this would put them in competition with Mefeedia, but i am confident our 2 year head-start will help. Mefeedia already kicked butt when it came to hyper-aggregation of video compared to the “big guys” back in April:

See more in:flickr, hyper aggregation, techcrunch, video, yahoo