In this world of excess even I joined in on the excess. Can I join EVERY social network? I tried, for one purpose in 2007, to review their ability to handle online video. The one that worked the best was Divx, hands down, but they cut hosting pretty early on. My second choice was Myspace. Ah, Myspace, I despise you, I make art film and you caught my 10 second fair use of The Cure. I think at this point I’m forever banned from uploading video. The worst, in 2007, was Youtube – their limit on length was short and the quality paled in comparison to even Yahoo. I even had a Friendster for 10 minutes; until I discovered that I couldn’t upload video. All this info was supposed to, or maybe it did, go into a massive school project, but it was way out of date before I even started. Somewhere, in the back of my brain, lurks the true winner – with dust and cobwebs encasing it. When I am 80 I will randomly start shouting, Blip, Yahoo, Bebo, damn you Myspace. For now I am staring at a gaggle of unused social networking sites, cringing at the memory of the creeps on Badoo, and trying to decide what I still have – what I deleted and what is left to delete. Even more importantly, why do I not have a Flixster account? And Twitter, oh, twitter I’m too wordy for you. My tweets end up reading like “(grunt) watch now oonga booga me from past”. Yet Facebook and Twitter are everywhere. For now, I am watching a proliferating number of my friends leave Facebook. I hate it. I don’t even post video there. I mean that really is the only reason to social network – to post MY video everywhere. And, getting back to Twitter, it won’t let me do that.
Before I start this mass delete let me review what is gone: Broadcaster, Bahu, Imeem, Motionbox, Vox, Livevideo, Orkut, Vod:Pod, Jumpcut, Capazoo, Sharkle – does anyone else feel like I’m speaking gibberish? As for what I still have; who uses Bebo, Xanga, Fotki anymore? Hi5, do I have a Hi5? Oh my, this is going to be messy. To make what I have meaningful before I delete, I am planning one last upload. If it still works I may keep it. So I begin with a 5 minute, 200 mb, mp4. The only test is on the site’s codec – it is an intensely motion heavy piece that makes codecs cry. Our failures: Xanga failed to even upload a millisecond. Fotki was promising “now upload your video”… if you pay… Sorry I’d pay for Vimeo first. Vod:Pod, now Lockerz, wants to be Pinterest but with some confusing monitary aspect and you still can’t upload video. Bebo, I have to embed from Youtube. Flickr has a 90 second limit. Blip has become a webisode submission platform (save for future reference). Gather has 100 mb limit. IMVU… what was I thinking? Phanfare now costs.
Our successes, and I use this term lightly, are as follows: Photobucket, ok so your codec destroyed the quality and now my video looks like a cartoon. Taltopia, yeah it worked it looks ok, but who uses this? Myspace, it let me upload hmm. Facebook, yeah it passes too.
Next time I will look at the ones that passed a little closer. In the meantime I will be deleting the rest.