Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Social Media
  3. News

Video-sharing service Telly introduces My Telly to pull your eyeballs away from YouTube

Kwame Opam
By
web
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Twitter is taking to video in a big way these days, revamping its gallery feature to pair videos with still images and backing Vine, what some have argued is the next big video-sharing outlet on the Web. Facebook already wants to be the premiere destination for all shareable content. And YouTube rules the roost when it comes to online video. But it’s still so hard to find video you love in one place. That’s where Telly steps in, allowing you to watch and share video with friends across your social networks.

Telly is the net descendent of TwitVid, one of the original repositories of Twitter video. Started in 2009, the site became the largest destination for video-sharing for the then-exploding social network. Telly extends that approach by focusing on video discovery.

Recommended Videos

“Last summer, the decision was made to try to broaden the original goal [of TwitVid],” said Mike Cieri, Head of Product for Telly. “The Telly experience is built more around video discovery… improving the way people discover video online.”

Related

Telly accomplishes this by allowing people to both upload video directly to the service, and by curating video according to what’s popular.

Telly_iOSToday, Telly’s developers are introducing My Telly, or the site’s new social component. By logging in through Twitter or Facebook, My Telly is programmed to algorithmically scour your social graph for videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and elsewhere that your friends enjoy and and allow you to share them with others.

“It’s a Pinterest sort of model,” said Cieri. “It’s not just user-generated content. It’s more how do I take what my friends are enjoying across the Web.”

However, the social video model Telly is employing presents challenges. What you share on your desktop might not be what you’d enjoy on your smartphone. Meanwhile, some embeddable video that works on traditional computers might not work yet on mobile.

Thus, according to Telly CEO Mo Al Adham, Telly is “trying to be smart” about what is shared where in its service, staying in compliance with internet video standards like HTML5 and AVC/H.264.

In the end, Telly wants to be where people go to find videos they’re sure they’ll love. “There’s so much more video out there than what’s encompassed by YouTube,” said Cieri. Telly might be your next doorway in the addicting world of online video bingeing. 

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kwame Opam
Kwame Opam
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kwame graduated from Stony Brook University with BA in Anthropology and has a Masters in Media Studies. He's done stints at…
YouTube purges extremist videos, from flat-earthers to Holocaust denial
youtube to remove more hateful and supremacist content going forward logo phone

YouTube announced further steps it plans to take toward reducing the amount of harmful content published on its site.

The video-sharing site published a statement on Wednesday, June 5, that outlined its plans to remove “more hateful and supremacist content” from its platform. Specifically targeting hate speech, the statement went on to say that YouTube’s updated video removal policy will include “prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory.”
In addition to removing videos that feature supremacist views, YouTube also intends to remove videos that deny the existence of “well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.” The video publishing platform also said it would crack down on videos claiming the Earth is flat or promising miracle cures for diseases.
YouTube’s updated policies also include reducing the spread of content it deems “borderline” or more specifically, content that generally contains harmful false information such as “videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, or claiming the earth is flat.” But instead of removing borderline content, YouTube is opting to use a different approach to reduce the number of views borderline videos receive. Specifically, a system update that limits recommendations of that content in the first place. The system update was tested in the United States in January and YouTube intends to bring the update to more countries by the end of this year. YouTube also plans to increase the recommendations for content created by authoritative sources, like trusted news organizations.

Read more
X (formerly Twitter) returns after global outage
A white X on a black background, which could be Twitter's new logo.

X, formerly known as Twitter, went down for about 90 minutes for users worldwide early on Thursday ET.

Anyone opening the social media app across all platforms was met with a blank timeline. On desktop, users saw a message that simply read, "Welcome to X," while on mobile the app showed suggestions for accounts to follow.

Read more
How to create multiple profiles on a Facebook account
A series of social media app icons on a colorful smartphone screen.

Facebook (and, by extension, Meta) are particular in the way that they allow users to create accounts and interact with their platform. Being the opposite of the typical anonymous service, Facebook sticks to the rule of one account per one person. However, Facebook allows its users to create multiple profiles that are all linked to one main Facebook account.

In much the same way as Japanese philosophy tells us we have three faces — one to show the world, one to show family, and one to show no one but ourselves — these profiles allow us to put a different 'face' out to different aspects or hobbies. One profile can keep tabs on your friends, while another goes hardcore into networking and selling tech on Facebook Marketplace.

Read more