New Option for Hosting Video to Your Blog

One of my clients who does a lot with videos, Freddy at Atomic Tango, shared this info with me and I had to share it with all of you.

As you'll see from the video below, WordPress.com is getting into the video hosting business.  What does that mean?  Well, if it means what I believe it does, it means these things:

  • You can now host a video at WordPress.com directly – you don't have to host your own videos somewhere else and then embed them into your own site
  • As Freddy points out, you aren't advertising for some other site, because there doesn't appear to be a logo – like YouTube puts in the corner of their embedded videos
  • Folks can easily share your video by embedding it to their own site (such as self-hosted versions of WordPress.org), as I have done with the below video from VideoPress‘s site – which will give you more insights on what tools it includes and why this tool is very interesting, so go ahead and watch that now:

This sounds like a great idea for folks at WordPress.com.

The biggest downside of things – that I can think of at the moment – is that there isn't currently a way for WordPress.org bloggers to directly host using this cool tool, we still have to have a WordPress.com account, upload it there and embed here. But in most cases you would already have a WordPress.com account, because you're probably using Akismet to protect your comments and that is the only place to get your API key. So, you could use that existing account for hosting the videos and embed here. Though that is kind of like hosting it on YouTube – minus their logo presence.

Also, if you aren't hosting the video at a high traffic site, like YouTube, then you aren't getting their extra exposure for your video.

So what do you think? If you are using WordPress.org already, is it worth it to use this new option? Maybe for the sizing and other features listed in the video? Watch the video and let me know your thoughts, by commenting below!

4 comments on “New Option for Hosting Video to Your Blog

  1. I think this plugin would cause those who use video marketing tactics to lose a lot of traffic. Videos are typically used to drive traffic to your blog. Millions of people everyday search youtube and similar sites for video’s. Is the “youtube” logo annoying? Perhaps but by hosting their you get traffic you will not get otherwise.

    How many people can search yourtube for “wordpress videos” and find your self hosted video? The fact is, none can! This means you will not get traffic from that site.

    Although if you are going to host your video on a multitude of sites, this plugin would be great. After uploading to youtube and similar site (they link to you) you publish the same video on your own blog with no watermark logo so you are not sending traffic back!

    • Yes, you have some valid points, about getting more exposure when you host on a well populated site like YouTube.

      However, WordPress.com also is a well populated site and the videos are hosted through their site and brought in to your self-hosted site, so you also get the extra exposure in their large community.

      Good comments, thanks for contributing! UniqueThink does encourage folks to get extra exposure whenever possible and this is just another option for doing that. So, thanks for the comments and I hope I clarified that for you. Let me know if you have other questions.

  2. We make video biographies (personal history documentaries) and post a lot of videos to the web. We have been using YouTube to embed video on our website for a couple of years now and I love being able to show a number of different clips in a video bar. I don’t mind the YouTube logo on the video bar. I also like Vimeo: two things that Vimeo adds for me are passwords and high resolution. This WordPress thing looks good though – I’ll check it out, thanks.

    • Thanks Jane:

      Yes, the high resolution feature definitely makes Vimeo a good choice. In fact, that reason along encouraged Freddy to use that for his main video on this AtomicTango site. Though he still likes the VideoPress, he needed the high resolution for his home page video.

      Thanks for mentioning it.

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