Big Advance: Periscope Video now in Twitter News Feed*

The announcement has a bit of an asterisk because it isn’t across all platforms yet (but that can’t be too far off, right?), but this week’s big news is that videos from Periscope are now being included in the Twitter news feed, at least on iOS devices.

Here’s how it appears when you’re scrolling through your feed on Twitter (to find this one I just did a search using the #Periscope tag):

Periscope in Twitter feed

You’ll note in the lower left of the video there’s a red box that says “LIVE” and also a counter of how many people are currently watching.

The video starts playing as soon as you scroll over it, although there is no sound at first.

It’s much like the experience of automatically scrolling video on Facebook and Twitter.

When you click on the video, it expands to full screen and looks like this:

Periscope video when watching on Twitter

Note that the follower count has moved to the lower right, and at the top is a button that says “Open Periscope to Chat.”

I think this is an important change that will lead to

  • significantly higher exposure for Periscope videos,
  • increased use of the Periscope app, and
  • further integration with Twitter on all platforms.

This current release only allows watching ‘scopes on Twitter; you can’t comment or give hearts. But just as pre-recorded Facebook and Twitter videos have gotten significant traction, so should live streams (or archives of up to 24 hours) from Periscope.

You can interact with Periscope video on Twitter just as you would with any other content, but those comments aren’t integrated back within the Periscope platform. At least for now.

When we were choosing which live-streaming mobile platform to use at Mayo Clinic, one of the main advantages we saw for Periscope was that it’s owned by Twitter, and that new broadcasts can be announced from our Twitter account.

Having Periscope videos show up in iOS Twitter news feeds is a big step.

Next request: It would be GREAT to be able to send Periscope users to a hyperlinked account page (like we have for Twitter or Facebook or YouTube) to make it easier for them to subscribe.

What new features would you like to see on Periscope?

 

Social Media 220: How to Customize Your YouTube Player

I have been interested in using a YouTube player to display some of our Mayo Clinic videos on our Mayo Web sites. One concern is that at the end of an embedded YouTube video, a list of related videos is automatically displayed at the end.

Here’s an example of a brief video I did to document my newly cleaned office as I prepared to start fresh in 2012:

With a quick Google search, I found this site, which makes it really easy to customize your player.

Among the changes you can make are:

  • Autoplay (have the video start automatically when the page is loaded)
  • Hide the video title
  • Hide the related videos list
  • Adjust size of the player
  • Enable or disable full-screen mode
  • Start the video somewhere in the middle.

Here is what it looks like after the customization:

Here’s another version with looping of the video (and showing the related videos):

 

The other neat thing about this online tool is that it lets you understand the syntax involved in the embed codes, so that you can adjust the settings manually.

Finally, here’s one more embed, in which I have our Mayo Clinic “Know Your Numbers” video start at the beginning of one of my two cameos.

 

Do you have other tricks for customizing display of your YouTube videos? How do you do it?

Where’s Lee?

This isn’t an allusion to my travels; I’m staying in Minnesota for the whole month, with no trips scheduled until February.

It’s about this video we did through our Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, in cooperation with our colleagues in the Office of Women’s Health and our cardiology group.

I wrote the lyrics to this parody of Tommy TuTone’s 867-5309/Jenny and was the Executive Producer, and Makala Johnson from our team shot, edited and coordinated production. We had a great team for the project, including a band and back-up singers drawn almost entirely from our Mayo Clinic employee population, and over 100 enthusiastic concertgoers.

So here’s the trivia question for the day:

Where are my two cameos in the video?

Put your guesses in the comments below. And with February Heart Month coming up, I hope you’ll also help spread the word.

Chancellor’s Choice: Keynes vs. Hayek

This has got to be the best thing to come out of George Mason University since 2006, when the Patriots made the NCAA basketball Final Four. It’s a fantastic example of how a creative video can make a dry topic (economics is called “the dismal science” after all) vibrant and interesting.

This one definitely gets a Chancellor’s Choice Award for Best Use of Video in an Educational Context:

As of this writing, Fight of the Century has racked up 621,000 views in just two weeks.

Here’s the first video in the series, which has had more than 2.2 million views:

And this video, also from the EconStories channel, includes an interview with the George Mason professor and his creative sidekick behind the series:

Together, these videos — which range from 7:33 to 10:10 — demolish the conventional wisdom that a video needs to be short to get traction, or that the “ideal” video is less than three minutes, or two minutes, or whatever a supposed “expert” says.

Length doesn’t matter. It’s more important that a video is interesting. And it isn’t necessary to be interesting to a mass audience. You just need to be interesting to your audience.

This video on myelofibrosis is about the same length as the Keynes/Hayek boxing match. Not funny at all, but extremely interesting to people who have myelofibrosis. As of today, it has more than 8,200 views, which has made it extremely successful. It has reached and interested the right people.

What’s your favorite video that’s more than four minutes long?