Miro Community Video Web Sites

Blogs are great for text and photos. Video came much later. Most of us figured out a way to crow bar videos into blogs. Web sites can be customize but are a painful time sink if you don't have an deep or abiding love for HTML or CSS.

A solution for the best of both is possible with Miro Community web space. Think of it like a video template that makes it easy to create subject specific videos and display them in full format.

The Miro Community site might be your harbor that combines the best of both. If you are an individual or non-profit organization the magic word is free. Here is the deal, basically you set up a master video page with the videos that you might have hosted on Blip.tv, Vimeo, YouTube or Daily Motion.

Let's say that you have a sub-genre that you want to direct viewers to that doesn't really fit in your main blog or web site. You could pull in those videos that you have hosted elsewhere into a topic specific video gallery.

Check out the demo video:



From the web site:

• Categories: Each category you create automatically generates an RSS feed, making the hard work you put into organizing your site portable. Easily place these feeds in other sites and podcasting applications such as iTunes, Miro or your university's custom podcast player.
• New Videos: As new content flows into your sites, it appears in a unique feed for each site that highlights all new content.
  
• Featured Videos: Each site automatically generates a feed containing videos featured by its administrators.
• Popular Videos: Miro Community tracks viewing behavior, and uses this data to generate a list of the most popular content on a given site, and within given categories.
  
• Source Feeds: Of course, Miro Community also makes the source feeds it pulls together available to users and administrators.

The site does have templates for newbies and non-techies but if you know your way around CSS you can customize and add a bit of zing without re-inventing the wheel.

Currently while in Beta mode the site is free to all but eventually that will transition into free for individuals and small non-profit organizations.

It seems like they want to attract colleges and universities and larger non-profits who might pay a little something for the right of non-branding by iTunes or YouTube.

The links below are examples of what can be done:

• Videos by and about the Floyd Co., VA Community
• Climate Camp TV
• Ubuntu Information
• MarketPlace Economy Story

So, if you are looking to bust out of the blog shell or you want to set up a page of video content to make it easier to display your videos, I think you should take a look at Miro Communities.