Rockin' Dot Coms

Vimeo is a great way to share video publicly or privately. One feature in particular that I think is pure genius is once you've joined Vimeo, their homepage "becomes your homepage and will fill up with your videos (and the videos you love)." If there's one thing video sites like JibJab or all relevant web 2.0 companies should be thinking about is how to best incorporate on and off site customization functionality to enrich user experience.

On-site customization is why MySpace is where it is today and why Facebook was able to rise from the dead. Off-site customization extends to all things under the sun from embed players to budding production tools that we're starting to see on the "edge" more and more. For example, imagine being able to create a viral piece of content within a widget living on your friend's Facebook page and posting the final product directly to another friend's page without ever leaving Facebook or whatever social site you choose to cruise. A not quite there yet but real-world example of this would be if Ebay's "To Go" widget, which already enables anybody to create/post a widget for a fun and interesting way to share the things you've discovered or are selling on eBay, allowed people to bid on listings through their widget.

Going back to how customization fits into the picture for video sites I think JibJab is on the right track after the re-launching the site a few months back but as a member of various social sites I must say that in comparison - "My JibJab" doesn't really feel like it's 'mine' at all.

"Well that's something we shall have to remedy, isn't it?" - Uncle Argyle / Braveheart

Below is a video by the folks at Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker. They've got it together.