Video search engine VideoSurf launched a Firefox add-on today called “Videos at a Glance,” which can show Twitter users the videos behind applicable links. For example, if someone in your Twitter stream posts a link to a video, the add-on will automatically display the video, as well as a visual video summary, right in the tweet, so you don’t have to click through.
“As Firefox hit 1B downloads last week, the VideoSurf extension brings sophisticated video search technology to what has become one of the most ubiquitous browsers available,” a spokesperson for VideoSurf tells murdok.
Although Twitter has been cracking down on the posting of malicious URLs, they probably can’t catch them all, and this could be good for that reason alone. The following video shows how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXXuEsrR8The add-on does more than just display videos on Twitter though. It also adds to the user’s experience in Google search results. Video results will display visual summaries and related videos will appear on the page. VideoSurf pulls videos from a variety of video sources.
With all of the add-on’s video displays, you can hover over the videos and they will begin to play, allowing for a similar preview experience to what Bing offers in its video search (you know the one that got people talking about watching porn at work when Bing first launched).
With the add-on installed, you also get some extra stuff when you visit YouTube, including results from other video sources beyond YouTube. You also get the visual summaries that YouTube doesn’t offer on its own.
