YouTube has added some new services to their site. They now allow users to organize video clips around categories. A number of online publications are reporting that YouTube has recently launched TestTube on their site.
After doing some research it became clear that TestTube is not a new feature to YouTube and it has been around since December 2006 as reported here. Maybe it is a case of Internet amnesia. I will briefly cover these not so new features anyway.
Test Tube features AudioSwap where users can exchange audio on their videos with music. The music is licensed and YouTube has agreements with a number of artists and plans to add more. They have also added Streams where users can chat with others who are watching the same video.
On their site they describe Test Tube as,” This is where YouTube engineers and developers test out recipes and concoctions that aren’t quite fully baked and invite you to tell us how they’re coming along. Your comments will help us improve and perfect the mixtures we’re working on. So jump in, play around, and send your feedback directly to the brains behind the scenes.”
Lycos launched its Cinema Platform in November, which is like YouTube’s Streams. The Cinema feature allows users to watch video content in synchronicity with other users and they can chat about a video in real-time.
In February, Lycos added Lycos MIX, which allows users to access content from other video sites besides YouTube. With the MIX feature users can have access to video content from MySpace Video, Yahoo Video and Google Video.
They can also chat in real-time and have control over their play list of favorite videos. Other viewers can participate by adding their own videos to the MIX and leave comments much like a video blog.
