NYTimes.com debuts first user video feature
Cory Bergman February 22nd, 2007
Couples who submit wedding announcements to NYTimes.com can also upload their own videos explaining how they first met. “How We Met” is NYTimes.com’s first user-created video feature (and most likely not the last), and it’s powered by Brightcove. Beet.TV interviewed NYTimes.com Nicholas Ascheim about the project, and you can watch the video here. A few more details in the press release below…
PRESS RELEASE — NYTimes.com announced today that couples who
submit announcements to the Weddings/Celebrations pages of The New York
Times will be able to submit their own How We Met homemade videos to
NYTimes.com/weddings. Never before has NYTimes.com featured user-generated
content in a video format.
To be considered for posting to the site, videos should focus on how the
couples met and what eventually led them to make a commitment to each
other. Only couples whose announcements have been selected to appear in
the Weddings/Celebrations pages of the newspaper will have their How We Met
videos run at NYTimes.com/weddings.
“How We Met will allow our readers to share one of the most meaningful
moments of their lives with other readers,” said Vivian Schiller, senior
vice president and general manager, NYTimes.com. “New York Times readers
are a pretty creative lot, and we can’t wait to see the varied ways they’ll
choose to tell their stories in video.”
Videos cannot be longer than three minutes and must be submitted to The
Times no later than two weeks prior to the couple’s wedding date. Because
the goal of How We Met is to provide a glimpse into the beginning of
lifelong commitments, videos should be appropriate for a general audience
and focus solely on the couple’s relationship.
A Times staff member will review all video submissions and, if approved,
the submission will appear at NYTimes.com/weddings on the same Sunday that
the couple’s wedding announcement is scheduled to run in the paper. As
with submissions to the Weddings and Celebrations pages, there are no
assurances that a submitted video will appear on the Web site.
The Video Vows that currently appear on NYTimes.com are produced by The
Times and will continue to be featured at the discretion of Times editors,
separately from How We Met.
Readers interested in submitting a How We Met video should go to
NYTimes.com/weddings for guidelines, including required technical
specifications.
5 Comments Add your own
1. discreet_chaos | February 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I tried to submit this a couple of weeks ago via the tip form, but the Virginian Pilot (a newspaper) is doing something interesting with some user-submitted video on hamptonroads dot tv
I can’t say that I’ve spent a lot of time there, but I do occasionally click from the newspaper’s mainpage, watch one or two of their in-house things and then I watch a user-submitted clip or two to get a feel for their progression.
IMO, it appears functional and maybe if I lived in their market, I’d consider making it a regular channel. And, perhaps by adding the auto-play highlight show to the front, they can successfully entice people to stick around… But hey, any way you look at it, you’ve got to give them credit for trying and for doing it in such bold terms.
Oh, and I’ll probably watch a “How we Met” when it’s available. I’m a sucker for sap.
2. HamptonRoads.tv | February 24th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Thanks for noticing, Discreet. I think we received our first viewer video 3 days after launching, and it has been interesting to watch them progress over the past year and half. If you’re seeing the highlight show auto-play you must be visiting us on weekday mornings - ciome back weekdays after noon Eastern to see a daily webcast that we launched this month. Like our sister company at roanoke.com, we’re using broadband Internet video to experiment with ways to connect with young adults who don’t spend as much time with traditional news media (i.e., newspapers OR local broadcast news). - ChrisK
3. discreet_chaos | February 24th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I’m glad to give props, where they’re deserved and it is in this case.
And BTW, since the focus of Cory’s post was on user-submitted vide; I thought that I’d mention, now that I’ve read the guidelines, I especially like the way that you’ll take someone’s stuff from a hardcopy and translate it into flash. I don’t know how many things you get that way, but the effor is certainly commendable.
Also, I thought that I’d say how much I appreciate your in-house stuff done with Pilot reporters. For instance, though I had read some about the decommissioning of the Kennedy, the video cut beneath the report with Jack Dorsey presented the story in a whole new perspective.
Kudos
4. discreet_chaos | February 24th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Now, if I just hadn’t of lost letters and words in my quick editing, but I’m sure that everyone gets the idea.
Once again, I’m going to blame the baby. He’s frantically trying to outwit the child-proofing on the cabinets, so he can get to the cookie cache.
5. invitedmedia | February 24th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
great way to teach your baby how to defeat the child-proofing…leave a tasty treat inside.
it was told to me 15 years ago that you leave the cabinets with cookies and such wide open, but the “bad” cabinets have the locks on them. it only made sense that the kids thought ALL the cabinets that had those little clips on them had goodies inside.
my kids learned very quickly that the open cabinets were “good” and the locked ones were bad.
they were a little fatter like that, but never were interested in the comet or draino.
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