SplashCast Media and CozmoTV Review

April 10, 2007

I’ve spent a couple of days creating and testing  both a CozmoTv widget, and a SplashCast Player. Both of these media players, essentially embedable widgets, have the ability to take YouTube videos (shows), and create channels out of the shows. Users are then able to create widgets out of selected channels, and embed the widgets to webpages and social networks. This is pretty much where the similarity of the two ends. The difference between the two are evident in intuitiveness, user functionality, and ultimately effectiveness as tools for the social media marketplace.

On the  Cozmo.tv homepage, viewers are able to browse through selected channels and shows. Once a cozmotv user logs into the system, users can create content for widgets. The idea behind cozmo.tv widgets is for users to create personalized channels based on their specific interests and share their channels with the cozmo.tv community. The cozmo.tv user screen basically duplicates the look and feel of the home page with the additional ability for users to create and edit channels and widgets.

From here a cozmo user can browse through such featured channels as the CBS Channel, Weird Al Yankovich Channel, or Extreme boarding channels, etc., each of which have associated related content (CBS Shows, Weird Al Shows, Extreme Boarding Shows).   For right now, the shows are really YouTube videos that reside on the YouTube server.  The difference is multiple YouTube videos can be assembled into a channel, multiple channels can be assembled into a widget, and different widgets can be embedded into different web pages depending on the application. The widget I created for my MySpace profile consists of several different channels.

In the spirit of simple web-user interfaces, otherwise known as ugly interfaces ala YouTube and MySpace, the Cozmo.tv  interface fits right in.  I joke! I joke! I do understand that the site is in BETA right now, so I realize that there will be changes, but I  have some immediate, can’t wait concerns. (Alex Rowland of cozmo.tv was kind enough to shoot me off an e-mail asking for any feedback - I gave some first impressions and he already responded with changes…Thank you Alex). As of this writing the interface definately can use some work. On the channel menu, you have to move the cursor to submenus very slowly, or the submenus dissapear.  On the Account menu, you’ll be lucky to get to the submenus unless you have superfast response (good thing I am skilled in the fined art of rapid mouse movement). These submenus give you the options of editing channels or widgets, but the clicking on your channels and widgets, I noticed that any I created were not visible.  Subsequently, through my countless efforts of trial and error, I’ve ammased a modest collection of widgets, all of which I can no longer edit.  Once I was able to embed a widget on my page, I was presently surprised that I could navigate through the widget thingy which was user friendly. I’m looking forward to Cozmo.tv implementing future revisions of their interface.  I used the MySpace bulletin feature within myspace to announce to one-hundred friends, my new, and greatly appreciated tool.

The Splashcast Media home page has the same basic features as the Cozmo.tv home page. There you can find information about SplashCast Media, featured channels, and a catalog of channels. It’s useful to find a blog about SplashCast and related news.

The differences of the two really become evident once you launch your SplashCast Console.

The SplashCast Console not only provides an enjoyable user experience, with it’s intuitive interface, it also has a very classy and attractive look to it. What a welcome change to the typical Web 2.0 site. Ok, let’s talk about functionality. The SplashCast Console goes far beyond the initial Cozmo.tv interface. Users can view their personal show stats by view or rating, and also channel stats. The menu section of the interface allows users to create and manage SplashCast shows, channels, and players.

The differences are even more apparent in the content of shows.  While Cozmo.tv seems to be marketing a new way to share videos that the user deems relevant, users of SplashCast have the ability to add audio, images, videos, and documents such as powerpoint or acrobat documents, all of which can be either streamed from the source, or uploaded to the SplashCast servers.  These different media formats are then arranged into shows - shows into channels - channels into players.  An example show which I created from different media sources can be found on this page which I created as my personal anti-Sanjaya endeavor.

The last contrast is in the usefulness of the widget or player. The SplashCast player is unique that it adds an RSS button to allow subscribers to be notified of any changes to the channel. Random viewers browsing blogs, social networks, or any other webpage with SplashCast players embeded can grab the embed code right from the player or even e-mail the show to whoever they want to know about it.  The built in sharing tools make the player far more attractive from a viral marketing perspective then the Cozmo.tv widget.

With all the things that I appreciate about SplashCast, I still have some suggestions.  The first would be the ability to set timing for individual show items.  Right now, you can set the show to transition either one set time between show items, or have it so that viewers must manually advance through the show.  I would also suggest that audio backgrounds can consist of more than one track, the track can be shortened or looped as needed, and  a visual representation of the track(s) accompany that of the visual elements (show items) that have been added to the show.

I think that both  SplashCast Media and Cozmo.tv have compelling offerings that should give individuals, companies, and social media marketers an entirely new reach, especially to take advantage of today’s different social media outlets. Being a promoter of social media, I would’ve liked to see more community building features built into the two offerings - friendlist, forum links, etc; perhaps this is something that both companies are considering. Because of the superior look, feel, and functionality of the two offerings, the upper hand clearly goes to SplashCast Media.

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Posted by Rick Garcia in Social Media, Social Networks, Widgets, Video Sharing Sites, Distribution, Viral Marketing