Ooyala has announced that it has developed a Twitter video card solution, in close collaboration with the social networking site, which offers Ooyala customers a turnkey solution to embed videos directly into their Twitter streams for instant playback.
Previously, users were only able to include a link to a video in Twitter. This solution inserts a thumbnail of the video directly into the stream so followers can click and play directly without leaving Twitter.
First deployed by sports broadcaster ESPN to better serve its 24 million online video viewers, Ooyala’s Twitter Card solution provides media companies, broadcasters and brands a new way to distribute video content delivered via Twitter across desktops and mobile devices. In addition, the solution can increase the discovery and sharing of video content and optimise engagement through social and mobile by eliminating the barriers to view content directly on Twitter.
“Twitter is a growing source of inbound referral traffic and outbound content distribution for online media publishers and broadcasters,” said Jonathan Wilner, senior director, business product management at Ooyala, in a statement. “Consumers today are at the intersection of social and mobile, and demanding easy and fast access to video content. Our ability to deliver video directly in-stream is a major step forward for our customers in meeting this new demand, in a way that is very meaningful for publishers.”
As a result of the close collaboration, the Ooyala solution has been certified by Twitter. The turnkey API from Ooyala automatically generates the necessary Twitter tags so that a video can be inserted onto a video landing page to enable Twitter Cards.
The technology works seamlessly with Ooyala Discovery, which enables video content providers to increase view-related revenue by algorithmically recommending highly relevant content within the Ooyala Player. For example, if a user watches a highlight from a football game within the ESPN Twitter stream, they could receive a recommendation to also watch highlights from the post-game press conference.
