When the Internet first began, it was mainly text based. Some sites added a couple of pictures, but these took so long to load on a dial-up connection, people often lost interest and navigated to the next site!
As Internet connections became more reliable and faster, photographs and graphics in general became more prevalent on websites, and some even began to include short videos about their products or services. Hosting a video on one’s own site was time consuming and costly though, as it requires a relatively large amount of bandwidth, however, web designers in Manchester and other areas began to realize that video was the way forward. In the early days the only sites that included a video were those owned by large corporations or others who were able to deal with the large demand on bandwidth created by videos but all this was set to change.
The first video sharing sites
In 1997 a site called shareyourworld.com started allowing users to upload clips or full videos in different file formats. Unfortunately in 2001 it was forced to close due to budget and bandwidth problems. In 2005 YouTube was set up, allowing anyone with a You Tube account to upload a video of anything they wanted. These days, roughly 60 hours of new video content is uploaded to the site every minute. Many of it is then linked into a website owned by the company publishing the video, however web designers in Manchester, and indeed worldwide, are able to directly input video on websites they design.
Many other video hosting sites have now popped up, including Vine, Wimp and Vimeo. They offer the user the ability to upload a video recorded on their mobile phone and will host it on the site, usually free of charge. Users are then able to share either the URL of the video, or embed it into their own web page using html code supplied automatically by the site.
The ability to host videos on an external site such as YouTube has revolutionized the Internet. These days, almost every site will include a video of some sort, and the majority of these videos will be hosted externally on file sharing sites such as YouTube or Vine. There is even now the concept of a “viral” video, where a clip uploaded to a site is shared and viewed by so many people it is considered to have “gone viral”
Online videos have gone to a new level now, as companies such as Love Film and Netflix have begun to offer their service online. We can now set up an account with one of these sites, and begin to watch a film or TV show immediately online, rather than ordering a DVD to be delivered to our houses. In fact, Netflix has been a groundbreaker in this field, offering new seasons of TV shows before they are available on DVD. They have reportedly signed a contract to allow them to stream the anticipated prequel to hit TV show Breaking Bad – before it has even begun screening on regular TV.
The Internet has come a long way since those first, text-only pages of the 1990s. Video streaming is one of many great innovations but it is sure to be far from the last or the greatest. Speak to your web designer in Manchester for more ways that video can help your business website to thrive.
