In this summer's earning call, Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said, “If you go back ten years, most of how people communicated was through text. We’re entering into a period where that’s increasingly going to be video and we’re seeing huge growth there.”

The numbers show it:

• In November 2015, Facebook reported 8 billion daily video views (and in April 2015, the same stat was 4 billion daily video views).
• In January 2016, Facebook announced that 100 million hours of video are watched in Facebook daily.

So the arc of this is very clear.  We started with text and moved to images and now we're heading to video.

In the same earnings call last month, Facebook pointed out that, “people watch video differently in mobile newsfeed than on TV”.  As video dominates Twitter and Facebook, what are the new rules?

• Make sure you’re videos are uploaded natively: Linking to a YouTube video from Twitter or Facebook? It’s only going to get a fraction of the views and engagement that a native video will.  Post your videos natively to Facebook and Twitter so they autoplay and play with no lag time or extra clicks.

• Start out strong: Try to win the viewer’s attention within the first few seconds. Those first few seconds are your video’s email subject line or newspaper headline. Some examples from NowThisNews: 
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Add text overlays to your video: Since videos automatically play without sound, you can’t rely on sound to draw in the viewer. So... overlay text on top of your video.  The text needs to be short and crisp and choreographed with the video. My favorite example of this are the news videos made by NowThis. Or take a look at the cooking videos by Tip Hero. Here are a few examples:
  
  

  #ObamaAndKids is the most adorable thing in your feed https://t.co/QzxX9OA77Z

  — NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 22, 2016

  
  
  

  Some brilliant girl scouts are selling cookies outside weed dispensaries https://t.co/LswrdGFAGg

  — NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 23, 2016

• Upload closed captioning to your videos (Facebook videos only): An alternative to adding text overlays, Facebook allows you to upload close captioning with your videos. Closed captioning is displayed by default when a video autoplays so your video can be experienced without turning on the sound.  Here’s what this looks like: 
  
  
  
  How do you get the SubRip closed captioning file (.SRT) for your video?  A few choices:

• Use a third party video captioning / transcription service-- there are lots of them out there, a baseline cost estimate is $1 / minute of video.
• Caption your video yourself-- I’ve used a few different third party SRT creation tools. Aegisub is one of them that's free and open source. Aegisub let you type the text in as your video plays back. It takes a little bit of work, but it's not bad. Pay attention to the size of each block of text-- too short or too long and it'll be hard for the viewer to follow along.
• Use SnapStream (if you’re uploading TV clips)-- If the videos you’re uploading are TV clips (like the Daily Show or the Colbert Report), use SnapStream. We automatically pass-through closed captioning when you create a TV clip and post it to Facebook.

Update (February 11, 2016): If you doubted what I wrote below about how captions on native Facebook videos improved performance, see today's news that Facebook is now offering free automatic captioning of "brand" videos.

Did you know you can upload captions with your Facebook native video uploads?

This is a big deal and something you should always do... why? Well, apart from making your Facebook videos more accessible, it'll also increase the video views and engagement on your Facebook native video uploads.

How's that? Well, we live in a world of autoplay video. When someone scrolls through their Facebook news feed videos autoplay-- which is to say, it shows the moving picture but without any sound.  And if you upload a closed captioning file with your native video upload, Facebook autoplays the video with closed captioning display turned on.

This is a major key 🔑!!  With captioning display turned on, your autoplayed native video is more likely to draw in a viewer because the video can be experienced without audio. Here's an example of the Daily Show (a SnapStream customer) doing this on their Facebook native videos:

(separate question, but what was I doing up at 3:38am when I took this screenshot??)

So how can you upload closed captioning with your Facebook videos?

Facebook has this article on how to add captions to your uploaded videos (it involves uploading something called a SubRip file or an SRT file).

But if you're uploading TV clips to Facebook using SnapStream 7.0, you'll be happy to know we automatically passthrough the closed captioning.  So you don't have to do anything else-- it's just there.  Here's a screenshot of this in action:

If you want to learn more about how SnapStream makes it easy for social media managers to upload TV clips to Facebook (and Twitter), check out the SnapStream social TV features page.

We're starting 2016 with a bang, with all-new SnapStream 7.0!

Twitter & Facebook Improvements

Social TV Dashboard

Easily manage all your Twitter and Facebook posts in one place, with SnapStream’s new Social TV Dashboard.

Approve Tweets and Facebook Posts

SnapStream’s built-in Queue is a new way for social media teams to control what content gets posted to Twitter and Facebook. From the Queue, designated team leaders can review the the post’s visuals, make edits to the text, and publish the post live. This approval workflow is completely optional by the way; you can customize it to fit your team’s structure.

For example:

Set Permissions to Publish on Social

Does your social team have an approval process? Or is it freestyle, all-you-can-Tweet?

Whatever your social media workflow, we make it easy to set user permissions for who can post to Twitter and Facebook, and in what capacity.

Give user groups as much or as little access as you’d like.

For example: Create a group for Interns and turn on Queue Tweets and Queue Facebook Posts, to hold all their outgoing content for approval.

Post Performance

“I don’t care how many Retweets or Likes we got!” said no one ever. Everyone wants to see their top performing posts. SnapStream keeps a track record of all posts and engagement on Twitter and Facebook. Sort by the most Likes, the most Retweets, the most Shares, etc.

Cross-Post between Twitter & Facebook

Create your clip once, and cross-post native videos and screenshots between Facebook and Twitter, while still playing to the strengths of each platform. The text is editable, so you can switch up the message to play to your Twitter and Facebook audiences. Make sure to include the appropriate tags, handles and hashtags for either network (see below: new auto-complete helps with that.)

Faster TV Clip Uploads

Immediacy is important when you’re live-tweeting a TV show. Because as Ricky Bobby says, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.”

TV clip uploads to Twitter and Facebook are up to 50% faster in new SnapStream 7.0.

Facebook Video with Captions

We live in a world of autoplay videos. To get the best engagement on your Facebook video posts, it’s a best practice to include closed captions. This way, users can “watch” a video even while the audio is muted.

With SnapStream 7.0, TV clips posted to Facebook are automatically uploaded with closed captioning.

SnapStream TV Show with Captions → Facebook TV Clip with Captions

Auto-Complete @usernames and #hashtags for Twitter

Live-tweeting a TV show means using the right #hashtags and @usernames.

Auto-complete suggests Twitter @usernames and #hashtags to add into your tweets as you type, just like you’re used to.

For live-tweeting events—like presidential debates, award shows or sports—it helps you keep pace and confirms you’re tagging the right @usernames and the right #trending conversation.

Tagging and Auto-Complete for Facebook

SnapStream’s auto-complete for Facebook posts ensures that your Facebook posts perform at their best.

Start typing @ + the name of the organization or person you want to tag and SnapStream will bring up the official Facebook Pages to tag in your post.

Like with Twitter, we pull this data directly from Facebook, so it’s similar to natively posting on Facebook.

New Web Interface

New Look, Same Functionality

Here are some looks at before/after screenshots, comparing SnapStream 6.x to SnapStream 7.0:

Welcome Screen

 

 

TV Library

 

 

Search Results

 

 

Web Player

 

 

Transcript & Tweets Tab

 

 

Program Guide

 

 

Recording Manager

 

 

Use SnapStream on Phones & Tablets

SnapStream’s new web interface is touch-friendly and designed to work on mobile, tablet, desktop or any screen in the universe. (In the lingo, our web interface is now responsive.)

You can now use your mobile phone or tablet to search TV, create clips (by transcript), browse the program guide, schedule recordings and more. (Note: video playback requires the web browser plug-in, which only works on Mac and PC desktops.)

Native HTML5 Video Playback for H.264*

If you are recording or ShowSqueezing to H.264 and using Mac OS X, playback is faster and easier with our new native HTML5 video player. This means no more installing or updating the SnapStream Web Player Plug-in and easier use of SnapStream throughout your organization.

(* Limited to Safari on Mac OS X for H.264 and H.264 TP recordings)

GIFs in the SnapStream Library

“The world’s gone GIF crazy,” is a recent quote that we  from Stephen Ziff, the Jacksonville Jaguars’ VP of Marketing and Digital Media. (He’s also a SnapStream user.)

Indeed, GIFs are everywhere… which is why GIFs are now part of SnapStream’s TV Library. GIFs are saved and catalogued exactly like TV shows and clips.

GIFs are automatically saved in the Library. You can download, view, tweet or email any GIF. *Bonus* you can also search for GIFs, because we retain the closed captioning with every GIF created.

Improved TV Alerts and Smart Clips

Turn any TV Alert on or off, and keep ‘em saved for when you need them again.

Smart Clips are also newly improved. They’re now more accurate and more tightly focused on alert keyword.

As a refresher, alerts can be set up as “Closed Captioning Search with Shared Smart Clips” and for every TV alert match:

1) SnapStream automatically creates a TV clip for you
2) Shares each TV clip online via SnapStream and
3) Embeds a link to the online mention in the SnapStream Alert email.

This can be a powerful way to extend a SnapStream Alert and the corresponding TV mentions to someone outside your organization.

Clip To Audio Files (WAV and MP3)

SnapStream has a new option for transcoding directly to audio files, WAV or MP3. No more multi-step process for all of our radio customers. Mark your clip in SnapStream, cut, and there you go… a WAV or MP3 file.

Search by Local Channels

Use the new search filter channel:LOCAL to include or exclude local channels from your search results. Whether you want to hone in on localized news content or ignore it all together, that depends on you. We automatically group together all the local call signs in this search filter.

Plus hundreds of improvements...

Read the full release notes here.

Schedule Upgrade to  7.0

Upgrades are usually 1 hour. SnapStream's support team will perform the upgrade in a remote session.

Upgrading has never been easier.  For most users on SnapStream 6.6, you won’t need to uninstall and reinstall a new version of the SnapStream Web Player. The 6.6 player and SnapStream 7.0 are compatible. So once your system admin does upgrade SnapStream to 7.0, your users will be ready to go.

Webinar: Learn New SnapStream 7.0

Tues. Jan. 26 at 1 pm EST

Thurs. Jan. 28 at 3 pm EST

From a total library of 5,144,139 recordings.

2015 was the year of Social TV and TV GIFs

So many amazing posts to Twitter & Facebook. Like these Top 5 TV Tweets with SnapStream.

We doubled the number of SnapStream users

We trained each and every one of you, to help you become power users.

We rolled out fresh, new ways to record TV

Like the 2 & 4 Channel SnapStream Express, starting at $499

 And SnapStream Cloud, Internet accessible from anywhere

On the software side, we turned out more than 1,300 new features and fixes.

Most of all, we had fun doing it

We racked up 25 million steps doing 52 Workweek Hustle challenges on Fitbit.

We traveled to Las Vegas, Washington DC, New York City, Los Angeles, Clearwater, Syracuse, Stamford, Chicago, Dallas, Ottawa, Jacksonville, and so many other places.

We wished Jon Stewart farewell from The Daily Show.
And gave special thanks to his team for being early customers of SnapStream since 2009.

And it's ALL thanks to Y'ALL!

Thank you for being valued customers to SnapStream. Happy TV searching in 2016!

Look Ma, we're on TV! KHOU Anchor, Len Cannon, did an awesome piece on SnapStream for CBS in Houston. Watch this 2 minute clip:

Thanks to @LenCannonKHOU and our friends at @KHOU for this awesome piece on @SnapStream, "The Mother of All DVRs!" https://t.co/QQjm7a0N1d

— SnapStream (@SnapStream) December 1, 2015

The Jaguars are one of SnapStream's many social media success stories unfolding in real time. With every live-tweet, our customers from Politics, Sports and Entertainment are hitting it out of the park! (s for all of you)

1. 

@AccessHollywood aced the #VMAs (4,000 retweets & likes)

Aw! @justinbieber broke down in tears after his big #VMAs comeback performance. Good to see you on stage again, Biebs pic.twitter.com/qwvw0o9hzx

— Access Hollywood (@accesshollywood) August 31, 2015

2. 

@TheDailyShow crushed the #CNNDebate (3,000+ retweets & likes)

When bae is mad you dissed her face. #GOPDebate #CNNDebate pic.twitter.com/Cd8TtbG6fE

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 17, 2015

3. 

@FunnyorDie slams it in the #GOPDebate (1,600+ retweets & likes)

*says he's created tens of thousands of jobs* *most famous for saying "You're Fired"* #GOPDebate pic.twitter.com/saujWoza6m

— Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) October 29, 2015

4. 

@Politico wins the #GOPDebate (1,100+ retweets + likes)

.@marcorubio: "We need more welders than philosophers" https://t.co/2uyOmzwGht pic.twitter.com/NTzF41uyDS

— POLITICO (@politico) November 11, 2015

5. 

@NFLonCBS scored big in #NEvsNYG (1,000+ retweets & likes)

pic.twitter.com/K95Th4qLjg

— NFLonCBS (@NFLonCBS) November 16, 2015

Want to make awesome GIFs for Twitter?

Check out snapstream.com/socialtv to learn more.

The NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars are scoring big points on the field, and on Twitter and Facebook. How are they doing it?

At the beginning of this season, SnapStream's social TV tools joined the Jaguar's digital team to up their social game. The stats have been STELLAR. It's exceeded their expectations.

The Jags had an initiative to use more animated GIFs this season, to drive fan engagement and better keep up with the pace of the game.

SnapStream helps the Jags rapidly fire GIFs onto Twitter / Facebook in 19 seconds flat. Perfect for play-by-play coverage on social. Pre-SnapStream, it used to take them 45 minutes to create and post any clips or GIFs.

It's so important to be the first to post must-see game moments from TV, to capture the most social reach and engagement. And SnapStream helps the Jags move fast on social. (See full press release.)

Check out some of the most hard-hitting posts from the @Jaguars this season

From live-tweeting GIFs during recent games, the @Jaguars have scored 700-800+ retweets and favorites on average:

🐰 pic.twitter.com/Tb4L25VkJU

— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) August 15, 2015

Congrats to @TelvinSmith_22 on winning AFC Defensive Player of the Week! pic.twitter.com/7xZIzMSCxM — Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) October 28, 2015

Your #Jaguars get the win! Head to https://t.co/NFZmFsyGmJ for all postgame coverage! #MOREJAX pic.twitter.com/Esk677j14S

— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) October 25, 2015

Agent 88 strikes! pic.twitter.com/zUhhojhgFg — Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) October 25, 2015

On Facebook, the Jaguars have racked up thousands of video views and likes:

Houston, Texas, Nov. 3, 2015 ­- The NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars have chosen SnapStream to power its new social media initiative to create and share GIFs with its more than 230,000 @Jaguars Twitter followers. SnapStream was selected for its ability to quickly and easily create GIFs and clips from live TV and post them directly to Twitter in seconds.

The Jaguars are also using SnapStream’s TV recording and archiving capabilities, and will have the ability to track mentions of players’ names on TV.

“This season we have a major initiative to use animated GIFs as part of our social content plan, but we needed a tool that would allow us to capture and convert video clips,” said Chris Burdett, Senior Digital Media Manager of the Jacksonville Jaguars. “SnapStream’s ability to create GIFs quickly is exactly what we need. With SnapStream, we can get a video or GIF from TV to Twitter and Facebook in 19 seconds. Before implementing SnapStream, it took 45 minutes.”

Launched in 2007 as a DVR for business, SnapStream enables organizations to record and store thousands of hours of TV content, watch TV recordings from a PC or Mac, and search TV content like Google lets you search the internet. Earlier this year, SnapStream launched Social TV tools, which make it easy to share live TV content on Twitter and Facebook in the form of video clips, GIFs and images. SnapStream’s social tools also provide a unique way to engage with fans in real time by only showing tweets that are relevant to the specific show they are watching.

“SnapStream exceeded our expectations by doing more than simply create GIFs,” Burdett said. “Our PR team can track any time the team or players are mentioned on TV. Our digital media team will be able to tag key moments in the game on live TV, so they can easily go back and find them later.”

“TV clips and GIFs are becoming a staple on social media. If you aren’t the fastest at getting a GIF or TV clip to Twitter or Facebook, someone else is going to beat you to it. Being the first to post a ‘must­see TV moment’ can improve social reach and engagement,” said Rakesh Agrawal, CEO and Founder of SnapStream. “I’m excited that SnapStream is going to be a part of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ team. They are a fast-moving, hard-hitting team, and with our technology, their social team is going to be able to move faster and hit harder on Twitter and Facebook.”

The Jacksonville Jaguars join a host of successful shows, networks and government organizations, including “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” “The Daily Show,” MLB Network, and the U.S. Senate, that use SnapStream for clipping TV, content repurposing and video archival.

To learn more about SnapStream’s Social TV features, TV search or recording capabilities, visit www.snapstream.com or send your inquiries to sales@snapstream.com.

Press Contact:
Brad Hem
The Dialog Lab for SnapStream
brad@thedialoglab.com
(281) 543-0669

Congrats to our friends at "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on an epic run! You made us laugh, night after night, and feel proud of what we do.

Since 2010, The Daily Show has racked up 57,530 clips, 232,448 recordings and 417,724 searches. To say thanks, we adopted 2 animals for Jon Stewart at Farm Sanctuary, his #1 charity.

The fun with clips will carry on when The Daily Show with Trevor Noah premieres on Sept. 28. Good luck, y'all! We'll be watching.