Definitions of Common Online Video Terms
Some of the lingo in the online video business can be a bit confusing. So to help everyone make heads or tails of what people are talking about, here is a little list of common definitions.
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SEO:
Search Engine Optimization. Generally speaking this is the process of getting your website to show up high in search results. So when someone searches for plumbers in Denver, they find you plumbing business at the top of the list.
From Wikipedia: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. -
Streaming Video:
This is video that is embedded into a page. It requires a plugin to play and usually doesn’t offer a way to download. These are your average YouTube videos.
From Wikipedia: Streaming media are multimedia that are constantly received by, and normally presented to, an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider. -
Self Contained Movie Files:
These are usually .mov and .wma. Most are playable in modern browsers, but most are designed to be downloaded to a users computer and then viewed. These are mostly self-hosted or distributed through P2P networks.
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Social Media / News Sites:
These sites rely on users to submit articles and videos and links to content they like and find useful. The sites are usually moderated heavily so spam is not an issue. A high ranking on one of these sites can result in massive amounts of traffic. Examples include Digg, Reddit, Delicious,and StumbleUpon.
From Wikipedia: Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. -
Blog:
In the context of our products a blog is a site that has the ability to publish numerous articles on a regular basis. This is in contrast to a static business site, only occasionally updating with new content. The goal is to connect with your customers and make them want to come to your website on a regular basis.
From Wikipedia: A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog”)[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. -
RSS / Podcasts:
These are both technologies that allow your content to be distributed through a “feed” and subscribed to by others. Your “feed” can be formatted in numerous ways, from showing only excerpts, to full text posts. These can be a good ancillary distribution method.
From Wikipedia: RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” but sometimes “Rich Site Summary”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. -
Content:
Content is the “stuff” on the website. This is the actual text or video that the site displays. When it comes to site SEO, a frequent heard phrase is, “Content is king”.
From Wikipedia: Even though we may embed various protocols within web pages, the “web page” composed of “html” (or some variation) content is still the dominant way whereby we share content. -
Meta Data:
Meta data, or tags, are pieces of information that help search engines better understand what your site is about. There are numerous meta tags but the most frequent are keywords and description.
From Wikipedia: Metadata (meta data, or sometimes metainformation) is “data about other data”, of any sort in any media.
This is just a beginning list and we will update it as we go and feel necessary.
Any terms you would like to see included? List them in the comments.
Travis Berry
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