Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 9:38 AM PT

Pop-Up Video Comes to YouTube

YouTube has unveiled a new tool, Video Annotations, which, according to YouTube, allows creators to:

Add background information about the video

Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to the next scene)

Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video

Annotations are only available in English and don’t work with embedded videos at this point, but you can see them being put to use in this skydiving video, magic card trick and this interactive shell game.

There are other companies such as Asterpix and Videoclix offering more robust versions of interactive video, but YouTube’s adoption brings these tools to the masses. Now you can know the backstory of that piano-playing cat, and we could be on the verge of a rebirth of choose-your-own-adventure stories (do you want the skater to get kicked or punched in the nuts?).

As Jackson points out over on Valleywag, the bummer about this program is that creators can only link out to other YouTube videos, eliminating the possibility of interactive product placement.

But for everyday people who want to add a little more to their vacation videos, this should be a lot of fun.

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Topic: Online Video, Software

Comments (6)

Here’s a good how-to video on youtube annotations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXtwUrKwK3g

David Rodriguez — 10:20 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
I found a site called http://www.bubbleply.com that’s been doing this pop-up thing for awhile with much more functions. It’s cool that youtube does it now but it’s not new.

Jason — 11:37 AM on June 4, 2008 Reply
ha ha, it’s just like the VH1 show

fauxgentleman — 5:35 PM on June 4, 2008 Reply
This is an interactive animated short film using Youtube annotations…

Patrick — 8:17 AM on August 21, 2008 Reply
I absolutely hate those stupid pop-ups when I just want to watch the video. I have stopped using youtube because of that one reason. It is the most annoying thing to deal with when watching videos since random gay porn.

person — 1:33 AM on October 11, 2008 Reply
Please boycott any product advertised in a pop up!

Dayana — 12:10 PM on September 15, 2009 Reply

Linkbacks (6)

[...] Enlace: YouTube Video Annotations Fuente: NewTeeVee [...]

despuesdegoogle » Blog Archive »… — 10:54 AM on June 4, 2008
[...] YouTube announced new capability to append various notes and pop up messages within its videos. This will let video [...]

Kelsey Group Blogs » Product Placement… — 12:29 AM on June 5, 2008
[...] this but really the whole idea and a lot of thinking behind it are not new (See recent posts from New TeeVee + ReadWriteWeb or read some of Adrian Miles’ thoughts on the subject) . Even this example is, [...]

REPORTS FROM THE FUTURE » Blog Archive… — 8:31 AM on July 23, 2008
[...] string them together. The tool also allows users to add comments within the video (similar to the Video Annotations tool that YouTube launched earlier this [...]

Google Buys Omnisio for YouTube « NewTeeVee — 2:36 PM on July 30, 2008
[...] seems like a tiny feature addition, especially since more and more YouTube producers are using its annotations tools to add links to their own sites, other videos, and products directly within a video at the time and [...]

Next Big Thing for YouTube: E-Commerce Links… — 4:25 PM on October 7, 2008
[...] Even online, content and interaction often seem like oil and water. At one time we thought Internet TV service Joost would be able to stand out because it opened up its API to widget developers. No such luck — turns out having the best content and making it easy to get to are way more important. I like where live-chat efforts from companies like Lycos and Paltalk are going, but they’re not there yet (see NewTeeVee coverage). On a more basic level, even YouTube is adding Pop-Up Video-like annotation features. [...]

Do You Want Widgets on Your TV? — 10:18 AM on November 19, 2009