Zync: a new way to share videos

March 13, 2007 on 10:00 am | by ayman | In Media and Community, News, Zync |

Today, we are happy to announce Zync, a video sharing plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger.

Like a lot of people, I tend to watch a lot of videos online. Most of what I watch, I share with my friends. No big surprise. Sometimes I’ll email a video to my parents and then call them later and ask them if they saw it. With my friends (more connected than my folks), I’ll fire off the link in Yahoo! Messenger. Then I wait. Occasionally I’ll type “did it load?” or “are you watching it yet?” More often, I’ll have to type “did you see the snowboard jump yet?” or “let me know when you see the puppet try to login”. It’s kinda difficult and not fun. If two people are standing by my laptop watching a video with me, we talk, pause, rewind, and chat about it, together.

So we built Zync: a plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger that allows videos from Yahoo!, YouTube, and Google to be shared in a synchronous manner. To the right is a screenshot of Zync in action. It allows people to watch videos together with their friends, in sync and in real time. Instead of just IMing URLs and waiting for friends to watch, Zync allows the users to converse about a video (pausing, jumping back, and watching together with a friend). Both people control the playback and both videos stay in sync.

Want to dive in and get started? You can check out this IM-it button:

Watch a video on Coffee Art

You can check out more information about the plug-in and how to download it on the Zync website. If you are a little savvy and want to embed the IM-it button on your website or automatically embed the IM-it button with Greasemonkey, check out Zync on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

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[…] Zync: a new way to share videos By ayman With my friends (more connected than my folks), I’ll fire off the link in Yahoo! Messenger. Then I wait. Occasionally I’ll type “did it load?” or “are you watching it yet?” More often, I’ll have to type “did you see the snowboard jump … Yahoo! Research Berkeley - http://yahooresearchberkeley.com/blog Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]

Pingback by Yahoo at Kaizenlog — March 13, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo Research Berkeley, has launched a really handy plug in for Yahoo Messenger, Zync. Zync lets you share videos with your friends without waiting for them to see it, or worrying if it loaded properly, where is he now and so on. […]

Pingback by Usable Content » Share Videos In Sync With Zync — March 15, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo! Research Berkeley Tags:Messenger, partage, Plugin, Video, Yahoo View blog reactions (No Ratings Yet) Loading … scoopeo_url=’http://www.egomedium.net/fr/2007/03/18/zync-une-nouvelle-facon-de-partager-des-video/’ […]

Pingback by Egomedium.net » Blog Archive » Zync, une nouvelle façon de partager des video Identité numérique - et réactions sur l’actualité du web — March 18, 2007 #
[…] Vía | Yahoo Berkeley Blog […]

Pingback by TechTear :: T_T » Zync, una nueva forma de compartir videos a través de Yahoo Messenger — March 19, 2007 #
[…] Share Videos In Sync With Zync March 14th, 2007 Yahoo Research Berkeley, has launched a really handy plug in for Yahoo Messenger, Zync. Zync lets you share videos with your friends without waiting for them to see it, or worrying if it loaded properly, where is he now and so on. […]

Pingback by Share Videos In Sync With Zync « Thought Works — March 22, 2007 #
[…] Yahoo Research Berkeley, has launched a really handy plug in for Yahoo Messenger, Zync. Zync lets you share videos with your friends without waiting for them to see it, or worrying if it loaded properly, where is he now and so on. […]

Pingback by Startup Meme » Share Videos In Sync With Zync — March 22, 2007 #
Great.

Comment by Duranto — April 4, 2007 #
[…] Zync is a research prototype plug-in from Yahoo! Research Berkeley for Yahoo! Instant Messenger that allows you to watch online videos from websites such as Yahoo! Videos, YouTube and Google Videos together with your friends/contacts/buddies, in sync and in real time. (via) Instead of typing the URL of a video in the chat window and waiting for your friends to finish watching it, you just need to type watch URL of video. This will load the video in a Player for everyone whom you invited and play, pause, rewind and forward together, in sync. So if you forward the video at your end, it will forward on your friend’s player also. […]

Pingback by Zync- Free Yahoo! Messenger plug-in to watch,play,pause,rewind,forward real-time online videos from Google,YouTube together in sync with contacts/buddies - Tech[dot]Blog - The Latest in Computers, Mobiles and Internet Technology — April 25, 2007 #
[…] Research : Berkley just released a cool shared video-watching chat plugin called Zync. Good for them. Interactive TV-watching […]

Pingback by John Manoogian III » Zync - a New Way NOT to Advance the State of the Art / Inventing What's Next — February 13, 2008 #

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