What is Video Bomb?
Video Bomb is a community site for people to bring together and share the best videos on the web. You can share interesting videos with a wide audience by posting, commenting and tagging videos on the site. Video Bomb is part of the Miro Internet TV Platform.
When someone submits a video, it appears on the Incoming! page and if people like it, they can star the video, which adds it to their favorites list. If enough people star a video, it will appear on the front page of the site.
A big reason we created Video Bomb was to work with Miro, our internet TV software. You can watch Video Bomb videos in Miro and you can star videos from within Miro. Together, Video Bomb and Miro are the best way to share internet videos with friends.
The best way to get a feel for Video Bomb is to Create an Account and start starring.
For more info, see the FAQ (below), About Video Bomb, and our Terms of Use. If you would like to direct any questions or feedback to the staff at PCF, you can write to us: hello(at)videobomb.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do I do if a video won't play?
When a video isn't playing, it's usually slow to load or you don't have the necessary browser plugin for that type of video. To get plugins for the most common types of video, click here. You can also try clicking on the 'direct link' for the video. And if you think that the video file is missing, let us know-- click 'flag this video'.
What are tags?
Tags are like keywords-- the person who submits a video can include tags that describe the general topics that the video relates to. It creates a freeform organizational system that helps people find videos of interest to them. When you click on the name of a tag, you can subscribe to a feed for videos with that tag.
How do videos get to the front page?
When a video is submitted, it appears on the Incoming! page. If that video gets X number of stars in Y amount of time, the video gets promoted to the front page. We will adjust X and Y as needed to keep a good number of videos on the front page.
What is an RSS feed? How do I get it?
When you subscribe to an RSS feed in an application, you'll automatically be notified when something new is available. Videobomb provides RSS feeds on most of our pages (look for the orange 'Feed' link). Video software like Miro can subscribe to these feeds. Watching videos via RSS feed works best for most people because videos download in the background-- you don't need to wait for a website to load.
What is Miro? What is the Participatory Culture Foundation?
Miro is a free application that turns your computer into an internet TV video player. Miro is one piece of a larger internet TV platform that we have been working on at PCF. You can subscribe any RSS feed, podcast, channel in Miro and it will download the videos for you to watch. You can download Miro here and try watching the most starred videos full screen and one after the other.
The Participatory Culture Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in January 2005. We're based in Worcester, MA, but many of us are based elsewhere. There are nine full-time staff, and many volunteers. Our funding currently comes from private philanthropists and we'll soon be asking users for their support as well. Our mission is to build software and websites to create an independent, creative, engaging, and meritocratic TV system for millions of people around the world.
Bombing a video
How do I star a video?
To star a video, you need to be logged in to Video Bomb. If you don't have an account, you can sign up here (it's free). If you have an account, login. Once you're logged in, just click on the star.
What does the number on the star mean?
The number on the star indicates how many people have starred the video. More stars means more people like it.
What kinds of videos can I star?
You can star videos of every kind. Video Bomb does not host any videos directly, but videos that obviously violate copyright or are explicit will be removed.
What size thumbnail should I use?
Ideally, thumbnails should be 128px by 97 px. However, we will resize larger thumbnails. Thumbnails should be less than 80k in size if you are uploading them to us.
What is flagging?
Flagging is a way that users can tell us when there's a problem with a video, such as: the link to the video is broken, the video is mislabeled, the video contains explicit content, etc.
What happens with flagged posts?
Flagged posts are reviewed by moderators and may be deleted. We also may automatically suspend videos if they get a lot of flags, and then we'll either delete or reactivate the video once a moderator gets a chance to look at it.
Submitting a Video
How do I submit a video?
To submit a video, login and click on the 'Submit a Video' link. You'll see the fields that you need to fill out and the more info you can supply the better. We definitely encourage videomakers and publishers to submit links to their own videos.
Can I submit a link to my own video?
Yes. In fact, we strongly encourage you to do so. When you submit your own link, you can write the description and make sure that the 'more info', 'publisher hook-up', and 'publisher RSS' fields are correct.
What is the publisher hook-up link?
The 'publisher hookup link' gives users a way to support videomakers. If the publisher has a merch page or a donation link, paste that in. Otherwise, leave it blank. That link will appear on the individual video page and will also appear in Miro.
Video Bomb linked to my video, but I don't have enough bandwidth on my site.
Video Bomb links can use a lot of bandwidth on the sites that they link to. There are a few ways to address this problem. First, you can try using a free video site like archive.org, revver.com, or video.google.com to host your video. We can switch the URL to that site, just let us know: hello(at)videobomb.com. Another option is to host your videos on a web hosting service that has lots of bandwidth. The bigs hosts like 1and1 and dreamhost are providing gigantic amounts of bandwidth for about $10 a month. The final option is that we can blacklist your domain, so that no one will be able to submit links to your site. Just drop us an email: hello(at)videobomb.com.
Your Bombs and Profile
What are My Stars?
My Stars is a list of any videos that you've bombed. You can subscribe to this list to watch it in Miro and other people can subscribe to your list. It's a really easy way to share interesting videos with friends.
Who gets to see my profile? What can they see?
Your profile is public, so you should only post info that you are comfortable with other people seeing.
Creating an Internet TV Channel
How can I use Video Bomb to create an internet TV channel?
We designed Video Bomb so to make it easy to create an internet TV channel. Let's say you want to create a channel called 'Skate Team' that would show the best skateboarding videos that you could find.
To make a channel, just create a Video Bomb account called 'Skate Team'. Then you can either submit links to videos that you want to have in your channel or you can star videos that are already in Video Bomb. Videos will appear in your channel in the order in which you star / submit them (when you submit a video, you also automatically star it).
Now, when someone subscribes to the 'Skate Team' feed in Miro or similar software, they will be able to watch your channel.
Help and Contacting Us
How do I get help or contact the Participatory Culture Foundation?
For technical questions, please check out the rest of this FAQ and our user forums, and if your question is still unanswered, then contact us at feedback(at)pculture.org.
For press, please contact us at hello(at)videobomb.com.
We love hearing general feedback -- for example, features that you'd like to see in Miro, or suggestions for the user interface. Write us anytime at hello(at)videobomb.com.
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