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Animated Previews for Mobile Video

Recently Embedly introduced preview covers for videos. The covers bring a bit of life to a video player, offering a view of the content with an ambient animation of the video frames.  You can pick a specific section of the video as a teaser, enticing your audience to click play. 

On mobile however, the video previews will not work in some cases because browser autoplay is disabled. How might video animations exist on mobile? One option is GIFs, but they are pretty heavy. However, another option is JPEG sprites.  JPEGs take up far less space than GIFs, have a wider color spectrum, and allow for more programmatic control.  Check it out- if you're on desktop, see this post on your phone to check out the animations.

The mobile covers work by stacking the video frames and animating them with CSS. When you click play, the cover disappears and the video begins to play.  Now you can have the ambient previews on mobile too! 

To make your own mobile covers for video, create an account and upload a video. When you add a cover, it will automatically create the animated sprite version for mobile.

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Create Striking Video Previews with Animated Covers

We’ve all seen the increase in engagement with gifs, covers, or looping videos. It makes sense when you think about it. They're more eye-catching than a static image ever could be. If you had to pick something to watch for 5 seconds, would you prefer a static image, or a short looping video? The looping video gives you the chance to learn and see more information than a single image could ever provide. 

The same theory can be applied when you add your videos to blogs, sites, or apps. 'Covers' are actually a short video segment that loop over your video. They allow you to grab your viewers attention before they click play. We’ve created Covers for our Video product to help increase your overall attention minutes.

Take a look at what a video looks like with and without a cover. Adding covers will add a deeper level of engagement and is easy to do.

No cover:

With the cover:

What Does This Mean For Your Videos?

If you’re embedding videos without covers, you’re losing potential viewers by just showing the default thumbnail, instead of a more engaging option. 

Adding covers to the videos you upload through Embedly is easy to do. Just follow these simple steps and give it a try.

Step 1: Upload the video you'd like your viewers to kick back and watch.

Step 2: Click on the video in the list of your videos. 

Step 3: Once on the video page itself, click “add cover” below the video.

Step 4: Select which portion of the video you want to be your looping cover. Click “create cover” for the section you’d like to select, and voilà, your embed will now include your custom cover!

Note: on mobile the covers are replaced with a thumbnail, since muted autoplay is not available on mobile.

We hope you enjoy the new feature as much as we do. Give it a try and let us know what you think. 

Create an account and get started with Video. 

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Freemium or Premium- You Pick!

When we launched Cards a few years back, our goal was to make it easy, simple, and foolproof to add third party media to your site. From the millions of cards you’ve created, to the pages and apps they live on, we’ve seen just how far reaching these cards are first-hand.

We’re making some changes to Cards, so we can continue to best serve our community as a whole. Moving forward, we’re excited to offer two options. Both will be easy to use and continue to increase overall engagement on your site through rich embeds. To help keep things simple, here is information on both the free version of Cards and Premium Cards. 

Here’s what you’re used to seeing.

Here’s what you will be seeing!

Off the bat you will notice both look a bit sleeker. Premium Cards will offer further customization! Beyond that, these super sexy premium cards will include some additional benefits as well:

Premium Cards

-Email support -Analytics on embeds -Branding can be removed 

Here’s the scoop on the free version Cards -Stack Overflow support -Recommendations for related content

We’re making it easy for you to pick a product and service level that works for you and your needs.  We invite you to try both versions and do some AB testing. See what your audience prefers by looking at your conversion numbers, plays, or attention minutes. Take the guess-work out of which version is right for you and let your audience tell you what they want to see.

Sign up now to jump in and start using Premium Cards or give our standard version a try!

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Google’s AMP and Embedly

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project intends to be the Facebook Instant Articles for everyone else. It’s an open source library that essentially controls how a page is loaded. 

Does Embedly work with AMP? Yes.

Embedly’s iframes work with AMP’s amp-frame.  We’ve created a few demos and added some documentation to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

Documentation: http://docs.embed.ly/docs/embedding-with-google-amp

Demos: Replace and Embeds

Happy AMPing!

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Undervaluing Vine

Here's the shortest Think Piece on Twitter that you will read today.

Vine is the second largest video network on Embedly. Larger than Instagram, Facebook Video, Vimeo or Dailymotion. Think about that, and how big those audiences are.

With 2.3 million sessions, they are 4x Facebook Video and 1.25x Instagram.

Vine is mentioned only twice in Twitter's Shareholder letter, but has huge upside potential with its growing network.

Data from embedly.silk.co

If we add YouTube into the mix, things look a little different.

Data from embedly.silk.co

This data is from January 1st - February 10th 2016

Long live Twitter.

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Our Newest API: Your Own Video Service with the Video API

Video API:

I’m excited to announce our newest API, Video! We’ve worked hard at creating an API that allows you and your users to upload videos directly to your site, in a player that is scalable, light and customizable. This API will help your audience directly share media, creating an even stronger, more robust, online community and experience. 

Why We Know You’ll Love This: 

Video is inspired by feedback from our customers. We began hearing more often the need for a video upload tool. After Twitter and Facebook began allowing video upload in tweets and status updates, users began expecting it. We’re listening, and now we’re delivering; you want your own video service, and Embedly can help. 

Flexible: User generated content or high quality videos from the site itself can easily make their way online- from comments on an article, posts in a cms, to your latest mobile app ideas. Everyone is creating video, and you can make it a part of your sites and apps.

Lightweight: Quick to integrate, and if you need to- easy to export all of the videos. You’re in complete ownership.

Real-Time Analytics: Receive data on all your videos, including plays, watch time, active viewers

Unlimited Bandwidth: Your videos can be watched time and time again, at no additional cost to you.

Devices: Integrates seamlessly on mobile and desktop

What To Do Next:

Integrating a new API into your site can seem daunting. We’ve removed all the questions by creating a short tutorial. Kick back, relax and watch this API in action!

You can see the API documentation for Video, and read the tutorial. 

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Lookin’ for Data in Alderaan Places

Here's an unpopular Star Wars opinion: meh.

In my impressionable teen years Episodes 1 through 3 were released in an ugly fashion and Episodes 4 through 6 seemed outdated. I'm part of a lost generation who was told that Star Wars was George Lucas's gift from the heavens, but we never really drank the kool aid.

And Disney is now selling a lot of kool aid.

With a $200 Million dollar budget and a projected ~$125 Million marketing budget, The Force Awakens will be big, maybe the best opening of all time big.

First a disclaimer. As of writing this, Star War's trailer was viewed more than 75 million times on YouTube and 14 Million on Facebook. Trailers are pretty much free advertising for movies. People love watching them and sharing them.

We didn't see all 90 Million plays of the video, only a fraction, but, a statistically relevant one.

We took a look at Embedly's data on The Force Awakens. So here, <3.

#1 The first day is huge for any trailer.

People make up their mind on the movie the first day and don't look back. 80% of the Star Wars plays are in the first 24 hours of the release.

#2 You just got to get them to hit play.

With trailers, once people start watching, they watch the whole thing. Above is a heatmap of The Star Wars trailer, the Independence Day trailer and the Revenant. Once a person commits, they will stay for the whole damn thing.

#3 There will be nerds.

Reddit has a subreddit called starwars leaks. Here is the first comment I stumbled upon.

"Han is Obi-Wan in VII and Luke will be the Yoda of VIII and IX. Billy D will be the Billy D of VIII and IX again. Same same." - jcbhan

These "Experts" watched and rewatched and rewatched the trailer with a fine tooth comb. The graph above shows their heatmap.

#4 Star Wars will be big.

We saw the trailer embedded on over 350 different domains and over 1,300 different URLs. As a comparison, we saw The Revenant on 52 domains and 330 URLs.

In case you missed it, here's the trailer.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Episode VII in the Star Wars Saga, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, opens in theatres December 18, 2015.

A final thought: I wonder how often John Boyega looks at Mark Hamill's IMDB and starts to think he should practice his voice acting.

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A Look Back at 2015

We started the year with a purpose, and that was to be purposeful. By being more selective with what we would tackle, we could accomplish more. With an increase in numbers across the board, we’ll be continuing this focused momentum through 2016.

But, first, we would like to humbly brag and talk about scale. In 2015 Embedly served:

7.5 Billion API Requests

12.5 Billion Images

4.2 Billion Embed Views

1 Billion Card Views

14 Million Recommendations

Product & Event Updates In a Nutshell! 

Recommendations Powered By Embedly: Our biggest change for the year came with our new recommendation system. The new cards include recommendations from your other posts, providing greater opportunities for your content to be seen. They are gaining traction, currently you can see them in action on theScore and Redbull! Check it out by watching Adele’s video below to the end or starting it then pausing it somewhere along the way.

Adele - Hello

New Dashboard: The new dashboard was released over the summer, making it easier for more people to embed and track the performance of their embeds. With the new dashboard we saw an increase in app.embed.ly logins by 62%!

Updated Cards: Embedly started the year sharing over 46 million cards per month in January, and that number rose to 68 million cards in November. One goal for the year was to improve Cards, so in case you missed it here is the before and after which we released in August! A blogpost was published that provides an update on all the changes and their benefits!

Old Cards:

New Cards:

GOOSEBUMPS - Official Trailer (HD)

Hacking Journalism - Video & Data Science: Early in January we went down to NYC and hosted a Hackathon at Condé Nast focused around how to rethink the ways in which we create, disseminate, and consume video online. With a packed house throughout the weekend, it provided a strong momentum for the year ahead. See the writeup by the Nieman Lab. Later in the year we hosted a second hackathon focused on data science in the newsroom, bringing together a range of data scientists in newsrooms including the New York Times, Washington Post, Vox Media, and Al Jazeera. See a video from the Washington Post on the event.

Vine Integration: Earlier in the year we teamed up with Vine to support Playerjs to officially support Vine embeds. For the details, you can read more about it here.  

Updated WordPress Plugin: The final product update for 2015 is the Embedly WordPress plugin. The plugin improves the SEO of video embeds, provides easier styling options for layout and social buttons. 

Looking ahead to 2016, you’ll see much more on Embedly’s social video recommendations. Just as before, we’ll continue to focus the tools to make them easier to get started with, including Cards and analytics. Thank you for a wonderful 2015, and cheers to an even better 2016! 

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Embedly Cards and Web Components

This post is written by Mark Wheeler. Mark is a developer hailing from Wakelet and you can follow him here: @dribbblemcr

What are Web Components?

Web components are a set of standards that allow the creation of reusable HTML elements.

A quick example?

Web components allow you to create your own HTML tags, e.g.

<image-slider></image-slider>

What this element does is up to you. Even better the JavaScript and CSS are encapsulated by the Shadow DOM which means even if you have clashes between names in two web components, they exist in their own DOM, so there are no side effects (one element cannot affect another!).

Which browsers support this?

There are polyfills for evergreen browsers to get all the functionality for web components.

Embedly Cards and Polymer

Polymer JS is a wrapper around web components that adds some cool extra features.

To use Embedly Cards with web components (and Polymer), first install the component:

bower install pixelcodeuk/embedly-element

Then include the Embedly JS at the top of your page:

<!doctype html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, minimum-scale=1.0, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes"> <title>embedly-element Demo</title> <script src="bower_components/webcomponentsjs/webcomponents-lite.js"></script> <script src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js" charset="UTF-8"></script> <link rel="import" href="bower_components/embedly-element/embedly-element.html"> </head> <body> <!-- put card here --> </body> </html>

Finally add the link you want to embed as a card:

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet"></embedly-element>

Options

Listed below are a few attributes you can set to customise your card:

Card width

Use the width attribute to set the width of a card (omitting this will make it responsive).

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet" width="200"></embedly-element>

Card alignment

You can align the card: left, center or right.

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet" card-align="center"></embedly-element>

Card chrome

Using the show-chrome attribute, you can optionally show/hide extra chrome around the card.

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet" show-chrome></embedly-element>

Card controls

Extra sharing controls to external sites is available with the show-controls attribute.

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet" show-controls></embedly-element>

Card theme

Finally, you can set the theme to "dark" with the theme attribute.

<embedly-element url="https://twitter.com/jack/status/20" link-text="Tweet" theme="dark"></embedly-element>

Full details are here: documentation.

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In Good Company: Major Digital Publications & Brands Also Using Cards

For those who have gotten started with Cards, you’re in good company. Here is a list of major publishers using Cards to customize and post embeds from YouTube, Vine, GFYCat, Giphy, and more. 

If you’re interested in trying Cards out, you can get started on Wordpress, by building your own integration, or making them on the fly.

ABC News posting an Instagram Card

Mashable posting an Apple Music Card: 

Popular Science posting a few GFYCat Cards:

Polygon posting a GFYCat Card:

Huffington Post posting an Article Card: 

The Score posting a Vine Card:

The Independent posting a NBCNews Video Card:

Fox posting Giphy Cards:

The Globe and Mail posting Article Cards to preview their own posts: 

Red Bull posting a Google Maps Card: 

Die Welt posting a YouTube Card: 

HLN posting a Facebook Image Card: 

As you can see, the embeds range from images, videos, giphys, and article previews.  They span internationally, and on pages with millions of views a month. 

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Better SEO for Video Embeds on your Wordpress Blog

How do video embeds impact SEO? Search engines can’t dig into a video embed to see what it’s about. The updated Cards account for this. You can see the difference here:

Embeds

YouTube Embed

Card Embed

Jon Hopkins - "Open Eye Signal" (Official Music Video)

SUBSCRIBE to Pitchfork.tv: http://bit.ly/MgXoZp MORE Music Videos: http://bit.ly/J27abt A skateboarding odyssey in the desert. Artist: Jon Hopkins Track: Open Eye Signal Album: Immunity Label: Domino Records Skateboarder: Chris Chann Director: Aoife McArdle Production company: Colonel Blimp Executive producer & producer at Colonel Blimp: Tamsin Glasson Open Eye Signal is from Immunity out June 3/4 on Domino: http://smarturl.it/immunity-itunes http://dominorecordco.com/immunity.

Embed Code

YouTube Embed Code

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q04ILDXe3QE" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Card Embed Code

<blockquote class="embedly-card" data-card-key="###" data-card-chrome="0" data-card-align="left"&gt<h4> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04ILDXe3QE"> Jon Hopkins - "Open Eye Signal" (Official Music Video) </a></h4><p>SUBSCRIBE to Pitchfork.tv: http://bit.ly/MgXoZp MORE Music Videos: http://bit.ly/J27abt A skateboarding odyssey in the desert. Artist: Jon Hopkins Track: Open Eye Signal Album: Immunity Label: Domino Records Skateboarder: Chris Chann Director: Aoife McArdle Production company: Colonel Blimp Executive producer & producer at Colonel Blimp: Tamsin Glasson Open Eye Signal is from Immunity out June 3/4 on Domino: http://smarturl.it/immunity-itunes http://dominorecordco.com/immunity.</p> </blockquote> <script async src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js" charset="UTF-8"></script;

When you sign in to make a Card, or use the Embedly Wordpress plugin, all videos will be embedded as Cards with the "SEO" option enabled. They will include information readable by search engines to improve findability of your posts. A search engine parses the additional text in the blockquote to index what is posted there. Note that the text is replaced by the embed when it loads. For your readers that information is not important, it is the video that is the focus. This is a solution that works great for reader experience and search engines. Now instead of it just being a YouTube iframe, it is clear this is a Jon Hopkins video.

While social is gaining relevance to drive traffic, search is still an essential component. This small change helps make your embeds SEO friendly. If you're on Wordpress, easily include Cards in your posts with the Embedly Wordpress Plugin.

Make your embeds work better for your blog.

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Product Updates: Google Analytics Integration, Player and Defaults

Some quick updates on a few things we are rolling out today. Besides, who doesn't love new shiny things?

Google Analytics Integration

Starting today, if you are a Cards user you will start to see Embedly events in your Google Analytics dashboard! While we have our own analytics, we know this doesn't always fit with our user's workflow. You will be able to see clicks on social buttons, plays of a video, and when a user clicks on a recommendation.

This is a big win for bloggers trying to optimize content. Here’s what your Realtime Events dashboard will look like.

For users of the API, this will work out of the box with our embeds, just include platform.js and you will start seeing events.

We're always making updates and improvements to what Embedly offers based on what our users are looking for.

Which analytics platforms would you like to see integrated?

You can learn more about the Google Analytics Integration here.

Player

We have had the Player.js integration for awhile now, but it can be a little difficult to set up for a first time Embedly user. With that in mind, we decided to make it a little easier and include a player in platform.js. Starting today, integrating with videos is as simple as:

embedly('player', function(player){ player.on('play', function(){ console.log('User played' + player.url); }); player.play)(); });

No more including multiple libraries, just include platform.js! This works with both API Embeds and Cards.

You can learn more about the player here.

Defaults

For a long time now we have made it easy to customize a Card via data attributes on the actual embed. Now you can customize cards, site wide with defaults. For example, say you want all the Cards on your site to be 700 pixels wide and align left, well now it's this easy:

embedly("defaults", { cards: { width: 700 align: 'left' } });

You can learn more about defaults here.

Bonus

If you are an API user we have a bonus beta feature for you. We are currently testing recommendations in API embeds. Right now we serve millions of recommendations through cards and would like to bring this functionality to you.

You simply need to include platform.js and add the following code:

embedly("recommend");

Embedly will serve 3 video recommendations from your site after the user pauses or ends a video. 6% of users will go on and watch another video on your site. This is a simple and easy way to increase engagement and retention.

Give us a shout and let us know how the feature works for you.

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Learn Where Your Content is Going

Knowing where your traffic comes from can help you understand the audience engaging with your content. Are you a content provider and wonder where your content goes? We’ve made some improvements to our system so now you can. 

By adding "referrer" as a query parameter to all of our Embedly iframes, as a content provider you can now see the page your content is actually appearing on, rather than “Embedly.” 

You’re used to seeing this:

Now you’ll now see something like this:

As a site owner, your blog now will gain more traction with content providers, since they can see all the wonderful videos, images and articles you’re continuously adding for the viewing pleasure of your audience.  This feature will help open doors, or sites around the web. This new improvement will help you see if users are connecting with your brand how you planned, if your outbound marketing efforts are working, and potential areas for new growth.

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An Easier Way to Embed on WordPress

Embedly Wordpress - Why

Why you should use the Embedly Wordpress plugin

We’re excited to share the news that embedding any content with Embedly’s WordPress plugin will be easier than ever before (especially if you’re using versions 3.8-4.3). For a bit, we put ourselves in your shoes, the end user, and have created something so simple, it’s almost fool proof. 

Here’s a rundown of the awesome features you’ll love:

-SEO and Improved Analytics: We’ve been hard at work background to improve the SEO of your blog posts, and we can now provide analytics. You’ll be able to see which embeds your audience found exciting. 

-Styling options available: With so much content produced daily, you know half the battle is making posts look attractive. With the Embedly plugin, you can easily change the size of the embed, the alignment, and pick a design to better fit your blog.  Goodbye are the days of embeds that don’t blend seamlessly into your blog. Hooray! 

-Easy to add/remove social sharing buttons: Who doesn’t want to make it easy for users to engage with your blog rather than scroll through it all without taking any action?  Sharing content is caring about it.

-Recommendations: Our recommendation engine will suggest video content from your own blog that is relevant to your readers. It will surface once your video embed is finished playing.

- We have over 300+ providers: With our plugin you can embed links from just about anywhere around the web. In addition to having the largest number of providers, what we think is even better is all the embeds will better fit into your blog. Regardless of the provider they will all know how to fall into place the same way making them look...well, pretty baller. 

-Light or dark text: If you’re blog theme is a dark one, and needs a light font, we’ve got your back. 

Hooked you on the features? Get started with these simple steps:  

1) First, install WordPress. 

2) Next, head to the WordPress Plugin Store and search for Embedly. Download that plugin.

3) After that, either sign in with Embedly or sign up for an account. If you have an account, you’re set to start embedding. If you’re new, you’ll be taken through a quick sign up session and redirected back to the plugin.

4) Once the plugin is installed, you’re all signed in, the only thing left to do is start blogging. Paste a URL and watch your embed magically appear. 

Here is what your media will look like in your post!

For more on installation and getting started, check out this tutorial:

Embedly Wordpress - How

How to use the Embedly Wordpress plugin

Happy Embedding!

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Bringing Together Data Scientists, Developers, and Journalists for Hacking Journalism: Data Science

Before I begin, just check out the sounds here. This is wonderful.

Sonya Moore on Twitter

Over the last few months Embedly has been working on a publisher product built on top of the video analytics.  Analytics can take time to parse - could there be a tool informed by those numbers that could offer clear actions and value? That’s how Recommend came to be - video recommendations based on what people are finding interesting in real time. 

Those steps from audience behavior to product can be a powerful path. What other strategies are there from data to product? What other tools can be built in the publisher space with this methodology? The last year has seen growth in the data science space in newsrooms. It’s no secret that BuzzFeed’s success is in part because of their strong data science team. 

Making a Space to Share Ideas Around Data Science in the Newsroom

Embedly teamed up with the Washington Post to produce the third Hacking Journalism, on Data Science. After Bezos bought the Washington Post, a data science team began - propelling the news org to the leading edge with their tech, news, and brand. 

Data scientists, developers, journalists, and designers gathered at the Washington Post to share ideas and build prototypes. Participants came from a range of media companies, including AJ+, AOL, Gannett, Hearst Newspapers, National Geographic, NBC Universal, NPR, PBS NewsHour, Pulitzer Center, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Turner Media, USA TODAY, and Vox Media.  

At the beginning of the event there were talks, including one by Rohit, the Embedly Data Scientist, on recommendation systems. People enjoyed the variety of possible recommenders, including the dislike recommender.

Kawandeep Virdee on Twitter

Sean gave an afternoon workshop:

Kawandeep Virdee on Twitter

Sam Han leads the data science team at the Washington Post. He gave a powerful talk on what they're working on, including their virality prediction work.

Kawandeep Virdee on Twitter

Media Coverage

The Washington Post produced video interviews and converage on the event: 

The Washington Post hosts Hacking Journalism event

Here are a couple writeups of the event:

Thirteen cool ideas from the Washington Post/Embedly hackathon - Storybench Hacking journalism: Data science in the newsroom - 3 to read

Projects and Prototyping

The emphasis of Hacking Journalism was to build relationships and learn new techniques.  While some of the projects may go on to production in newsrooms, they should be seen as prototypes to start a dialogue. If you are interested in any of the ideas, reach out to the creators. 

DCSN - Optimize calls to action (like share buttons) based on the reader context, including the referrer and subscription status. 

RenBroc - A method to identify engaging content that otherwise has received little attention. It surfaces articles that have a lot of comments, but lower than expected pageviews. 

Full Story - Given a news story, this tool presents snippets from various articles presenting that story to highlight differences in opinion and framing. 

Quotable - Browser extension that lets you highlight and share snippets of articles. These highlights are used to inform an article recommender, which includes paid articles. 

Dig.it - Surface archived articles relevant to current topics. Determine keywords of trends by using tweets of trending hashtags, and search through the archives using these keywords.

Flinder // Tinboard - Surface content to the reader based on how much time they have to read. 

Audiolization - Easily represent data with sound. 

Journofriend - Choose a subject and get updates from a variety of sources on it using topic analysis and categorization

The Bridge - Analyze a given list of twitter users, and observe trending hashtags in their conversations. 

Content Magical System - Write, edit, and publish articles through e-mail. Designed for publishers with a dashboard to track work. 

Make Me Smart - This dashboard gives press secretaries feeds that include national news, tweets, geographic trends, and government reports around a given issue. 

oldNews - Timehop meets article recommendation. Get recent article suggestions given what you’ve read a year before or earlier. 

File This - Bookmarklet that saves and indexes web pages, extracting keywords and entities for filtering and search. 

David Rouse on Twitter Jessica Morrison on Twitter Aleszu Bajak on Twitter Kawandeep Virdee on Twitter bmuller on Twitter Kurt Yalcin on Twitter

You can find more information on all of the projects here:

HackingJournalism Data Science - HackDash

Thanks!

Hacking Journalism: Data Science was possible with the organizing team: Laura Bucci, Angela Wong, Alex Remington, Leonard Bogdonoff, Lam Thuy Vo, Jeanne Brooks, Matt Carroll, myself, the support of the following companies: Embedly, Washington Post, Conde Nast, Mozilla Open News, Chartbeat, MIT Future of News, Elastic, and Huge, and additional help from Jane Lockhart and Carlos Coral from the Washington Post. 

Leonard Bogdonoff on Twitter

Also my parents came to the event which was the best.

Lam Thuy Vo on Twitter

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Deal Yourself a New Deck of Cards

The Cards you know and love have gotten a bit of a update! We were amazed when we looked at the numbers and saw over 40 million cards are viewed every month, compared to just 12 months ago when that number was closer to 12 million. That’s a 233% jump! We had no idea they would be so popular, but have been pleasantly surprised with their success. 

We’ve seen great adoption on sites like Reddit Live, Red Bull Media, the Score, USA Today, and Slate- along with international publishers like AD.nl, HLN.be, Welt, and De Morgen. 

As a result of their success, take a look at what we’ve done to improve them: 

Old Cards:

New Cards: 

GOOSEBUMPS - Official Trailer (HD)

The first change you’ll notice is the minimalist design. We cut the frills - the border has been changed, the sharing buttons are less obscured, and redundant details have been eliminated. The new design will seamlessly fit into the existing branding on your site, and any content you’re sharing with your users. 

What you’ll see: they are easier to share. Looking at how readers are using the Cards, the importance of sharing is clear. An increase in the visibility of sharing buttons will encourage your audience to share your media. 

The new cards are much much faster! We’ve batched the requests which minimizes the time they take to load. This will keep things swift, and users on your site. 

Likely not a big deal for most of you, but the new Cards have dropped support for IE 8. This was necessary in order to increase the speed of multiple cards on a page. The traffic we saw on IE8 was less than .1% so we don’t anticipate any issues. 

Cards are still free and will forever remain just as easy to use and integrate.   We know you’ll love the new cards as much we do- enjoy!

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In 9 Days,

Hacking Journalism begins.  

Next week we’ll be down in Washington, DC hosting Hacking Journalism with The Washington Post! The mission of the weekend is to bring together journalists, data scientists, developers, and designers to build prototypes exploring possibilities in news media.

You can take a look at the schedule and learn more about the weekend here. 

A thank you to our sponsors for helping to bring the weekend to life- The Washington Post, Conde Nast, Huge, OpenNews, Chartbeat, MIT Future of News, and Elastic.

Follow us on twitter to keep updated on projects throughout the weekend- @embedly

See you down in DC!