The service allows visitors to the site to share the videos with their friends using tools like del.icio.us, Muti, Digg and more and, as you can see, embed videos in their own blogs. Users can also rate videos and monitor the popularity of those videos. This adds to the podcasts and blogs that are already available from The Times and comfortably places The Times ahead of their competition.
Vincent applauded the ex-Rhodes team and I agree with him. Ray, Colin, Carly, Gregor and the team are doing a fantastic job with their online offering and it is about time. Mainstream media is firmly entrenched in old media thinking and, to a large extent, their online presences reflect this mentality. Establishing an online presence creates opportunities to change the way we consume content and how it is presented on the Web. Video, audio and text can be presented side by side or in any combination that works best for the consumer.
That being said, I think The Times could integrate the content better. If you visit the multimedia page there are no links to the podcasts and blogs except through the link back to The Times home page. The multimedia page looks like it may as well be a different site altogether if you ignore the colour scheme so perhaps the videos could be more visible on the main site in some way. The same thing applies to the blogs and podcasts page but I would imagine this is the sort of revision that requires a redevelopment of the site as a whole and that takes time.
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What do you think?