Gannett in new online video distribution deal

GCI said today it had picked a Seattle company, thePlatform, as its new video publishing service. If I've got this right, thePlatform (what an awkward name!) will replace the Feed Room as the service that gathers, stores, distributes and publishes videos for all the company's websites.

Online video is looking increasingly like a source of big, fast ad revenue growth for the company; it could run millions of tiny paid advertisements in front of videos if it can produce more and get them on more websites. In a statement by thePlatform, Gannett Digital President Jack Williams said: "We needed a centralized, scaleable, and easy-to-use video management system as we expand our offerings and tie our sites together into a cohesive network."

But I was pretty confused when I went to five of the sites thePlatform listed as existing customers -- CNBC, Court TV, E!, Helio and the BBC. The video players on all five didn't include embeddable code. No code, no lucrative viral spread of videos across blogs and other websites.

Now, maybe those three companies all chose to keep the code private on purpose, though I don't know why they would. Can any of the IT readers or webmasters out there explain more? Please e-mail me. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.

Tech 101: The exciting embed code!
Actually, knowing what it looks like and how to use it isn't such a bad thing for a 21st century journalist. Check out the following screen shot of the flip side of a YouTube video player. The code is right there, below the word embed. You copy that code to the clipboard, then paste it onto your blog. Wham! Now your readers can watch one of, say, the Des Moines Register's politics videos -- including any paid ads -- without even being on the Register's site. And the Register gets ad revenue whenever, and wherever, those videos play.