Open Web Award blog partners response to our win over YouTube ranges from

• the quizzical
  

  Of interest YouTube came second for video, how weird is that?

• to the thoughtful
  

  FFWD- People’s Choice for Video Sharing. Why I like it: Quick and easy video management and syndication.

• to outright enthusiasm
  

  FFWD is the best video sharing network which gathers the best videos on the web, it’s cool that youtube didn’t get the 1st place.

I think the controversy arises because it's difficult to imagine why the lifestream world needs better video sharing without seeing it. So I've compiled these screen shoots to illustrate the difference. I've used friendfeed because it is complimented for handling media (like videos) better than other lifestreams (uh yes, unpublicized feature ffwd can be integrated with freindfeed and soon Facebook), so the gap I'm about to show ffwd fills is even bigger with relation to a more barebones service like Twitter.

The actual lifestream entry...

without ffwd

with ffwd

ffwd advantages are: bigger thumbnail, title not prefaced by unnecessary source site information

These are cosmetic issues and I believe when you use friendfeed's bookmarklet the resulting post looks more like the ffwd post. However, there is something to mention about the bookmarklets that is illustrative of why you might need both: friendfeed's is for sharing anything to friendfeed, ffwd's is for sharing videos to anywhere. I use the ffwd bookmarklet to share a video simultaneously to friends-on-email and Twitter and Friendfeed and Facebook (not available outside of the labs yet). Whereas the Friendfeed bookmarklet is more about who you are sharing to namely your Friendfeed subscribers and the conversation with them, The ffwd bookmarklet about the videos I'm sharing and others watching them.

This focus on watching the videos recommended by a person is reflected in the UI. When you link through Twitter to a video on YouTube, you reach a page like this:

Whereas the page you would reach if you used ffwd is:

ffwd Advantages are: a landing page all about you - your thoughts, favorites, personality, etc, where you as curator is recognized as the "source" of the recommendation rather than the site that simply hosts the video.

Even the ffwd button has been infused with the essence of you. It will guide the visitors exploration through previous videos you have shared, and videos from channels you subscribe to. It's like you had your own web TV station.

The last benefit is primarily for your followers. Instead of a nondescript TinyURL, the ffwd share bookmarklet posts a URL that explicitly indicates that the content is a video. It's a simple thing, but a key UI optimization when you are dealing with only 160 characters.

In summary, the ffwd bookmarklet optimizes sharing video on Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook or any lifestream (just let us know which ones) by making it easy for followers to recognize your video recommendations and watch them. Please read more, install the bookmarklet and Twitter connect (you'll need an ffwd account) or see it in action.

For you Twitter vanguards, we just launched three features that are a simple way to act on four of Guy Kawasakiʼs tips for be coming Mr. Goodtweet:

• Tip 5: “Always be linking”,
• Tip 6: “Establish yourself as a subject expert”,
• Tip 7: “Incorporate pictures and other media”,
• Tip 8: “Use the right tools”.

If you are logged into your ffwd account the titles below will link to where you can get the three components

Twitter Connect
Guyʼs Tips: Always be linking, Other media
Populate your Twitter stream with useful video information ffwd channels (a compilation of the best videos on a topic crowdsourced from all over the web) you are watching. ffwd share Bookmarklet
Guyʼs Tips: Use the right tools, Always be linking Standardize and simplify the sharing of videos from nearly anywhere on the web. Instead of finding and learning the sharing function for every site you find a video on,
just click on “ffwd share” for a consistent UI to share a video with your friends or save it as a favorite. Your
shares will be add to the ffwd index, a collective wisdom on the best videos out there and now with ffwdʼs Twitter Connect post to your Twitter feed.

Personal Video Lifestream
Guyʼs Tips: Establish yourself as a subject expert, Other media
Launch a virtual television channel that you control. Videos from all over the web that youʼve shared, saved, and tweeted, as well as any channels youʼve subscribed to are collected in one place which your followers can subscribe to. The UI of the page transforms a list of videos into a channel surfing joy: no scrolling and clicking necessary. Your followers just need to watch your discoveries and click the ffwd button to bring up the next video when theyʼd like to move on.

ffwd share Bookmarklet
Guy’s Tips: Use the right tools, Always be linking
Standardize and simplify the sharing of videos from nearly anywhere on the web. Instead of finding and learning the sharing function for every site you find a video on, just click on “ffwd share” for a consistent UI to share a video with your friends or save it as a favorite. Your shares will be add to the ffwd index, a collective wisdom on the best videos out there and now with ffwd’s Twitter Connect post to your Twitter feed.

It’s remarkable how a few simple pieces of technology when combined can create an enormous value proposition. If “you are what you eat” gave way to “you are what you watch”, then maybe now it’s giving way to “you are what you tweet”. We see this growing into Twitter Television: the ability to watch video tweets in real time like a television channel. We look forward to your feedback, but more importantly we look forward to see what you tweet to your channel, so we can discover it too.

Our relationships to favorite offline places comprise: visiting often, spending time, making commitments, and bringing or referring friends. These are the measures of success for online places too, often just shrouded in the technocratic language of website analytics: return visits, session length, registrations, and virality.

The drivers in offline places are the people, our hosts, encouraging us to "Come again", "Sit a spell", "take a frequent visitor card" and "Make room at the table". Coffee shops, hotels, retail stores succeed when they package these simple values consistently and the same is true for websites.

For instance, at our recent company off-site (watch the video) we decided to target our product development at increasing returning visits and virality (we already have strong performance in engagement and registrations). The work ahead of us is to work out the equivalent to "come again" and "make room at the table" for next generation television. First generation television was (whether self-aware or not) a hospitality industry too - take "Same Bat time, Same Bat channel" for instance. In a sense the television industry's transition looks like a bizarre world where you once had same chain hotels in every city and suddenly anybody can build a hotel and there is just one giant city. It's mother of all Chance cards in Monopoly.

Our solution? Build a custom hotel for every guest. So expect to see the good people of ffwd roll out reasons for you to come again and make room for your friends over the next few months as we improve your personal hotel (your personal adaptive channel) on the video web.

(First a big thanks to Josh Lowensohn for letting this lowly Mac-not-running-parallels slob check it out on his machine)

Clearly this is the most web-app friendly browser, ever. Whereas Firefox 3 enabled some great new technology (like Feedly), Google's Chrome gives due to all the existing web-app technology by recasting the essential metaphors of the browser from the perspective of web-apps rather than web-sites, for instance stand alone windows and shortcuts for applications. ffwd was designed to be such an app and I'm glad to say it runs great on Google Chrome. How could it not with exceptional support for Javascript and WebKit rendering? However I'm disappointed with one major decision: putting the tabs at the top. Granted the web-application world can feel good about giving the application names top billing in the window, but there would have been far more benefit in moving them to the bottom. If they had been moved to the bottom, then the browser-as-desktop look would have been complete. OS X, Windows, and most flavors of Linux dock active applications at the bottom of the screen. Immaterial of whether that's the best UI (which I happen to think it is), copying it would have reduced resistance tremendously to the adoption of web-apps by desktop users.

Google either did not think about it enough or is cynically trying to make the Omnibar look like it's part of every application. A giant search box just isn't the best first line of navigation for every web app. Don't believe me? Take a look at this screenshot of Yelp with the smallest possible Firefox header.

While Yelp has opted to highlight search lower in the UI. In Chrome (I can only imagine since again I'm a lowly Mac user), there would be an extremely confusing additional search bar given priority above the menus. Furthermore the fact that this Chrome-like minimalism is possible but so uncommonly used in Firefox that it has become a selling point for Chrome is further proof that a more desktop-like default layout is a huge missed opportunity.

Either way I hope Google changes it ASAP, otherwise a huge opportunity for the emerging web application space (that's not internal to Google, anyway) will be lost. Web apps will thrive more if they look as much like desktop apps as possible. So, please Google move everything you can to the bottom of the window, so the  javascript menus you went to great pains to process better will have a shot at thwarting the hegemony of "File Edit etc.".