Today's Update

What's New:

• Wall - A place where you can just leave random comments! (cliche, but they can be fun)
• Leaderboard - Calculates the scores of the entire playlist

And of course bugs, stability and internal fixes, and some UI updates.

FYI or those you who are not interested in these new options, there will be an update coming up where we allow room owners to have more control over the room (only registered members can participate, rules like that), and also a section where you can turn these modules ON or OFF. The tabs also defaults to original synchtube (with Search first) so you can just ignore the new features as well if you are not interested in them.

cheers,

~mrchess

Synchtube TV is back!

Thanks to our architecture change we are excited to announce that Synchtube TV, which initially debuted almost 10 months ago, is now back!

What is TV?

TV is a mode that FULLY automates a room allowing it to function without a leader!

How does it work?

The leader clicks the "Enable TV" button. This will lock the playlist and cause the room to continually repeat the playlist until a moderator or room owner disables TV mode.

When in TV mode, the room will play the playlist repeatedly and the media will be continued to be synchronized.

Why is this useful?

• TV mode is useful for leaders who need to leave when there are no moderators around to "take over". You can put the room in TV mode and leave with the peace of mind that the room will be safe until someone can take over.
  
  
• TV mode is also useful for individual room owners who want to run rooms without being around. You can set up a station for your personal blog/website, set TV on, and just leave!
  
  
• TV mode is just useful in general to relieve you of leader stress -- you don't have to worry about losing or having a leader.

Future of TV?

One direction we are headed in is allowing rooms to become individual TV stations, letting rooms have set times to play videos, just like a real TV station. More on this later...

We will also be starting to implement analytics features so you can track the popularity of your room.

TV is still highly experimental so all feedback or suggestions is great appreciated. Please leave any feedback in the comments section -- we read it all.

I know I'm in the blog all the time, but I would also like to give a shout to the co-founder of synchtube, lucidrains, who devised the new architecture and algorithms that improves synching and makes TV possible.

Thanks all.

~mrchess

Extra:

Here is an excerpt of the original TV debut 10 months ago. Pardon the corniness. :)

synchtube TV (beta)

Create your own TV station that streams YouTube videos in real-time. synchtube TV allows you to set up a playlist as if you were broadcasting it as a TV station to the world. People can join

your TV station, watch simultaniously, and chat!

Promote your blog/YouTube Channel/website

• Imagine creating a lounge area with streaming YouTube media be it music or videos where users of similiar interest can come and hang out. Wait, stop imagining! You can do it now with synchtube TV! We hope synchtube TV can be used to supplement your website of choice to further develop your online communities

Create a radio station

• Not into video? Why not create a radio station to broadcast your favorite music. Live personal playlists are so much nicer than anything Pandora can offer.

Not your average synchtube room

• synchtube TV requires NO LEADER. Like real television, content will continue to play regardless if people are viewing or not. Your content will also loop indefinitely -- once it hits the end of your program, it will go back to the beginning of the program.

Today's Update

• Fixed loading of old playlists
• Fixed importing playlists
• Fixed various bugs including a dangerous XSS bug (thanks Binaryheap)

• Added thumbs up down (currently does not save... yet)
• Added username next to video when you add a video (currently does not save... yet)

• Removed individual update bars

New? Any thoughts?

We've got a couple things cooking for new features and stability, but we were also wondering what everyone else wanted.

So I just ask the question:

What can we build for your rooms to make them a better experience?

mrchess

Ads... oh no?

Hey guys.

If you haven't noticed, ads are now on synchtube.

Before anyone flips out I just wanted to say that right now synchtube is a giant hole in our pockets and we need to at least try to break even. That being said, while we did put ads up, we tried to put them up in the most non-invasive way because we all know how annyoing ads can be.

In addition they are closeable, so you can always just click them away!

We also added some "Sponsor" ads on our frontpage. I know a lot of people were interested in giving us donations. We priced the frontpage ones pretty cheap ($20 for 30 days) so please check those out if you are still interested :).

Thanks!

mrchess

What's New This Week?

It has been a tough but educational past week as we migrated our server code to handle the new load. Long story short, things are finally starting to stabilize as we iron out bugs, so thanks for sticking it out.

Features:

• Added a Voting option!
• You can now enable a 'Skip' button (see [Settings] in your rooms)
• You can use this button to vote and skip videos!

Misc:

• Added tooltips to buttons
• Many bug fixes

Upcoming:

• Easier way for large rooms to manage playlists
• Ideas for creative ways to reduce trolling

Shoutouts:

• Yaridovich & Filly rooms for the many bug reports
• animu room for testing vote when it was beta last week
• Thanks to all for reporting "Error 16". We are looking into it.

On a side note I wanted to thank you for writing feedback and e-mails. We read them all, but may not reply to all of them. Keep in mind we are a two person team that handles everything from coding new features, to design, to maintenance, and so on. :)

Cheers,
mrchess

Growth Help

Hi all.

As synchtube continues to grow, we start to tread into unknown web space.

Synchtube is one of the first of its kind to implement such an instant technology stack that lets you watch videos in real-time down to the second.

That being said, I know as much as you do about the future of our technology -- we are in brand new web space. I hear rumors of synchtube crashing sometimes, but unfortunately I am not there to see it. I visit often, and use the service, but sometimes these problems only show themselves when hundreds of people connect at once.

It would be of great help, when synchtube crashes (god forbid) and you think you notice a pattern with it crashing PLEASE post it here so I can fix it.

Thanks again!

Cheers,
mrchess