We're pleased to announce that on Wednesday of this week we enabled Facebook Connect on MTV.com. We know how much you use Facebook and we wanted to make it easier for you connect with each other and your friends.
Facebook Connect will allow you log in to MTV.com and participate in the community using your Facebook account. In addition to commenting on videos, photos and news, you'll now be able to share your MTV.com activity with your friends by publishing a story to your Facebook news feed.
If you already have an MTV.com account you can link it with your Facebook account by (1) clicking on the Facebook connect icon in the comment section on any piece of MTV.com content, (2) editing your profile and clicking on the "This Commuinty" tab, or (3) checking the box on the Log In page if you're logged out.
This morning, we launched a new version of our Home Page. Prior to arriving at this design, we tested a variety of layouts and concepts with audience members. The one you now see is a combination of the response from our research and our new editorial goals for the site.
Our first goal was to make the site easier for you to use and to find the content you're seeking with less effort. We changed the sitewide navigation in the header to feature at-a-glance style pulldown menus. No more annoying flyouts that are hard to get to!
We heard loud and clear that the rotating background art was visually pleasing, so we decided to keep that. The existing large rotational promo unit, which we call the Marquee, was also favored over other layouts so that's staying as well. These two elements should be familiar to you regular MTV.com users.
Secondly, we wanted room on the page to deliver you more timely, relevant content both from MTV as well as from others across the web. That was the motivation behind The Daily Fresh module. Multiple times a day, we'll be handpicking fun, cool things that we think you'll enjoy. (So keep checking back!) Very soon, there will be a way for you to tell us about cool things you've found as well. We know that you guys are in the know too.
The Daily Fresh will also be a way for us to spotlight and highlight our audience--that's you. We might pull out a good comment from a music video, or find a cool photo or video uploaded by our community members to their profiles and put it on the home page. We've got to call out talent when we see it. You guys are a creative bunch and you deserve to be seen.
Just a few other things. MTV.com is now the front door to all our our brands: MTV, MTV2, mtvU, MTV Tr3s and MTV Music. We wanted to be sure that MTV.com's home page reflected what all the brands were up to because there's a lot going on. We're continuing to work on ways to better connect with you and help you connect with your friends and other shows and music fans. In fact, we're launching Facebook Connect on the site soon which will make it much easier for you to lend your voice and share content. And because someone has to pay the bills, we'll be working with our advertising partners to innovate and experiment with new ad models.
Please let us know what you think. Leave us comments below--we'll be checking!
Yesterday, we discovered a poll containing content of a highly offensive nature within the section of MTV.com for the “Rob & Big” show that resulted from an apparent intrusion of the polling tool on our site. MTV does not in any way condone the hateful remarks contained in this poll, and we offer our sincere apologies to those directly mentioned within it, the show’s fans, and visitors to MTV.com who were exposed to it.
The poll was immediately removed from MTV.com, and further investigation into additional potentially insensitive or inflammatory material has been conducted and concluded as of yesterday afternoon. Additionally, the MTV.com polling system is completely separate from our community platform, and there was no breach of MTV.com user profile data or our internal network security.
• Prove the depth of your devotion by taking MTV quizzes
• Challenge your friends to beat your scores
• Climb the leaderboard to become the recognized most knowledgeable fan of a show (or shows) among your friends or across all of Facebook
• Show off your achievements by adding MTV Show Quizzes to your profile
• Keep watching for new quizzes, because we'll be looking for new ways to measure your MTV intelligence and we'll add more shows all the time
It's time to put what you know about MTV series like The Hills, The Real World, MADE and more to the test with MTV Show Quizzes. We're looking to sort out the people who watch the shows from the truest, bluest, hardcore fans. How can you show that you've got the goods? Put your wisdom on the line and take a quiz!
Want more MTV?
Check out the MTV Music Videos app to watch more than 16,000 videos on Facebook!
Find and watch MTV’s library of 16,000+ music videos
Create a list of your favorite videos and see your friends’ favorites
Create music video playlists and watch videos
Share music videos with your friends
Watch music videos in full screen
Thanks to all of the fans who’ve sent us their feedback – and please keep it coming! We’ve been listening and we’ve upgraded this application to add playlisting, favoriting and more ways for you and your friends to stay in touch and share what you're watching.
We’re continuing to make improvements…stay tuned and check back for updates. We’re working on additional playlisting features, video suggestions, and much more.
Watch videos, invite your friends and let us know what you think.
We’re happy to announce the public availability of the MTV Networks Content API. For the past few months a select group of developers have been helping us through our “private beta” period and now we’re ready to go public... But still beta. Our API will allow web programmers access to our content - like music videos - in an easy way.
Initially we’re making every music video in our archive (plus all the related metadata) available through our API.
Not sure where to start? Check out the documentation, read the latest blog entries or drop us a line on the message boards. We're building, tweaking and adding new features all the time, so be sure to visit this site frequently for the latest updates.
We’ve got more widgets up our sleeves, too. Feel free to take this widget and jam it on your Myspace pages, blogs, Facebook profiles – just about anywhere! Just hit the grab me button and you’re all set.
4/14 Update: Thank you for the feedback on our new video player. For those who have had trouble watching our video, we appreciate your tremendous patience. We've been working hard to tackle all the problems that have been coming up. It can take time to figure out and reproduce an issue sometimes when we don't get many specifics, and we want to make sure we've tested our fixes thoroughly. For many of you who have been able to enjoy the new full episode video player, we have improvements on the way. Your feedback is invaluable, so please continue to let us know what you think.
3/18 Original Post: We're truly excited to launch our new full episode video player in time for the new episodes of The Hills premiering on March 24. We've been working hard to pack this new player with lots of improvements over our old video player. There's also many more features we have in store for you, and once it's more proven, we'll start rolling this player out to other shows.
We're still working out some kinks and tweaks but check out what’s new below. In the meantime, definitely let us know what you think… what you like, what's not working, what can be better, and anything else you’d like to see in our new video player. We may not have time to reply as much as we'd like, but rest assured we're reading and listening to your comments.
Before
After
Watch larger video with up to 3x improved video quality, color fidelity and resolution than previous video players on mtv.com without downloading additional software.
The video player will automatic detect and dynamically optimize the streaming content to the highest level bit rate your internet connection can support for optimal viewing experience. Our Flash videos stream from 1.7 Mbps for higher connection speeds to 350 Kbps for modest connection speeds. Also, the player automatically displays 4:3 (full-screen) or 16:9 (widescreen) video in their native aspect ratio. We still give you the ability to change display sizes and optimize the bandwidth settings, but designed the video player to give you the best viewing experience without you having to do much but sit back and enjoy.
We've redesigned the webpage to give the video center stage with minimal clutter, and not in a pop-up. The layout is optimized for 1024 x 768 monitor resolution in mind, so even the large view fits perfectly on your screen. Relevant content like songs from the episode and After Shows, along with access to other episodes of the series, are now one click away.
Watching our shows online doesn’t just have to be passive. Our audience is part of everything we do and we want to hear what you think about the show via comments and ratings, share your favorite episodes with the community by adding to your profile, and share with your friends by posting or sending them the URL.
WOW. We've been tracking your support for the adorable Jonas Brothers and their latest video--and we're totally bowled over. And I'm sure that the Jonas Brothers would be too. While you got your fan mojos on, you actually helped us uncover a bug in our comment counter on the video page! There is a fix currently in the works now so that we can allow an unlimited number of comments. The good news is that all the comments were actually recorded, it was just the count that was off.
We decided to do a little housekeeping while the fix is taking place, so we eliminated all duplicate comments just to make it easier for you to get through them. Half the fun of watching the video is seeing what people have to say about it, right? We wanted to make it easier for you to see more comments at once. It's not our general policy to delete duplicates, but given the circumstances we figure you'd understand.
We alerted our Music & Talent department to all of your efforts and they're letting the Jonas Brothers' label know how active and motivated you guys have been around the band. We were definitely impressed by your organization and mobilization so we passed the word on.
MTV News has been bringing you the very latest in music, movies, celebrity and pop culture news for years. On air, online, and on your mobile device, we've always mixed things up and given you the best of everything.
MTV News continues to serve up a blend the day's news updated throughout the day. Our new News homepage allows you to zero in on just what you're looking for.
Want to browse our collection of News, Movies and Video Game blogs? The Newsroom, Movies, and Multiplayers blogs are all accounted for here.
Want to upload a photo from last night's show? Or just browse our Featured User's profile? Click on You R Here, MTV News' user generated concert site.
We've also added our latest and greatest photos, just in case you can't get across the country to see your favorite artist performance or movie premiere in person.
We're rolling out more changes to MTV News in the coming weeks. More news video reports. More ways to sort and subscribe to your favorite types of news. More MTV News.