The WatchUWant Blog

WatchUWant Evolves

adambossy — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:19:27 +0000

We’re working hard to personalize the video experience on the ‘net. Today, we’ve gotten one step closer! We’ve released a much-improved version of our site that offers a slew of video discovery options!

Highlights of the improvements we’ve made:

Trends
View the latest Twitter trends, upcoming movies, video games, and more. This feature was already part of the website, but since it’s helped us find so much great content, we’ve moved it to a focal point of the website:
Discover
Don’t know what to choose? Randomly “discover” a channel and we’ll choose for you!
Design
The entire site has been re-designed. There are even more improvements in the works!
Speedups
Our code has been streamlined to be much, much quicker. If you have any speed problems, let us know!

For more updates on the site, follow us on twitter.

A Much Better Viewing Experience

adambossy — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:33:18 +0000

You asked for it, so we gave it to you! In response to the many requests we’ve received to give you more control over videos, we’ve implemented the following:

Watch the previous video in a channel
Rewind/Fast-forward a video
Full-screen mode
Volume controls

Check out the new changes here!

Additionally, we’ve given the logo a snazzy makeover to go along with our up-and-coming website re-design!

As always, let us know what you think!

Vote WatchUWant in the Boxee Challenge!

dmolnar — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:03:08 +0000

We’ve created a WatchUWant app for Boxee, the most excellent social media center for Mac, Linux, and (soon) Windows. Boxee makes it easy and fun to organize your media for a “lean-back” experience, which makes Boxee a natural fit for WatchUWant’s seamless channel creation. Plus Boxee has awesome features for sharing and recommending what you watch with others!

Enough talking, here’s a screen shot:

WatchUWant on Boxee!

We’ve sent our app to the Boxee Dev Challenge. This means we’re competing with other apps on Boxee for votes from expert judges, and from you! This also means WatchUWant will be available soon for installation right from within the Boxee App Box. So if you download Boxee, you will be able to WatchUWant with the push of a button! We’ll update this post as soon as app is pushed out and available.

Check out the Challenge (and vote for WatchUWant!) at the boxee blog.

We have a winner!

dmolnar — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:48:18 +0000

Thanks to everyone who contributed to our name contest. We have a winner!

Riley J. Goodside will receive $100 and the thanks of a grateful start-up for his name suggestion. We’ll have more news about Riley’s suggestion and future names, but first we want to share some even bigger news…watch the next entry!

Congratulations to Riley, and thanks to everyone who submitted a suggestion!

What’s In A Name?

adambossy — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:24:14 +0000

At the risk of sounding clichéd, I feel it would be distasteful to discuss names without a reference to Shakespeare’s magnum opus. Why are we talking about names? Because we’ll give YOU $100 if you come up with a great name to re-brand WatchUWant. More details here.

The website is coming along smoothly. We’ve recently added:

1) A share button.

2) Search tips.

3) A Twitter account.

4) RSS feed for Featured Channels.

Use these! We’re trying to build a website that brings us as close to YOU, the viewer, as much as possible. Feel free to suggest any additions you’d like to see on the site. We’re all ears.

We’ve got plenty in store for you already! We’re currently working on adding player controls, a highly requested feature. Additionally, we’re revamping the layout to make it easier on the eyes. Oh, and Boxee support! Which we love and you should too.

WatchUWant iPhone App

Arvind — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:44:25 +0000

Hey folks, check out a video of the WatchUWant iPhone app, made by Felipe, our iPhone whiz. It offers most of the functionality of the website, plus a nifty “To Go” feature that lets you save channels to watch when you’re off-line. You never have to be bored on a plane again. Or on a road trip, if you’re in the passenger seat

It will be in the App store soon. We’re also starting to build apps for other phones. We will have updates soon!

A simple beginning

Arvind — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:30:46 +0000

There is an essentially infinite amount of video on the Internet. However, most of it is not worth watching, and the good stuff is hard to find. What if there was a service that could automatically separate the wheat from the chaff, recommend new and interesting content, and moreover, tailor its selection to you? That’s watchuwant.tv.

Our interface is very simple, but already quite powerful. Whether you’re looking for inspirational, informative, amazing or just funny videos, you will find the that our site gives you much better results than searching on YouTube. Over the last 6 months, we’ve developed a number of algorithms that analyze the metadata to improve quality. We have also streamlined the interface–if you don’t like a video on our site, all you have to do is hit the Next button. Try it, we think you’ll be addicted

We’re just getting started, and we’re adding features rapidly. You can help us out. Spread the word. If you find a channel you like, tweet it. Give us feedback on how we’re doing! Subscribe to this blog, so that we can have a conversation with you. What features would you most like to see?

We’ve applied to Y-Combinator for seed-stage funding, and we’re looking for hackers. Is that you, or someone you know? Drop us a line!