Friday, May 25, 2012

Howcast Reaches 1 Billion Views, Launches New Site

Howcast announced Wednesday the launch of a new website designed to guide users through all videos within a selected search topic. The new design also shows users which videos they’ve already viewed, which is especially handy when watching a series. 


You can also read more about the “experts” featured giving advice in the videos. Vice President of Product Development at Howcast, Tom Bender, told Mashable the new site will be able to better show-off the content.
“We try to find the best possible experts to work with,” he said. A crew shoots 30-40 videos on a given topic — “how to make the best coffee,” for example — and the videos are grouped together. Now, with the new layout, this content will be easier to navigate.
Howcast has another big announcement, too. The reference content site has reached one billion total views. 

Having a wide variety of videos no doubt increases the site’s page view number. “Everything we do is inherently niche,” Cofounder and CEO Jason Liebman told Mashable.
There are some videos that have become super popular, like videos teaching people how to ‘Dougie’ or decorate a cake, which he said typically get a lot of views. Also helping: the site produces 1,000 videos per month and has a video library featuring around 15,000 ‘how to’ videos.
One might think views of a particular video would surge after its release date then drop off shortly after, but Liebman said with videos on Howcast, this isn’t the case. Since nearly all the videos are on “evergreen” topics, the views continue to pour in year after year. 

Howcast launched in 2008 out of demand for “reference content.” Liebman is a former Google employee. He worked on the Google video team and then for YouTube before creating Howcast.

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