Signing Up
The sign up is really straight forward; choose a name, password, username and email. From there, it takes you to a few different screens to help you collect your saved videos from different sites around the web.
Importing
When you go through the typical sign up for a free account, you can import videos from a bunch of sites. This is pretty cool if you are an active video blogger or make a bunch of videos and post them to different sites. One cool import option, if you choose to use it, Popscreen will go through all of your Delicious and Digg bookmarks and look for videos to import if you let it. I don’t typically bookmark the actual video when I read a post with an embeded video, I usually save the page it is embeded to.
Supported Sites
Currently, over 90 sources are supported with more on the way. As you may suspect, larger more well known sites like Youtube, Vimeo and Metacafe have more “pops” than some sites. One site I was surprised didn’t have more pops was ESPN. I would have thought there to be more greatest plays saved.
Live Streams
Sites that offer live streams can be “Pop’d” (bookmarked) as well. I have seen a a good amount of bloggers really embracing live feeds. It is a good way to let get more connected to their audience through live interviews or Q & A sessions. Ustream, Justin.tv and others do just that.
Saving
When you are jumping from site to site and see a video you want to keep, Popscreen makes it super easy for you add the site for late viewing. You can add shows with either a URL, the embeded code or using the bookmarklet. To keep things sorted, you have the option to create playlists.
Sharing
Off to the side of the videos as you watch and also when you add a new video to your library are several links to popular social sharing options: Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon… When you are watching one of your videos and want the permalink URL or the code to embed it into a web page of some kind, you can click the embed tab to the right of the video. This will display both options. It seems these days everyone has a short URL for their site; Popscreen is no different. When you share a video, a short URL (same as the permalink for the video) is provided. Here is an example: http://popd.it/WHV.
I did notice when I used the Twitter share button, there were several extra characters used by blank spaces. Not a big deal to hit the space bar a few times, but still it would be better not to need to.
Conclusion
Overall, the site is really easy to use and the bookmarklet makes adding a video a breeze while surfing the web. Since the site is fairly new and in beta, I suspect there will be more to come in the near future. How did you keep track of your videos before Popscreen?
