Montreal Tech Watch

WatchMojo has relaunched with new features this week, and they are beginning to take the spot of number one video startup from Montreal for me. (Well there is also yulbuzz who is very innovative, but it seems those guys are on holidays.). If this is the first time you read about watchmojo, they produce videos, and then distribute them to as many portals and web destinations as possible.

The most noticeable improvement is the new customized video player. It’s much more slicker, and has a widescreen format of 480 pixels by 270 pixels, which practically doubles the size of the video shown. The player also has user sharing, program guides, and can now be toggled to full-screen. Check the following video, featuring watchmojo.com’s CEO, where he profiles myspace.com:

I find the video player to be on par with watchmojo’s production quality.

For the back end, watchmojo now uses Typo3 as the CMS, and bliptv for the video platform. According to Ashkan, Typo3 allows them to categorize and tag their content, which should make the user experience more friendly. Tools for social bookmarking have also been added to each video page. All of this is very impressive for a company that is just 18 months old. (did I mention they have produced more than 4000 videos?)

I am not sure now where they are going market-wise, and still feel overwhelmed by the quantity of links avalaible in each page. I think the next logical step for them is to hire a good Information Architect and designer, someone like Guillaume Thoreau, so that people would actually feel welcomed to the site.