Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.
It finally happened to me the other day. I became that guy.
I found a hilarious video, decided I had to send it to every person I had ever met, and a lot of people I hadn’t met, so they could share in the hilarity that was this wondrous video. So out went the link.
And in came the responses. “Hi, welcome back to the Earth!” “Where’ve you been? This video was huge, like, forever ago.” I even got called a n00b. Those are zero’s, folks. Not O’s.
So I resolved to find a way to make sure that would never happen again, that I’d be on top of all the funny, awesome, and cool videos that seem to make the rounds of the Web every day. And in about 10 minutes, my problem was solved, in the form of Magma.
Magma is a site that just aggregates the best and most popular videos from around the Web, sharing them with you to keep you updated on what the Web loves. It rates every video with a Magma score – based on how popular the video is at that moment, as well as the number of comments, related videos, and the like – from 1 to 11. I’m sold already – Spinal Tap references are the easiest way into my heart.
The first thing you’ll want to see is the “Must Watch” list, which is ten videos you really need to watch right now. Right now, I’ve got Barack Obama’s health care plan next to a dancing baby, next to “FILTHY HIPPIES EVERYWHERE!” I love the Internet.
Magma pulls its videos from YouTube, as well as Hulu, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and more. It also makes lists of videos that are popular on Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit and others, along with a section of “editor’s-choice” type videos, with selections from the Magma staff.
You can create an account with Magma that lets you save your favorite videos, as well as add videos to Magma to store in your account. With an account, it becomes a video-bookmarking service as well as the popular aggregator, which certainly has its uses in a site that pulls the best videos from around the Web.
Magma wants to be the TV Guide for the Web, saying that “the TV Guide was once THE place to find out what was on TV. In today’s world of digital media, there is a hole in the market and nothing has taken its place.” That’s an awfully bold goal, but Magma’s already keeping me on top of the meme wheel.
N00b? I think n0t.
Photo: budcaddell
They interviewed the guy who started Magma on Net@Night a couple of shows ago. I have to think that there are many other latecomers to all sorts of internet memes (I'm one, too), so maybe something like this can take off. It does seem like a pretty crowded field at times, though.