Comments are synced to a video with a time-stamp so anyone can join the conversation with one tap, whether it’s an hour, a week, a year after the initial video release.

It’s been referred to as “second-chance twitter.”

Founded on 6th August 2013 by Jo York and Kev Price, who are based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, the idea was taken from concept to market trial in three months as part of the tech accelerator programme Ignite100.

Reframed allows people to comment on, share and discuss moments in video. Our mission is to improve the experience and depth in which audiences connect with video content, generating engaging relationships between people who are moved by or resonate with the messages at specific moments.

The Reframed interface timestamps comments at the exact moment the user starts typing. This information is used to display the comment at the relevant time in the video, giving them context. The comment activity is displayed visually in graph form over the timeline so users can instantly see the points in the video that are gaining interest and jump straight into those moments.

Users often discuss this activity away from the video on social media sites, which are displayed in the order of the time and date they were made, not at the point in the video to which they refer. So, joining in the conversation becomes more difficult. Reframed syncs the conversation to the video so whether it’s an hour, a week or a month later, people can join in the conversation - in context.

In this way Reframed gathers text that describes the content of a video at a specific point. This is very useful for the content owners and also allows Reframed to deliver specific moments within a video in search results. So rather than just displaying the videos that include certain content in the search results, Reframed can deliver the exact moments.

Live chat style discussion

Comments also facilitate further discussions, which are displayed outside of the flow of the video due to their size. This provides the functionality to publicly discuss the moments within the video in much more detail. Users can participate in multiple discussion threads at the same time.

And all of the activity around each video is available in “real time”, which means other people’s comments are added to the page without having to refresh it.

Comments can be tweeted and a link provided to bring more viewers to the exact point in the video at which the comment was made, known as “deep linking’. Our integration with Twitter goes further, as the entire video also appears in the Twitter timeline and plays from the moment the comment references.

This functionality is known as “Twitter Player Cards” and in order to get them you have to apply to Twitter through a very long process. Twitter worked closely with us to speed u p the process and we are in discussion with them about how we can become more deeply integrated, This could include adding replies and retweets around the video and becoming a media partner on their Amplify programme.

Platform independent

Reframed works with many different video formats, including YouTube, Vimeo, Video.js and self-hosted video. This allows users to comment on and store comments on videos across all these platforms. So whether it’s a TED Talk on YouTube or a documentary on Vimeo, users can keep track of all their comments made on all the videos they have viewed using Reframed. This feature has been described as “Pinterest for moments in video”.

Reframed acts as the glue between video, which can be archived and distributed throughout the web and social media platforms. So it’s all abuout what’s current and what’s relevant. Reframed increases engagement, audience reach and monetisation.

Channels

Channels are a way to group a user’s videos in one place with full moderation tools, which allows the channel owner to promote, hide and edit comments, enabling them to curate interesting videos and influence the conversation.

Embeddable player

The embeddable player brings all the functionaliy of the Reframed player to any website. The interface can be customised to match the look and feel of any website. Just like the channels, the website owner has full moderation tools to promote, hide and edit comments. Certain accounts can be given “Featured User” priveleges, which allows their comments to take centre stage.