Zync™
a research prototype from Yahoo! Research Berkeley

What is Zync?

Zync, a research prototype from Yahoo! Research Berkeley, is a plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger. Zync allows you to watch videos together with your friends, in sync and in real time. Instead of just IMing URLs and waiting for your friends to watch, Zync allows you to converse about a video (pausing, jumping back, and watching together with a friend). Both videos stay in sync. Sweet. :)

To use Zync, load up the plugin and type a message to your friend like:

watch http://youtube.com/watch?v=tScm-eZInBE

Both players (yours and your friend's) will load the video and play, pause, and rewind together, in sync. Zync works with most all Yahoo!, YouTube, and Google videos.

Zync is a research prototype from Yahoo! Research Berkeley. We'd love to hear your questions or comments about Zync.

What's the easiest way to run Zync?

Zync has graduated from a research prototype and is now part of Yahoo Messenger 9.0 beta!

Simply surf over to http://beta.messenger.yahoo.com and download Yahoo! Messenger 9.0. When you send a video link to a friend, you will see a button labeled Watch Together. Click it and Zync will load automatically. Yay!

What do you need to use Zync?

  1. Yahoo! Messenger for PC Kinda need Messenger to run a messenger plugin. :)
  2. Install the Zync plugin.

How to load Zync

Once you've installed Zync, you can launch it by:

  1. Start a conversation with a friend using Yahoo! Messenger
  2. Go to the Actions menu and pick Choose a Plugin...
  3. Click the My Plug-ins tab
  4. Click the Start button
  5. You or your friend can then send the messages like watch http://path/to/video to start watching videos together

Whew! if that was too much, you can just click one of the links below and start watching by clicking on the links below.

Start Watching

You can start watching by checking out some of our lab favorites:

You can also check out the top five YouTube videos of the day.

Embed it

To embed a Zync launcher on your website or to GreaseMonkey it, check it on the Yahoo! Developer Network.

Feedback

Questions or comments? Please send us a note via email.

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