[dools]

The fundamental problem here is that I don't know if I want to tweet about a video before I watch it. A tweet is like an endorsement, especially when you have the extreme burden of more than 10 twitter followers (as I have) - you have a responsibility to your adoring public to ensure you fill your stream with high quality, relevant content.

All jest aside, I think it's a great idea to have the ability to tweet during a video as a seamless experience.

You've chosen a great example with Mixergy. Andrew's interviews are LOOONG and I'm frightfully busy. I love watching his videos but I rarely make it through to the end. If I have a tab open with hootsuite in it I'll quite often hop across and tweet that I just watched the video, if the video were totally awesome I'd open up a tab to get to hootsuite and tweet about it but if it's nice and interesting but not bone shatteringly good, no-one but me and Wistia's video hosting stats will know that I watched it.

If, however, the "Are you enjoying this video? Click to tweet about it right now" came up during the first half of a video, I'd be far more likely to spread the word about what I'm watching more often. Obviously it would have to be less obtrusive than it is now and it shouldn't interrupt the flow of the video at all.

[smbwrs]

Agreed. If I was forced, or even prompted, to tweet before watching a video, there's a very strong chance I'd just close the damn tab. Don't force me to promote your content before I have a good reason to.

Seamless tweeting mid-video seems pretty useful, though!

[podperson]

I completely agree and would add one more point:

You may get tweeted by doing this but you might not like the tweets. I'd think a better solution would be to let the user tweet part-way or at the end of the video (but of course this may be harder). It's certainly easy to do where you control the player, but that's obviously not the case with YouTube.

[jordanlyall]

I think the bottom line is, if it's something of interest, a tweet is a small price to pay. If it's not worth it, you'll move on. The hope is that the viral growth makes up for the drop-off. We shall see.

[docgnome]

But... how do I know it's worth the "price" before I've seen it? Or am I missing something?

[jordanlyall]

If it's coming from a source you trust.

[simonw]

But I know that the "source I trust" hasn't watched the video yet, because they can't have, because they are forced to tweet about it before they have seen it.

[johnrob]

Nobody complains about referring friends as a way to ascend pre-release invite lists (i.e. http://www.socialcam.com/). How is this any different?

[rocktronica]

The artificial scarcity on beta apps is understood but unavoidable, if that's the route the app makers are going.

Telling me to bother my friends before I can watch a video that I can get w/ a quick Google search or view-source is another matter.

(That said, nice little script you made. Pretty clever!)

[ojbyrne]

Actually I find that practice kind of pernicious. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[TimothyBurgess]

It only took me a minute or two to write a javascript bookmark (i.e., paste this in as browser URL) that will bypass the tweet requirement:

        javascript:a=window.frames[0].document.getElementById('bg').src.split('/');a.pop();window.location.href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v='+a.pop();

It's only been tested for the OP's site (and will only work for his particular page structure) but the point is that it could easily be adapted for any one of these.

[shaggyfrog]

The OP should seriously reconsider how useful such a technology really is if you've really figured out a workaround to eliminate it 2 hours after launch.