‘Tis the season to send a personal video greeting!

Chestnuts are roasting on open fires and it’s the time to start thinking about holiday greetings for friends and family. If licking stamps isn’t your thing, send the gift of good video tidings by uploading your own unlisted video or creating an original video production with some new video web applications, tailored for the holidays.

Upload a personal video greeting and share it with an Unlisted link
Get the family together, put on a funny hat or sweater, and gather ‘round the webcam! You don’t have to broadcast your greeting to the entire YouTube community (unless you want to). When you upload your video, mark it as “Unlisted”. Then you can share it with only those people who have the URL. We just launched a new notification on the video watch page that lets people know the video is unlisted.

If you don’t have a video camera handy, have no fear. Check out these three free web applications can help you create original personal videos from text and images and easily upload them to YouTube.

Produce an original animated video with Xtranormal
If you can type, you can make a movie with Xtranormal, trust us. Simply compose a script and have holiday characters animate the message for you.



Make cool video slideshows with Stupeflix
Tell your story with unique video creation tools like instant preview, maps, text-to-speech.
It’s free and easy to try: no signup required, videos under 60 seconds are free.



Share your video greeting in minutes with Animoto
Animoto’s three new holiday video styles will be the greetings people remember. It’s fast, free, and ridiculously easy.

I hope you’ll have fun with these tools and enjoy a happy holiday season full of video!