A link isn't a sharing strategy
When I joined Vidcast, sharing meant one thing: copy a link. There was no concept of who could see it, no way to control access by team or domain, no password protection, and no way to surface content to people who hadn't been directly shared a link.
For Vidcast to work at the enterprise scale Cisco needed, we had to solve two connected problems: who can see this video? and how does the right content reach the right people?
Designing the permissions model — first principles
I started from first principles: what are the real use cases for sharing a video, and what level of access does each one require? The result was four distinct permission tiers, each with a clear mental model.
Building the system that makes content findable
Permissions solve who can see a video. Discoverability solves how content surfaces to the people who should see it. I designed three interconnected systems that together account for 19% of all platform views.
Playlists
Curated collections of videos — ordered, titled, and designed for sequential consumption. Built as a module-based system so any video can live in multiple playlists. 15,970 playlists created to date.
Pages
Flexible module-based content hubs — combine videos, playlists, text, and embeds into a structured page. Built for use cases like team onboarding, event recaps, and learning libraries. 3,949 pages created to date.
Homepage & Feed
Personalized discovery surface surfacing recommended content, recent uploads from followed creators, and company-wide broadcasts — all filtered by the viewer's permissions.
Creator Profiles & Company Pages
Public-facing pages for individual creators and companies — giving viewers a browsable archive of all discoverable content from a single source.
The third pillar in action
Discoverability was always the third pillar of the Vidcast product strategy — the system that makes Creation and Consumption actually reach people. The permissions model gave enterprise users the control they needed to share confidently. Playlists and Pages gave them the tools to curate and publish. And the homepage gave viewers a reason to come back.
"19% of all platform views now come through Pages and Playlists — content that wouldn't have been watched if it relied solely on direct sharing."