People really seem to be enjoying this new ad from Chevy, uploaded to YouTube a few days ago. YouTube has it in the “Trending Topics” right alongside things like the ever-popular Harlem Shake and Asteroid 2012 Da14. Given how much these other things are being talked about, that’s a pretty good start for an advertising campaign.
It should probably be noted that the ad is currently featured on the front page of YouTube, as an actual ad. Still the comments on the video are overwhelmingly positive.
According to YouTube, “Harlem Shake” is the biggest video trend of the month. As of Tuesday, YouTube had seen 12,000 Harlem Shake videos with 44 million views.
As YouTube’s Kevin Allocca points out, the meme first started gaining traction last week, thanks to a video from Filthy Frank, but it was SunnyCoastSkate, who established the form most are familiar with.
“From there, the spin-offs spread very quickly,” he says. “As of the 11th, around 12,000 ‘Harlem Shake’ videos had been posted since the start of the month and they’d already been watched upwards of 44 million times. As you can see in the chart below, over 4,000 of these videos are being uploaded per day and that number is still likely on the rise.”
YouTube has created a playlist with some of the most popular versions. Prepare to feel dumber.
In the past, Jimmy Kimmel has asked people to prank their friends and family around certain holidays, upload the video to YouTube, and let all of us enjoy the lulz. He’s done this for Halloween, by asking parents to tell their children that they ate all of the candy. Hilarious.
He’s asked people to give their kids terrible Christmas presents and their mothers terrible Mother’s Day presents. Both hilarious. He asked people to unplug the Super Bowl at a pivotal moment in the game and capture everyone’s reaction on video. Priceless.
But this time…I dunno Jimmy. You’re playing with fire.
Sony today announced that PlayStation 3 owners in Europe will finally be getting the newly redesigned YouTube app. The redesign emphasizes subscriptions and search. From the PlayStation blog post:
You might have watched YouTube on PS3 before, but get ready for a completely new experience that’s designed for the big screen and PS3 controls. The new app brings you more content, like your subscribed channels, and more ways to find videos, with better search tools, more ways to watch YouTube by pairing your smartphone, and more language options.
The smartphone-as-a-remote feature only requires “a quick pairing process.” After that users will be able to browse video on their phone, then play it on a TV and control the video using the phone. The expanded YouTube app languages now include English, Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian.
The redesigned app on the PS3 can be found under “TV & Video Services” and “My Channels.” The new rolls out today for the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Russia, and India.
Rumor has it that Google may invest as much as $50 in Vevo, the music video property founded by Universal and Sony.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek is reporting that the company is in talks to do so, citing two people with knowledge with the situation. This would reportedly put Google owning less than 10% of the company, and give Vevo a $500 valuation.
Of course, the deal would keep Vevo, an important YouTube partner, pumping music videos into Google’s major video site (which has become a more important property for the company than ever in recent years).
As reported in December, the contract between YouTube and Vevo was set to expire, but the contract also had some kind of four-month extension clause, which would really push the deadline a bit further in the future. Either way, it’s still looming.
Bloomberg shares a statement from YouTube’s Chris Dale, who says, “While we don’t comment on individual negotiations, we always hope to renew our relationships with valuable partners so we can continue to provide YouTube users with the best possible music experience,” Chris Dale, spokesman for Google, said in an e-mailed statement.”
Earlier this week, Vevo announced a new partnership with Disney, which will see Disney curating family-friendly music video content on Vevo, and Vevo providing music videos to Disney.com. The two will also collaborate on original programming.
Google’s Matt Cutts is back online, and cranking out the Webmaster Help videos. He tweeted a link to the second of the latest series today, and this one is about referer spam coming from a YouTube video.
The user-submitted question is:
Why does a certain YouTube video appear to be visiting my blogspot blog? Take this video for example, it keeps appearing in my Blogger Dashboard as a referral..
Cutts says they looked at the video, and found in the comments that there were multiple people complaining about the same problem – that the video spammed their blog.
“This is an instance of what we call referer spam,” he says. “A referer is just a simple HTTP header that is passed along when a browser goes from one page to another page, and it normally is used to indicate where the user’s coming from. Now, people can use that, and change the referer to be anything that they want. They can make it empty, or there are some people who will set the referer to a page they want to promote, and then they will just visit tons of pages around the web. All the people that look at the referers see that, and say, ‘Oh, maybe I should go and check that out.’ And the link – whenever there’s a referer – it doesn’t mean that there was necessarily a link, because you can make that referer anything you want, so there are some people who try to drive traffic by visiting a ton of websites, even with an automated script, and setting the referer to be the URL that they want to promote.”
He notes that some of the other comments on the YouTube video say that its creator is well known, and has no reason to spam people. Cutts notes that it doesn’t necessarily have to be coming from the actual creator.
“The thing to know is that there’s no authentication with referer. Anybody can make a browser, and set the referer,” he says. “You can’t automatically assume it was the owner of that URL if you see something showing up in your dashboard.”
Basically, you should just ignore it, he says.
Google announced the launch of several new measurement features for AdWords for Video designed to bring some consistency among video ad reporting and other forms of media.
One of the features is Reach & Frequency reporting. AdWords For Video will now show you reach and frequency metrics in the campaign reporting interface.
“These metrics give you more insight into how many unique viewers have seen your ad and the average number of times they’ve seen it, helping you better measure against other media such as TV,” says YouTube product manager David Tattersall. “To view these metrics on a campaign, ad or targeting group level, just click on Columns >> Customize Columns and look under the Performance section.”
There’s also a new Column Sets feature, which groups metrics by marketing objective. If you select Branding, you can see how broadly a video has been viewed, with unique viewer average view frequency and average impression frequency data. If you choose Website Traffic and Conversions, you can see website traffic, number of conversions, cost-per-conversion and conversion rate. If you select Audience, you can see follow-on subscribers and follow-on views. If you pick Views, you can see follow-on views and unique viewers.
There’s also a new GeoMap feature if you click “Map View”.
I don’t know if Gangnam Style is completely dead yet. I’m not even going to comment on whether or not it should be. I don’t care if PSY said some anti-American crap one time. I also don’t care that this song is going to be stuck in my head for a day or two now.
Basically, this is really cool and probably took forever to construct – so it deserves a look. It’s multiple flip books, strung together to recreate the video for Gangnam Style, frame by frame. Creator of the video, YouTube user etoilec1, suggests that you watch the original video first so that you’ll have some reference. I don’t think that’s necessary. Everyone’s seen that video enough to know that this flip book nailed it.
About 11 months ago, a severely obese 23-year-old named Robert Gibbs made an impassioned plea for help on his YouTube channel.
“I’m making this video because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried losing weight on my own, I’ve tried doing everything possible – been on diets, been hospitalized. And I’ve always done what needed to be done at the time, then i’d always just gain the weight back,” he said in March of 2012.
Soon after posting, the video went viral, racking up over a million views and prompting a Twitter trend. The video made its way to reddit, where it received even more attention.
Well, he’s just posted an update in the form of a live weigh-in. And he says he’s down over 300 pounds.
In his original plea, Robert said that he was somewhere between 600-700 pounds. He must have started at over 700 pounds, as being down 300+ still leaves him at over 460 pounds.
We all know that YouTube commenters can be a cruel lot sometimes, but in Robert’s case the top comments are nothing but encouragement.
Humanity win.
[via reddit]
Over a year ago, YouTube started a big push toward making the site more channel-centric. Not only did they facilitate the launch of a bunch of new original content channels across all types of categories (sports, automotive, comedy, etc.), but they also changed up the way the site looks to encourage users to subscribe to channels.
In all, Google invested over $100 million into new original channels. Recent reports have suggested that Google is investing even more into original YouTube content.
Now, it looks like Google is looking to offer another incentive for content creators to produce for YouTube, as well as another reason for advertisers to flock.
AdAge is reporting that YouTube is gearing up to launch paid channel subscriptions. They quote multiple sources familiar with the plans who say that the paid subscriptions could debut as early as Q2 of this year.
It’s unknown exactly which channels would launch as part of this new model, but the sources said that users would be asked to pay between $1 and $5 a month to gain access to the paid channels.
According to AdAge, “YouTube is also considering charging for content libraries and access to live events, a la pay-per-view, as well as self-help or financial advice shows.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard talk of new paid channel subscriptions. Back in June of last year, YouTube CEO Salr Kamangar talked paid subscriptions at the Reuters Media and Tech Summit. The main focus was on certain cable channels who could find more success on YouTube with a subscription, but he also discussed other content creators on YouTube being able to charge for their content.
The report indicates that any paid subscription model would most likely be small (25 or less channels) at first.
The big question is whether or not YouTube users think there’s anything on YouTube worth paying for – and if not, who can create that?
Often, when major Internet companies make product changes or announce new offerings, people wonder what that means for their privacy. One example in which we’re currently seeing this is with Facebook’s new Graph Search. Google and Facebook in particular have had to answer to the FTC with regards to privacy issues in the past, and both have to undergo regular third-party audits to make sure they remain in compliance.
Facebook is always making changes to its policies, it seems, and Google launched a major overhaul of its privacy policy last year, enabling it to share data from one product to the next. This continues to draw controversy in some places.
A new documentary called Terms And Conditions May Apply just premiered at Sundance, which takes a deep look into how our use of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other web products impacts our privacy.
The movie was made by Cullen Hoback, who made Monster Camp, and FrICTION.
You can watch the trailer here.
[via CNET]
DIAL stands for Discovery And Launched (I guess “DIAL” sounded better than “DAL”). It also happens that it was created and is maintained by Netflix and YouTube (with input from “a variety of partners”). It’s described as a simple protocol that 2nd screen devices can use to discover and launch apps on 1st screen devices. In other words, phones and tablets can use it to launch apps on TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players.
“For consumers, DIAL removes the pain of having to launch the required app on the 1st screen before interacting with it from their 2nd screen,” the DIAL website (maintained by Netflix) says. “DIAL does not have any significant impact on the 2nd screen’s battery life and the only requirement is that both 1st and 2nd screens are connected to the same home network.”
“For device manufacturers, DIAL increases usage of applications on their 1st screen products (TV, set-top, Blu-ray, etc.),” the site says. “For app developers, DIAL helps link their 2nd screen app to their 1st screen app without requiring a manual launch or pairing process by the user.”
When one app is running, and another app is launched via DIAL, the device starts the app just as if it would if the app were started on the device itself (or from a remote control, which Netflix compares the protocol to repeatedly).
There is no cost or royalty structure attached to DIAL. As long as you follow the terms, anyone can use it.
GigaOm shares a little on why Netflix and YouTube teamed up:
“We realized in the fall of 2011 that we could create some potentially useful 2nd screen experiences,” Scott Mirer, director of product management at Netflix, told me via email this week, adding:
“At about the same time, we learned that the YouTube team was interested in much the same thing – they had already started to do some work on 2nd screen use cases. And so we approached them on collaborating… We also felt that having two major video services define and promote DIAL would help get it more widely adopted as a common solution to a common problem, vs. taking a proprietary approach. It’s been a productive partnership and we’re confident that we’ll get wider adoption because of it.”
More info in the FAQ section.
With the Sundance Film Festival underway in Park City, Utah, YouTube is giving us an admittedly small, but welcome glimpse at some of the action.
Starting today, you can watch 12 Sundance shorts on YouTube.
The short films were hand-selected out of the pool of 64 shorts showing this year at the festival. A staggering 8,100 short films were submitted for consideration, meaning that less than 1% of submissions were chosen worthy to debut at Sundance.
The shorts are hosted at Sundance’s The Screening Room channel, which YouTube says will continue to upload short films from Sundance filmmakers.
“Sundance is known for its diverse range of films, and with everything from trippy cats and zombies to a rooster king and an ambitious rodeo cowboy, The Screening Room shorts are no exception. When the festival ends, Sundance Institute will continue to curate The Screening Room, highlighting cutting edge short films from past Sundance filmmakers and the film festival circuit each week,” says YouTube in a blog post.
Sundance kicked off on January 17th and will run until Jan 27th. We know that the closing night of the film festival will feature the Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs biopic jOBS.
As long as people keep one-upping proposals to suit the YouTube age, there will continue to be a plethora of cute/funny videos to warm our hearts and RUIN IT FOR THE REST OF US.
So this Australian guy decided to propose to his girlfriend by creating a fake boy band and singing a song about an abacus. Yeah, it’s perfect and awesome and she says yes. Did she even have a choice? He compared her to a shovel (girl)!
Public proposals are a tricky thing – just ask the various guys we’ve seen rejected on ballpark jumbotrons in the last few years. But when you do it right, well, you really do it right.
[via reddit]
YouTube just announced that its “Send to TV” feature that turns mobile devices into YouTube remote controls is coming to TVs from LG, Panasonic, Sony and others. They’ll be showing these off at CES next week.
“We want to make YouTube easier and more fun to watch on every screen, including the big one in your living room,” a YouTube spokesperson tells WebProNews.
In a blog post, YouTube’s Francisco Varela says, “This year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), we’re bringing that mobile/TV pairing feature to devices from our friends including Bang & Olufsen, LG, Panasonic and Sony. In 2013, you’ll see this feature come to even more devices like those from Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Vizio, Western Digital and others.”
“These new devices will also have the latest look and feel for YouTube on TV, letting you watch HD videos and channels on the big screen with everyone at home,” Valera adds. “Catch the latest videos from your subscriptions, watch playlists full of 1080p videos and find the next great video faster with search suggestions.”
YouTube is currently available on 400 million devices, and people watch over 25% of all YouTube videos on mobile devices. The Send To TV feature was first launched in Novmeber on Android devices and Google TV.
As we told you earlier, South Korean rapper PSY’s global megahit “Gangnam Style” hit one billion total views on YouTube, making it the first video to ever achieve that milestone. It hit 1 billion views shortly after 10 am ET, traveling at a rate of nearly 140 views per second.
In honor of the achievement, YouTube has released some interesting additional stats on Gangnam Style. Check them out below:
YouTube makes a point to let us know just how fast PSY reach the pinnacle of YouTube popularity. Gangnam Style amassed one billion views in just over five months. To put that in perspective, it has taken Justin Bieber’s “Baby” (#2 on the all-time most-viewed list) nearly three years to hit 800 million.
YouTube has also added a little dancing PSY next to the view count:
If you’ve somehow escaped watching the first-ever billion-view video, here it is: