comScore has released its online video rankings for sites in the United States for May 2012 and it appears to be some more good news for Yahoo. Following last week’s comScore report that Yahoo had finally slowed the precipitous loss of its search market stakes in May, this month’s video site rankings show that Yahoo appears to have gained back in May some of the viewers that it lost in April. The company’s total unique viewers still isn’t back up to March’s 60 million viewers, but at least Yahoo appears to be headed in that direction.
Google sites, which include the very popular YouTube, lost about 6 million viewers in May, which may or may not have something to do with Yahoo’s climb back up towards its March numbers. Then again, one reason Yahoo made some significant gains in May may have something to do with the fact that it was offering over 100,000,000 more videos in May than it was in April.
In other changes from April, Microsoft was bumped down one place by Facebook, Viacom was bumped down one place by AOL, and News Distribution Network bumped down both Amazon and Hulu.
The top five online video ad properties was unchanged from April to May and the second five shifted around very little. Hulu remained the top video ad property by adding about 69 million ads in May, amounting to about 55 million ad minutes. Hulu also delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 56. In other words, Hulu’s really trying to give you the television experience with lots of ads.
Also of note, comScore says that video ads accounted for 21.6% of all videos viewed and 1.9% of all minutes spent watching online video. While the average online video lasted about 6:30, the average video ad lasted about 12 seconds. The amount of video ads posted in May yielded another new record, surpassing the 10 billion mark for the first time.
VEVO continues to dominate the rankings among YouTube Partner Channels. Although it added nearly 27 million new videos in May, it actually lost over 600,000 unique viewers. Excepting the final two spots in the top ten YouTube channels, the rankings for May remained the same.
Although there were a few variations in May’s rankings from April’s, comScore notes that the number of the U.S. audience for online video remained the same at 84.5%.
Reuters is reporting that YouTube may consider selling subscriptions to viewers sometime in the near future. Speaking at the Reuters Media and Technology Summit, Salar Kamangar, CEO of YouTube and senior vice president of video at Google, said that smaller cable channels might have a place on YouTube, and could sell subscriptions through an a la carte option. He also stated that some of YouTube’s “top content creators” want to be able to sell subscriptions as well. Kamangar said the company is talking about subscription options “very carefully.”
The cable channels Kamangar mentioned are channels that have a small audience, and so don’t command many, if any, fees from cable distributors. These channels would lose little by offering their content directly through a YouTube subscription. Obviously, this is a shot across the bow of the cable industry, which is fighting as hard as it can to not simply become another utility industry, pumping out internet connections to homes the way electricity companies or water companies provide their products. Just this week, the U.S. Department of Justice began investigating cable companies for possible anti-competitive practices with regards to Netflix and Hulu.
As for content creators on YouTube, it’s likely that few of them would be able to charge subscription fees on their own. Groups of them could team up, though, creating their own channels. Recently, more for-profit YouTube channel ventures have been popping up, such as Felecia Day’s Geek and Sundry.
I suspect Kamangar said YouTube was discussing the prospect “very carefully” because it knows the uproar that would be caused if YouTube users were suddenly asked to pay for content that used to be free. Still, if YouTube can gather up enough quality content to make it work, it would be another step closer to breaking the cable company monopolies in the U.S. And when that finally happens, premium-quality channels such as HBO can finally be free to sell their content directly to willing customers, even without YouTube.
It’s been three years since YouTube started providing captions for its video content, starting with English and eventually including Japanese and Korean. Today, the web’s top video site announced that it’s adding the first romance language to its collection of captioned languages: Spanish.
Whenever you come across a video that is clearly in Spanish – and the software is smart enough to pick up on many different dialects – you can click on the red button labeled “CC” in the toolbar and select “Transcribe Audio” in order to see the transcribed Spanish text.
Once you’ve enabled the captions for the audio, you’ll then have the option select “Translate Captions” into one of more than 50 available languages.
The caption feature actually uses the same voice recognition algorithms as Google Voice, so if the sometimes strange transcriptions I used to receive when I was using that service is any indication, the captions may not be perfect.
YouTube says that it currently offers captions for over 157 million videos and with more added each day. As you may imagine, there are relatively few videos in Spanish that have the caption feature but here’s one of the few that has gotten the update.
While I appreciate YouTube for finally offering this service for speakers de español, I’m a little puzzled that it took the website this long to finally offer captions for the second most widely spoken first language in the world (Chinese is #1). But whatever, better late than never.
Dr. Melody King, VP of marketing at Treepodia, recently wrote an article called “Pushing Back on Google Penguin: How to Improve SEO with Video Links“. It’s not so much about Penguin, as it is generally improving your ranking using video. Really, this is about doing better in search, regardless of whether you’ve been hit by an update, but with so many hit by updates like Penguin and Panda, webmasters are looking for ways to quickly recover. Done right, video just might be a great way to do so.
We reached out to King to discuss this a bit further. She says a site can bounce back quickly after being hit by an algorithm update, by using video.
“Google starts indexing the video sitemap practically immediately,” King says. “I’ve seen immediately many times, but I hate to state it as an absolute. As soon as the videos are indexed they are eligible to start displaying in the universal search results, and in most cases that means video appears at the top of page.”
On strategies to get maximum SEO value out of video, King tells us, “Put the results of your SEO research into the sitemap creation in a formula structure. I.E. Meta Title = Keyword + Brand + Category + Product name.”
“The goal is to target the long tail searches that are popular & appropriate for your items,” she says. “Doing it in a formula format makes this task super quick and easy. With Treepodia, the retailer tells us the desired formula and we take care of the rest. The formula can be unique for different segments of the catalog too – this piece is valuable to retailers depending on their unique product set and spread.”
“You should host your own videos with a e-commerce video platform, which will allow you to add critical elements such as add-to-cart links, cross & up sell, analytics, etc. This also gives you greater flexibility with the sitemap content (thumbnail image, meta title structure, etc.) and piece of mind that the videos are being indexed to your domain,” says King. “The ability to get videos indexed to your domain that are hosted by YouTube is a recent addition, and it’s reliability is still under debate. However, it is a business decision to decide to ALSO syndicate your videos to YouTube as well.”
“I’d also say that social backlinks are the best, and people are WAY MORE LIKELY to Facebook share a video than a static image or textual product description,” adds King. “User generated product review videos would be the ultimate social video for an ecom shop, since it is likely to be cute, funny, entertaining, etc. (all great ingredients for a viral or semi-viral product video). An ecommerce video platform can also help filter, manage, and A/B test user generated videos for this purpose.”
“YT is the second largest search engine & your site will get PageRank from the website link in the About section – but is it worth it to invest the time to manage the channel? Your call,” she says. “I’d say yes (especially since YouTube is an insanely powerful social avenue – see stats here), but many retailers I’ve spoken to are not drinking the Kool-Aid, yet.”
When asked about the importance of on-page text for video pages, King says, “Actually, we recommend using video to improve the PageRank of existing category, brand, and product pages – especially product pages because of the sheer volume.”
Another article on the subject of video SEO published this week recommends 9 YouTube tips for better ranking. While Amanda Dhalla at Video-Commerce.com elaborates on each of them, they come down to: Don’t be lazy, optimize your titles, maximize descriptive text areas, use annotations, create playlists, encourage sharing, customize your channel, use calls to action for conversions, and be unique.
Chris Atkinson at ReelSEO also posted a good video SEO article this week, discussing video metadata and its search benefits.
YouTube and Google+ were already integrated with one another, but now, with the new app, you can control, save and share playlists from inside the hangout itself. You just have to make sure everyone in the hangout loads the app.
“This also gives YouTube creators more ways to connect with audiences, as we work to build the best platform for the next generation of channels,” a YouTube spokesperson tells WebProNews.
“Everyone can add videos in the Hangout through a search tool in the app, or remove the videos you don’t like,” says Google software engineer Ullas Gargi. “All your friends in the Hangout can drag and drop videos to sort the order in the playlist, or skip forward or backward to play the next one. Click the “Push to talk” button to chat with the group to give props to the best curator, or to hand out reprimands to the friend who keeps adding the 10-hour Nyan Cat video.”
“If you like a video that’s playing, you can share the video with your Google+ circles at any time,” Gargi adds. “Since great playlists are works of art, you can also save the playlist that you and your friends created to your YouTube account as public or private to enjoy later.”
Hangouts have been one of the most popular features of Google+, based on comments we’ve seen throughout the past year, so the more functionality that Google makes available from them, the more people are likely to continue to use them.
With Google+ Local taking over Google’s local search, it will be interesting to see if businesses come up with interesting ways to use the YouTube app to engage with customers and partners.
The YouTube app is available worldwide in over 60 languages. It only works in regular Hangouts (not in Hangouts On Air).
As ubiquitous as YouTube now seems, it’s easy to forget that the company is less than a decade old. In just over seven years, the video sharing website has spread all over the globe and continues to quickly expand into new markets. Despite this, YouTube only operates 46 individual country YouTube sites. This week, Indonesia became that 46th country.
Over on the Official YouTube Blog, Country Marketing Manager Krishna Zulkarnain announced the site’s launch. He stated that, although YouTube is already available in the Indonesian language, an official YouTube for Indonesia will bring its 237 million citizens more relevant videos and highlight content from the site’s sponsors. From the blog post:
We’ve already seen new talent in Indonesia using the power of video to build audiences and careers. “Dancing Cop” Briptu Norman turned his popular Bollywood lip-synching video into national fame. Brother-and-sister act Gamaliel & Audrey went from covering Lady Gaga out of their bedrooms, to complicated a capella versions of Chris Brown, to now working in a studio on an album.
YouTube Indonesia celebrated its launch in style, inviting some of the country’s most popular bands and musicians to its launch party. Some of those musical acts are featured in the video below, along with other bands and musical artists from around the world, wishing the website a successful launch and encouraging the Indonesian people to get creative with YouTube:
Is YouTube testing out a new look for its own homepage? More than likely they do so on a constant basis, but thanks to some images posted at the Google Operating System blog, which is not affiliated with Google, we have an idea of what a revised YouTube start page could look like.
While the redesign hasn’t been confirmed by the official YouTube blog, that doesn’t mean YouTube (and Google) aren’t above testing new features without announcing them first. With that in mind, what would a potential new YouTube homepage look like? Take a look, courtesy of the aforementioned Google Operating System blog (not affiliated with Google or YouTube):
Compared with the current one:
So what do we have? Changing the black in the left sidebar to a grey/white look, coupled with the removal of the YouTube’s popular categories link. Bigger video thumbnails are featured, and, according to the GOS blog, if you’ve watched a video, the associated thumbnail will now include an unobtrusive “watched” label on it. Users who’d like to experiment with the new YouTube homepage can do so by entering the following commands:
If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open youtube.com in a new tab, load:
* Chrome’s JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J)
* Firefox’s Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K)
* Safari’s Web Inspector (how to do that?)
or
* IE’s Developer Tools (press F12 and select the “console” tab)
If you’re an inexperienced user who got intimidated by those instructions, it’s understandable. That being said, there isn’t anything in those four lines of code that will break your browser, so you can rest easy if you’re worried about messing up your computer. Give it a shot and see what you think of YouTube’s potential replacement homepage.
People have been complaining about the YouTube mobile experience for years. It’s just not the same as it is from the web. There are certainly plenty of similar complaints for numerous other popular sites and apps, but YouTube’s mobile apps have developed a reputation for just not being as great as YouTube itself.
The search feature from YouTube’s mobile apps, specifically, will often not deliver the same results as the YouTube desktop search feature.
Google and the YouTube know the mobile experience doesn’t match the desktop experience, and a YouTube product manager has weighed in on the topic in a discussion on Quora.
One user asked, “Why is Youtube’s search from mobile devices so inferior to its web-based search?”
YouTube’s Matthew Darby responded, “Mostly, because not all content is available on all devices. Content owners are given the option to exclude content from some platforms, particularly when monetization is not available. This often means the video you’re looking for isn’t available on that device, and so it’s removed from the search results you see. The most obvious example is iOS, which doesn’t have a lot of content available for this reason, including music videos from the major record labels.”
Update: A source close to the situation tells WebProNews that this response is not totally accurate. For example, the source says, there is major label music video content that is accessible via mobile devices.
Sure, iOS is indeed an example, but plenty of Android users have complained as well, so let’s not turn this into a Google vs. Apple thing. Googling “why does youtube mobile search suck,” the first result is “Does anyone else think the Android YouTube app sucks?” from androidforums.com.
“For some reason when I search stuff on YouTube.com I get much more results than I do on the mobile app,” the user who started that thread complained.
The National Hockey League has come a long way in the last 8 years. From a lockout that was the first in professional American sports to cost a league an entire season, to the overwhelming popularity of the Winter Classic. These go to show how far the league has changed and how far hockey itself has come in the last 10 years. One of the benefactors of this huge growth is David Singer, the purveyor of Hockeyfights.com. In a WebProNews exclusive we were able to ask him a few questions about fighting in hockey, his website, and the state of the game in general.
We asked David when his love of hockey fights began, and how the idea for the site came about.
“In one of the first few games I went to as a kid there was a fight. It’s impossible not to notice the energy it brought to the arena. It was just like a goal. I didn’t appreciate fighting until I was a little older and understood the role it could play in a game (something that’s been forever debated). I wanted to track fights the way others track goals and other statistics. Penalty minutes were always being kept, but I wanted to know how many times someone was fighting, and who they were fighting. I started keeping some numbers and talking about local teams. It snowballed from there.”
Moving on to the popularity of his site the question of his daily visitor numbers growing exponentially in post-lockout hockey came up. “It took a couple of years post-lockout for the site to have bigger growth,” said Singer. “The first, and most obvious reason, is there weren’t as many fights in the seasons after the lockout. A close second was just re-gaining the hockey community in general. Many, especially the diehard fans that visit hockeyfights.com, were turned off by the league shutting down for a season. While the league has rebounded, some have never come back.”
This brought me to wondering if his site sees a bigger uptick in views when 2 heavyweights go at it, or when there is an incident like last year’s Islanders v Penguins brawl, or maybe when a star drops em like Crosby or Ovetchkin? “The site is definitely event-driven. A brawl can trigger traffic.” He went on to say, “Some stars can, but it’s not as predictable as one might think. Sometimes a player from a European country that usually doesn’t fight drops the gloves and I’ve got a huge influx of traffic from his home country and ex-pats everywhere. Just as much as a fight, big news can do the same. There is the hockey in hockeyfights.com and big trades or signings or any other big news can drive visits.”
One of the more publicized things this year has been head shots and how the NHL is dealing with them. Many players have gotten suspensions. I wondered what is the one thing that could get rid of them? Smaller pads? The repeal of the instigator? David had a thoughtful answer about this touchy subject.
“Repealing the instigator would help in my opinion, but it would take time and lenient coaching. I’m not sure most teams have that sort of patience anymore. Either way, I don’t expect it to happen, even though I’d like to see it. Ironically, I think it’d curb fighting in the long-run. As for head shots in general, especially those that cause injury, I think there are a few things that can be done to help. Equipment should be an easy fix. Too many use it as weapons, or consider it armor. With technology today, there has to be a way to protect players without allowing that protection to hurt others. However, I don’t think that’s the main cause. A lot of it is players looking for a huge, video game-style hit. They’ve been taught to do that from the earliest of lessons. ‘Finish your checks.’ I can’t think of a coach that hasn’t said that. Sometimes, you don’t need to wipe a guy out to do that, but in a day of sprint shifts and the fourth line always wondering if they’ll be scratched or sent to the minors, they’re rarely going to let up on someone. I think it’s something that needs to be adjusted at the lowest levels and the higher leagues need to make sure they keep with that approach. Adding to that are players that put themselves in bad positions looking to draw a penalty, something else they’ve been taught. It’s a bad combination.”
For years all we see is talking heads on ESPN saying that fighting in Hockey is ruining the game and that if it ever wants to go mainstream they need to get rid of it. That got me wondering about who really wants to get rid of fighting in hockey? Is it just non-fans and journalists? Could we really see a day when there is no fighting in hockey? He said, “You’ve hit it: non-fans and some of the media are the largest supporters of trying to take fighting out of hockey, or adjust the penalties for it. Poll after poll shows the players, ‘hockey people’ (non-media, in the business) and most of all, the fans, like it in the game the way it is. I don’t think trying to remove it would benefit the game, and I don’t think it’ll draw in more fans, either. I don’t know if you’ll ever see a day with no fighting whatsoever. No matter what the rules are fights happen in all leagues and all sports, just at varying levels.”
Fights are good for hockey, whether people admit it or not, when stuff like this happens on the opening faceoff, not one single fan leaves that arena while play is going on for any reason, even if it is a blowout:
With over 45,000 likes on Facebook, he gets a lot of attention that was recently brought to the forefront by his posts on Facebook saying Goodbye, (Enter Team) when someone was eliminated from the playoffs. When he posted this, it gave him a barometer of fan hate towards a team. His assumption, by looking at the data, is what you would expect. That the teams with the longer record of being good have the most vocal fans and the most detractors means those posts get the most like and comments.
Every year Hockeyfights.com posts a little award type show with several categories for things like Best feud and best old school moment. Well the main category as one can expect is the fight of the year. This year’s list is pretty good:
The voting process is very simple. Just go to Hockeyfights.com and join. You can then vote on any fight, how good it was, how rested the players are, and you will never be the same. I know I have gotten caught in this website for hours at a time.
It’s sometimes easy to forget that YouTube is part of the Google family of products. Good thing we have developer hangouts to remind us that the folks at Google are constantly improving the YouTube experience for developers who use the API.
The latest YouTube API Hangout featured the YouTube Product Management team talking about the new CORS support in the YouTube API. CORS, or Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, is a way for JavaScript developers to make arbitrary HTTP requests via a standard XMHLHttpRequest Interface.
The team also talks about what YouTube will be up to at the upcoming Google I/O conference. Here’s the topics on YouTube that you can expect to see during I/O:
YouTube Channels: Get with the Program!
Getting Direct Feedback from your YouTube Community
Mobile YouTube API Apps for Content Creators, Curators and Consumers
HTML5 at YouTube: Stories from the Front Line
YouTube API + Cloud Rendering = Happy Mobile Gamers
New YouTube Android Player Tools (Session + Codelab)
Master the Latest YouTube Data API (Codelab)
Webinar: YouTube for Your Business
Webinar: Using YouTube APIs and Ruby on Rails for Educational Apps
Check out the 46-minute Hangout below to get your first details on what will be discussed during these sessions. If you use the YouTube API or just like to develop software and apps using YouTube, you’ll want to check this one out:
Every year since 2002, music lovers have descended on Manchester, Tennessee for four days of fun, albiet usually swelteringly hot summer festival delights. Featuring performers from a wide variety of musical genres including indie rock, bluegrass, folk, alt rock, metal, and hip hop, Bonnaroo has become one of premier music and arts festivals in the country.
And this year, if grownup obligations or lack of funding has prevented you from making the journey – fear not. YouTube is planning to stream three days of the event on their dedicated Bonnaroo channel.
Basically, you can get down on the farm, even if your real life has prevented you from getting your ass down to the farm.
Bummed that you’re not going to make it to Bonnaroo this year? Get some good folks together and cue up the Bonnaroo webcast powered by Dell where you’ll have two channels to flip between to watch Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phish and many more. It’s the only way to get down on the farm without being on the farm.
YouTube will be streaming 45 performances during their coverage, and you can check out the schedule below:
Last year, the Bonnaroo live stream came to us courtesy of VEVO. “Bonnaroo” means “a really good time,” and if you can’t be on the ground this weekend, you might as well enjoy the music in the comfort of your clean, air-conditioned home.
We’ve all seen it, and it’s just as painful every time. Not all of us are afflicted with the disease, but we all know someone who is. If you’re tired of someone you know negatively affecting everyone with their illness, it may be time you show them this public service announcement and suggest that they get help.
It’s called Vertical Video Syndrome, and it affects millions of the lazy, clueless, and moronic among us every day.
Vertical Video Syndrome (VVS) is when, for whatever reason, a person decides to shoot a video using their smartphone while holding it upright (vertical). The result is a horribly unnatural video that goes against every advance that humans have made in terms of filmmaking in the last century – as well as human anatomy. I mean, our eyes are like “O_O,” not like “8.”
This PSA, courtesy of Glove and Boots, shows us what can happen if amateur videographers continue to shoot in the vertical. First, YouTube will find a way to monetize our stupidity. Then a whole string of problems would result from vertical video being the norm. The future involving Mila Kunis and George Lucas makes me cringe.
Check it out below:
It’s easy, guys. Just turn your phone horizontal. Do your part and save us all from new Star Wars movies.
If you spend any time on YouTube at all, you have probably realized they scan user uploads constantly searching for copyrighted materials that shouldn’t be up there without the publisher’s permission. For instance, if you post a video of yourself snorkeling during your vacation to Hawaii and add a cool track from the Beatles playing in the background, you may return later to find it deleted completely or missing the musical soundtrack you so tastefully embellished it with. The system they use to find the videos and deal with them is called Content ID.
Now, YouTube has struck a deal featuring a wide variety of publishing companies that will allow instances of your Beatles soundtrack disappearing, a lot less frequent. Working with their various publishing partners, YouTube will track down your renegade soundtrack, verify it with the publisher, then assign some advertising to your video so they can make money off people enjoying you snorkeling with your yellow submarine.
The downside for viewers is, more ads to sit through, but the upside for artists and producers is more creative freedom. The upside for publishers, recoding studios, recording artists, and just about anybody else involved in the copyrighted music business is they will be getting paid. It’s a critical first step to making the recording industry profitable again, after the huge hits they’ve sustained from digital freebooting.
The publishers on board for the new deal with YouTube include BMG Rights Management, Christian Copyright Solutions, ABKCO Music, Inc., Songs Music Publishing, Words & Music, Copyright Administration, Music Services, Reservoir Media Management, and Songs of Virtual.
“When these publishers allow YouTube to run ads alongside user generated videos that incorporate their compositions, then the publishers, the songwriters they represent, and the record labels and artists using their compositions, all make money – so they can reinvest in their careers and keep making great music, and the music industry can thrive.”
Yes, it does mean more advertising to sit through, but it also could means a resurgence in the recording industry, and if you’re a music lover, it is something we have all been starving for. I think the impact of this deal, which YouTube has facilitated, will be far reaching and revolutionary from both an advertising standpoint and a creative one.
If you’re curious about the Content ID system, which actually plays a critical role in the new publishing deal, I have included YouTube’s infomercial on it. I think it’s quite brilliant regardless of how oppressive you find it to be to your creative process. Regardless, it will now be deciding who gets paid rather than who gets censored. Enjoy!
Whether those within the Internet collective like it or not, the defining moment for them this year was the betrayal of Sabu that led to the arrests of various LulzSec members. After that point, Anonymous went on the offensive, but claimed that LulzSec was dead. They didn’t need a separate group acting under the Anonymous banner, Anonymous was enough.
Some people obviously disagreed with the sentiment and went about trying to revive LulzSec. It seems that those efforts have now been rewarded with the return of everybody’s favorite hackers. Announced through an inconspicuous YouTube channel, LulzSec announced its glorious return through a hilarious Star Wars parody that compared the FBI to Sith Lords and themselves as Jedi warriors fighting against the Empire that is the United States.
So what? LulzSec says they’re back and make a funny Star Wars parody. It really doesn’t mean anything, right? Well, you would be right except that the video goes on to claim that LulzSec has gotten their hands on some juicy information from various government servers. The amount of data totals out to 3 TB and comes from various sources including the State Department, ICE, Defense Intelligence Agency and other military sites. They also claim to have taken information from servers belonging to Syria, Colombian prisons and more.
Of course, this could all be just another attempt at somebody trying to get attention. LulzSec was apparently brought back to life back in March for Project Mayhem, but that all turned out to be a ruse. It remains to be seen if this one is legitimate or not.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, however, this one at least seems the most legitimate of the bunch. All previous claims of return came with promises of attacking governments and whatnot, but they had nothing to show for it. This new video at least has proof, however questionable, to show that this might be the real deal.
The response from the various branches of Anonymous has been divided as expected. Some welcome back the group that put Anonymous on the map while others think it should be left alone out of respect for those that were arrested.
Today, the internet says farewell to one of its legends. Eduard Khil, the man responsible for one of the more memorable, long-lasting, and recreated viral videos of all time has died at the age of 77.
Last week we told you that Khil had suffered a stroke and was in critical condition at St. Petersburg Polenov Scientific Research Institute of Neurosurgery. Doctors were reportedly planning additional surgeries on Khil, but they acknowledged the fact that he suffered irreparable brain damage as a result of the trauma.
And early Monday morning in St. Petersburg, Khil passed away from “irreversible damage” caused by the stroke, according to Russia’s RIA Novosti.
In Russia, Khil was very popular and his baritone voice won him the People’s Artist Award in 1974. In addition to his success as a singer, Khil also taught the craft at Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy. Two years ago, Khil was given the Order of Merit for the Fatherland by Russia.
But of course, his introduction to the West came courtesy of a YouTube video that went viral in 2009. The video, shot in 1976, shows Khil performing “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой,” or “I am glad, cause I’m finally returning back home.”
Or, as it is known by many on the interwebs, the Trololo song.
The video was parodied countless times and even found itself on par with the “Rickroll” in terms of classic internet bait-and-switch tricks. Check out Khil reacting to the various parodies of his performance back in 2010. Most of us won’t be able to understand what he’s saying, but there’s no doubt that he’s tickled by his internet stardom:
E3 doesn’t start officially until Tuesday, but many publishers will be pushing out news and game reveals starting tomorrow. Nintendo may even get the ball rolling later today with its Nintendo Direct presentation. While we don’t expect Nintendo to reveal anything mind blowing during the presentation, a recent rumor suggests that Nintendo will have even more exciting news to share during its proper E3 press conference on Tuesday.
Speaking to anonymous developers working on multiple Wii U projects, Wii U Daily learned that the Wii U will be getting achievements, cloud storage and deep social networking integration. The developers suggest that Nintendo will be showing off these features during its E3 press conference. If true, these rumors suggest a Nintendo that is doing some exciting and innovative things in fields that we have taken for granted thus far.
The first rumor says that the Wii U will be getting achievements called Nintendo Points. They will be similar to Xbox 360 achievements and PlayStation 3 trophies in that players will earn them for completing objectives in game. Unlike the other console manufacturers, however, Nintendo will be bringing a much needed change to the achievement system. As of now, players will only receive points in exchange for completing in-game objectives. It’s all kind of superficial and only appeals to the base instinct of wanting to see a number rise. Nintendo Points will offer in-game rewards for completing objectives and getting achievements. Think of a Mario game that unlocks new levels as you earn achievements. That’s what the developers are suggesting.
The second rumor points to Nintendo getting a cloud saving feature just like what Sony and Microsoft offer. Comparably, the Nintendo cloud storage solution will allow players to save their game saves and profiles on the cloud for easy transfer between consoles. The difference between Nintendo’s and the competitions’ solution is that Nintendo’s cloud storage will be free. Sony and Microsoft require that players pay for either PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live Gold respectively to gain access to cloud saves.
The third and most exciting feature is the integration of social media into the Wii U’s operating system. The developers specifically point out that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be the first services to be integrated. Unlike the other consoles’ integration, Nintendo is apparently going for a deeper integration that has yet to be seen on a console. The developers say that players will be able to pause a game at any moment to share a screenshot of the game on Facebook or Twitter. The YouTube feature is the most exciting as it would allow players to record and upload gameplay videos to YouTube directly from the console.
A few other details from the developers include a new Mii creation system that relies on a camera API that transfers a person’s face onto the Mii proper. The 3DS has this feature as well, but the camera is so low-res that it can’t really capture a person’s face that well.
The other rumor is a bit more unfortunate. The developers say that porting current projects to the Wii U is harder than originally thought. Fortunately, porting from the Xbox 360 to the Wii U isn’t that bad since they have similar architecture. Just like the Xbox 360 before it, porting from the PlayStation 3 is an all-together different beast. It should be expected as the Wii U is rumored to have a quad-core processor similar to the processor on the Xbox 360. The cell processor in the PS3, while powerful, does not make it easy to port to the more traditional CPU architectures.
A lot of the rumors that you see here are entirely plausible and will probably show up at Nintendo’s E3 press conference or the Nintendo Direct later tonight. The achievements and cloud storage are the most likely, but I wouldn’t count out the social networking features either. Nintendo needs to wow us at E3 and some of these features alone are enough to cause a stir. Here’s hoping that Nintendo has the games to back up these admittedly exciting rumors.
Unless you closely follow most Google employees on Google+, you may have missed the announcement yesterday of a new feature that has been added to the Google+ video player. Google+ videos now have a closed caption option, allowing caption files to be uploaded along with the video.
The quiet announcement came via Google Accessibility Engineer James deBoer’s Google+page, where he revealed the new feature on behalf of Google’s accessibility team. From the post:
Why add captions, you ask? Adding captions and subtitles makes your videos more accessible to people who can’t follow along with the audio — either because they speak a different language, or because they are deaf or hard of hearing.
As deBoer points out, the captions can be used as subtitles in videos featuring foreign languages. Though the new closed caption button on the Google+ video player does look the same as the one on YouTube, it is unclear whether Google+ allows the many closed captioning features that were added to YouTube earlier this year.
DeBoer went on to give a brief rundown of how uploading closed captions would work. As seen in the picture above, a user can open up a Google+ video in lightbox view and choose the “Closed captions” option in the “Options” menu at the bottom of the screen. From there, it is a simple matter of clicking on the “Add new captions or transcript” option and uploading the caption file.
It’s been reported that both Google and Facebook have been competing over a possible larger investment in music video platform Vevo. CEO Rio Caraeff stated earlier in the year that the platform was focused on expansion, and funds from the search giant or the social network would facilitiate this growth. Caraeff had stated in March, “we’re in a good position. Content is king. We’re seeing a lot of distribution partners take an interest in that content as a way to differentiate their services. We’ve had a lot of people reach out and say, ‘What more can we do together beyond just having the player on our platform?’ We’re talking with everyone about a more in-depth relationship; we’ve nothing to announce.”
Vevo’s present deal with YouTube is finished at the end of this year, so Google and Facebook are exploring investment options. Vevo has likewise signed up with investment bank Allen & Co. to explore its own options, which might include bringing in a new investor, selling outright or going public.
Vevo had recently launched a redesign, and has seen a 600% boost in Facebook-published content viewership.The new player has taken advantage of Facebook’s Open Graph, and saw six times as many Facebook-watched videos since February, putting the latest count at 4.5 million. New user registration is also up by 142%, with the platform adding 500,000 new members. VEVO Facebook impressions were up 181% as well, at 171 million. Basically, it wouldn’t seem like a such a bad idea for the platform to more officially look at the social network.
Though, YouTube is still Vevo’s top partner channel, garnering the platform 48 million unique viewers in April. Presently, Vevo is the third largest video streaming site online, behind Google and Yahoo!. Facebook sits at fourth place. As a whole, VEVO logged 254 million video streams worldwide during Q1, 2012, a 32% jump from Q4, 2011. iPhone and iPad views were up as well, at 28% and 22% respectively. Engagement is also up as well, with viewers watching an average of 4.3 videos in March, up from 3.8 in February, spending 15.2 minutes on the site, up from 13.1. Vevo has some decisions to make at year’s end.
Eduard Khil, the Russian singer who shot to internet stardom after the video of a 1976 performance went super-viral, has reportedly suffered a stroke and is now in a coma at St. Petersburg Polenov Scientific Research Institute of Neurosurgery.
Eduard Khil might not ring any bells, but I’m sure that you recognize his other name, “Mr. Trololo.” Or, the “Trololo guy.” Khil’s performance of the Russian song “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой,” or “I am Glad, ‘Cause I’m Finally Returning Back Home,” found its way to YouTube in 2009 and the rest was history. Millions of views later, his distinctive vocal style and odd mid-performance laughter had landed him in the annals of memedom.
The video became the “Russian Rickroll,” another stalwart YouTube clip for internet bait-and-switch tricks.
If it’s been awhile since you’ve seen it, check it out below:
Doctors say they are planning on surgery, but Khil is 77 years old so survival definitely isn’t a sure thing. Even then, recovery is an unknown proposition as they say his brain has suffered irreversible damage as a result of the trauma. Although he is known across the interwebs as Mr. Trololo, he is known in Russia for many other songs.
Khil’s “Trololo” video spawned numerous parodies, including this gem courtesy of JImmy Kimmel Live and Inglorious Basterds‘ Christoph Waltz:
It was recently reported that YouTube has hit 72 hours of video content uploaded per minute, in a steady ascent since its inception in 2005. By 2007, users were adding six hours of video per minute – by January of 2009, that number hit 15 hours, by March 2010, 24 hours, by November of that year, 35 hours, and so forth.
Engineer Craig Mansfield came up with a number on how much it would cost Google to pre-screen all of it’s content – a staggering $37 billion a year.
YouTube has been having some copyright infringement problems since its inception, with record labels and movie studios suing over the platform’s lack of better control over what its users upload. YouTube recently lost a court case in Germany over 12 unlicensed songs a user uploaded to its server. The plaintiff had urged YouTube to install better upload filters in an attempt to stop illegal content streaming. Though, now with the 72 hour per minute ratio, the logistics of this sort of thing just become more complicated.
Mansfield calculated that it would cost $36,829,468,840, to be more precise, to employ 199,584 moderators to govern the uploads, which is just shy of Google’s annual revenue.
Back in March, YouTube launched a new feature for the YouTube API that would allow people to include lists of videos in the player. It was great since it let users watch a continuous stream of content without ever leaving the embedded video player. The only problem is that the playlist wasn’t readily available to the user at all times.
Google is rectifying that today with the latest update to the YouTube API. With a little HTML magic, users can now insert a parameter, showinfo=1, into the iframe. After that, clicking on the playlists button will bring up the playlists and they will remain permanently visible.
If you are unaware of the playlists feature, clicking on the button brings up a miniature sliding bar with all the videos currently in that playlist. Each slide has six videos on it with an arrow navigation tool to sift through the videos until you find one that you must watch next. It’s seamlessly integrated into the embedded video so that it only appears when you move the mouse over the video.
Here’s the example video from a recent Google Maps API Hangout that takes advantage of the new playlists feature. Play around with the playlist feature for a bit to see the improvements. YouTube API developers should appreciate how embedded videos now replicate more of the experience of watching a YouTube video on the site proper.
As always, check out the documentation to see more examples and ways to implement the new feature. It should have everything you need to know to get playlists up and running on your Web site or mobile application.
