Fans of the Far Cry series may not have waited for as long as Diablo fans, but it has been four years since Far Cry 2 was released. And since the Far Cry series is always known for pushing the boundaries of PC graphics, many fans are excited to test their machines against Far Cry 3. A gameplay trailer already surfaced earlier this year, but fans will get the chance to see even more footage at E3 in a few weeks. Today a teaser trailer for the E3 reveals has been released, and it portends a surreal presentation come June. You can see the trailer for yourself below, but be warned that it does contain some very strong language:
The graphics, of course, look amazing. And, from what I can glean from the trailer, the story looks to be interesting. Or, if not interesting, at least an adult, novel-style story with a few twists and turns. Far Cry 3 is scheduled to be released on September 4 in the U.S. and September 6 in Europe.
With Far Cry 3 and Assassin’s Creed III coming out later this year, Ubisoft might just have the most anticipated conference session at this year’s E3. Luckily for video game fans, Ubisoft will be live-streaming their 2012 E3 presentation. Fans can view the press conference at either youtube.com/ubisoft or uplay.com. The presentation is on June 4 and will start at 3 pm PDT or 6 pm EDT.
Back in 2008, French TV network TF1 sued YouTube for copyright infringement, for hosting clips of some of its shows, including La Môme and Halloween. A judge in Paris finally dismissed the case on Tuesday, and Google is calling for a better acceptance of YouTube in France.
The government in France doesn’t like Google, and fears it might go as far as disrupt its culture and language. The country poured millions into a search engine called Quaero years ago to compete with Google, and the search giant has been in court several times in France since. Though, with the win against TF1, Christophe Muller, YouTube’s head of southern Europe, Middle East and Africa partnerships, took to Google’s European Public Policy Blog to equate the legal win to a testament of internet freedom:
“The overall decision is a victory for everyone who uses the Web. … After this decision, creators can be secure to post their materials on YouTube and other platforms and we can host their content without fearing a giant liability. The end result will be more videos posted on the Net, more revenue generated for creative artists, and more exposure to a global audience for these artists. – The verdict demonstrates how the Internet is enriching French culture. Over the past year, we have signed contracts with five French collecting societies to pay royalties to French writers, musicians, and other artists. More generally, we have a major investment plan for the French economy and culture, demonstrating how committed we are to France. By embracing the Web, this verdict moves France a step forward to further benefit from Internet’s massive economic and cultural opportunity. We hope this judgement will allow us to build constructive partnerships and bring more French language content online.”
Google takes up roughly 90% of the search market in France, and the legal win will surely make things run more smoothly for its YouTube branch. In related news, YouTube recently lost an infringement case in Germany, shedding light on a historically rough time with European legal systems.
Earlier this week, actor/Internet celebrity Wil Wheaton posted a pretty interesting rant about Google on his blog, and on his Tumblr. Specifically, it was about a feature he spotted on YouTube, which placed a Google+ like button in the spot where the YouTube thumbs up button would normally be. It would prompt users to upgrade to Google+ when not signed in. We asked Wheaton for some additional thoughts on the subject. He seemed somewhat eager to oblige, saying that “this whole thing has struck a nerve”.
Wheaton, probably best known for his roles on Star Trek: The Next Generation and in the film Stand By Me, currently has a show called Tabletop on the Geek and Sundry premium YouTube channel.
The feature was only a Google experiment, and it’s very likely that only a few people actually saw it. We spoke with a Googler about the feature. Here’s the official statement: “We’re always experimenting to help users find, watch and share the videos that matter most to them, on YouTube and across all of Google’s products including Google+. Depending on user feedback, some of these experiments may become options for users and some may not.”
Here’s that it looked like:
Google does run experiments all the time. That’s nothing new, but we also know that Google is very serious about making Google+ a much bigger part of the larger Google. As CEO Larry Page described Google+ during the company’s latest earnings call, Google+ has two parts: the social destination (what most people think of as Google+) and the social spine (the social layer that is spread across most of Google’s products). While the former part will no doubt grow and get more feature-rich as time goes on, the latter part is the one that seems really crucial to the company, and with its recently consolidated privacy policies, Google should have more freedom to use users’ data from product to product. Like say, from YouTube to Google.
So, while this particular experiment may never see the light of day as a full-blown feature, it seems likely that Google will continue to look for more and more ways to integrate YouTube (or for that matter every other Google product) and Google+.
I found Wheaton’s rant about the feature interesting for various reasons. For one, he’s an avid Google+ user. It would be one thing if he wasn’t, but he is. He has 1,377,525 followers. He likes Google+. It’s not about that. Another reason is something he said in his blog post about how this could cost his video upvotes on YouTube. It’s a pretty good point. Not all YouTube users use Google+. YouTube has established itself quite well over the years. It’s often cited as even being the second largest search engine, after Google itself. A whole lot of people use YouTube every day. A lot more than use Google+, the social destination.
“The only reason that matters is because it’s part of how Google will decide who gets another season of the shows they’re sponsoring,” Wheaton tells WebProNews. “I want to be very clear about this: when I made my post on Tumblr, I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was thinking about how Google is forcing people who don’t want or need Google+ to sign up and use it.”
We asked Wheaton what are some ways he thinks Google could integrate Google+ and YouTube without pissing people off.
“Give users an option, and respect their choice,” he says. “Make G+ so incredibly amazing, people don’t want to ignore it, but if they do, leave them alone and quit messing with their existing user experience.”
“G+ and YouTube are both great on their own. They don’t need to be integrated,” he says. Still, when asked about what Google+ features he’d like to see on YouTube, he says, “More meaningful and intelligent comments from users. I have a G+ circle that’s called Smart People, and it’s one that I have a hard time keeping up with. It would be nice if ‘YouTube comment’ wasn’t a punchline.”
We asked Wheaton more generally, if Google should push Google+ more into its other products.
“Only if they want to alienate even more users,” he says . “There’s a reason so many people use browser extensions like Disconnect; not everyone wants to be social on the Internet.”
“This is where Google is making a huge and annoying mistake,” he adds. “You can’t force people into something that’s social; it’s like telling someone, ‘I know you were going to enjoy a quiet night at home reading this book, but before you can turn the page, you must go to this party and mingle with people, whether you want to or not.’”
This seems more like a comment on the increasingly social nature of the web at large, but there’s no question, Google is pushing this kind of social mentality.
“I was infuriated by this thing I saw on YouTube because it was yet another example of Google forcing people who use its products — which are great products, by the way — to join G+,” Wheaton tells us. “As I’ve made clear, I love G+, and I love a lot of Google products, but if Google wants people to join, embrace, and enthusiastically use G+, they should make G+ awesome and compelling. What they’re doing now — forcing people to sign up by crippling a user experience with an existing product — is just going to make people resent G+, and never give it a chance. That’s a shame, because G+ is a great product that doesn’t need to be force fed to people.”
Again, the feature was only an experiment, but it’s not like Google is going to stop looking for ways to increase Google+‘s presence throughout its products. You can already see a lot of the integrations, if you go here.
YouTube integrations, specifically, include: seeing videos your friends like, watching videos together in hangouts, sending videos to Circles, and +1ing videos.
Search integrations include: personal results, profiles in search results, and the related people and pages feature.
With Gmail, there’s: finding emails from people in your circles, sharing photos, and seeing things shared by people in your circles that you got emails from.
With Google Maps, you can send directions to people in your Circles.
With Google Earth, you can send images of places to Google+.
With Blogger, you can share posts to Google+ whenever you publish them and use the +1 counter on the dashboard.
With Android, there’s: Instant Upload of photos, group chat, video hangouts, and the nearby stream.
With Chrome, theres: the Google +1 button extension for recommending sites and pages, and the Google+ Notifications extension to check Google notifications off of Google properties.
With Google News, you can keep up with specific authors by following them on Google+, as they’re displayed in News results. You can also see articles people in your circles have +1’d in the Spotlight section. Just this week, they announced that they’re showing content from your Google+ circles in “Top Stories” and in a new realtime coverage section (a far cry from the realtime search feature they used to have, I might add, which included realtime tweets).
Clearly, there are a lot of useful ways Google can integrate its “social spine” into its various products, and there will no doubt be plenty of more, but as the experiment Wheaton wrote about shows, it’s all in the implementation.
“I’m thrilled at the opportunity that I have as a content creator to release videos on YouTube,” Wheaton tells us. “I couldn’t do Tabletop without Google, and I’m grateful for the opportunity the company has given me. As a user, and as a creator, I want Google to keep making awesome products and making it possible for people like me to work outside of the traditional mainstream. I don’t want Google to turn into another Facebook that just feels icky and intrusive.”
Speaking of Facebook, that wasn’t all he had to say on that. We asked Wheaton if he think Google+ is capable of achieving Facebook-like user numbers.
“Probably not, but that isn’t Google’s fault,” he says. “Facebook has a significant head start, and has effectively captured a generation. Facebook is also demonstrably evil, though, so if Google offered a truly non-evil social network — a real and meaningful alternative to Facebook — it could probably attract huge numbers of people.”
“Just think of the free publicity every time Facebook does something that intrudes on the privacy of its users, when Google can say, honestly, ‘yeah, over at G+ we don’t do that.’ Unfortunately, as an advertising company, I don’t see Google ever embracing that idea.”
And Google is already facing pressures in advertising after two quarters in a row of substantial CPC declines. Revenue, however, was up 24% last quarter. It’s also worth noting that Google hasn’t even put ads on Google+ (the social destination) yet.
YouTube has partnered up with WITNESS, an international organization that utilizes video for human rights advocacy, and Storyful, a social network of aggregated news, to create a powerful new outlet that offers the world a new venue to spotlight important stories related to human rights cases around the world. The product of this partnership is a new channel on YouTube simply called Human Rights that curates content about human rights in hopes of educating and prompting action.
The site so far includes playlists that include multiple videos about particular subjects or regions, such as a series on Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, a human rights activist in Bahrain currently detained since last June during the government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Interspersed among the numerous videos about Al Khawaja are brief info placards that introduce the proceeding video. In all, there’s nearly an hour’s worth of video about Al Khawaja’s plight.
Anybody can suggest a video for inclusion in a playlist by emailing the YouTube URL as well as pertinent information about the video to [email protected]. Storyful will be checking up on the sources of the videos to make sure they’re the real deal while WITNESS will be moderating channels to make sure the content is calibrated to accurately and effectively inform audiences about the specific human rights issue depicted in the videos.
It’s a basic law of pop culture that Bill Murray can get away with just about anything this day and age. He’s an icon who’s own personality is just as big, if not more so than the filmography he’s accrued throughout the years. Whether he’s singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ at Wrigley Field, or playing Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, there’s always one constant – you’ll be entertained.
So, enjoy the video and abask in the greatness of Bill Murray.
As a bonus, here’s a video of Murray running around the bases at Wrigley Field before throwing out a first pitch. Again, who else could have gotten away with this?
Earlier this month we reported that Machinima, a popular video game news and pop culture YouTube channel, would raise 30$ million during a fundraising round led by Google. Those facts have now mostly been confirmed. Machinima actually managed to raise $35 million in financing during the round. Google did, in fact, lead the round, though previous Machinima investors Redpoint Ventures and MK Capital also participated.
“With this latest round of funding, Machinima is well-positioned to make the next evolutionary step in the world of multi-channel video programming and distribution by expanding into original content, international territories, and new platforms and devices,” said Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO of Machinima. “Our tremendous growth as one of the world’s largest online video communities, with innovative social metrics and attributes and massive mobile viewership, positions us well to lead the third wave of original video programing brands.”
In addition to content, new platforms and international expansion, Machinima plans to use the funds for global sales operations and product and technology initiatives. The company stated that it wants to create a global video programming brand that will transform the way new generations engage with online video and gaming content. An ambitious goal, for sure, but Google seems to think it is possible. “Machinima has built a brand and an audience that rivals some of the biggest channels on TV,” said David Lawee, Vice President of Corporate Development at Google. “The success and uniqueness of their business makes this a smart investment opportunity.”
Google’s investment in Machinima is part of an initiative by Google to promote and improve programming on premium YouTube channels. With Yahoo!, Hulu, and Netflix, and other websites also investing in video content production, we seem to be getting a glimpse of how entertainment will look in the future.
At North Rowan High School in Spencer, NC a teacher refuses to let a student “Disrespect President Obama”. Let’s check out the classroom in this YouTube clip.
The Fact of the Day was “Did you know Mit Romney was a bully in high school?” (I can only assume the teacher gives some sort of current events fact everyday), which is an actual news story. The student thought this Fact of the Day was leaning left.
The student speaks up saying, “Wasn’t Obama a bully in high school?” This statement is immediately followed by a screech of “we dont disrespect the president”. The student does not back down from his statement while keeping his voice to a respectable level. This is especially true in comparison to the teacher’s voice. The young student was trying to give the other side of the coin.
The teacher’s whole argument was that the current president should be treated better than the man who will be running against him come election time. This is an opinion not a fact. Whether you agree with the teacher’s argument or not, we all know that’s not how campaigns work.
If you go back and dissect anyone’s past, you will find something to write about. In this case the subject is high school bullying. The student was simply saying there was a story about Obama where he pushed a girl in high school. Meanwhile the fact of the day was a story about Mit Romney pinning a classmate down and cutting his long hair. Both stories are obviously not flattering towards the presidential candidates.
The student thought that if one story was presented in a classroom setting, then the other should be too.
Google’s YouTube, launched in 2005, has hit 72 hours of video content uploaded per minute, in a steady ascent. 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.
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 of thing just become more complicated.
Also, if new filters are enforced, this could delay upload times for YouTube. This would definitely be a hit to the service – a main reason why some users steer clear of other video hosting sites, like Vimeo, is because of the long processing times. And Facebook’s filters flag anything found to be copyrighted, and promptly deletes it. A YouTube clip is processed very quickly, and an anti-infringement endorsed filter would likely hinder this to an unknown extent, with copyrights having to be cleared.
On the other hand, if a random user is monetizing an unsigned artist’s content on YouTube, which happens all the time, this is also a bad thing, which would warrant longer wait times. As of now, video content can be posted faster than real time – meaning, an hour long clip can be put online in ten minutes, so there’s no way some oDesk employee in Tangier might have pre-screened it. It is evident that it will likely be a while for YouTube and Google to sort out the most efficient balance regarding how its content is legally uploaded.
YouTube is seven years old. That’s less than a decade. It’s hard to believe something so ubiquitous as YouTube has been around for such a short span of time, and it demonstrates how quickly technology is currently progressing.
To celebrate its seventh birthday, YouTube has created a video to commemorate the occasion. The video shows highlights from the company’s seven-year history, including LonelyGirl15, OK Go videos, and David after Dentist. If you have been on the internet for any significant length of time, the video will certainly make you smile. Here’s YouTube’s message to its fans, taken from the video description:
On Monday, May 21, we celebrate seven years since we first shared YouTube with the world. To commemorate this occasion, here’s an updated video with some of the crazy statistics and incredible things you’ve been a part of in that time. Thanks for the amazing things you watch, create, and share!
YouTube released the video in a blog post on the Official YouTube Blog. It was announced in the post that YouTube now has 72 hours of video uploaded to site every minute. From the blog post:
Like many 7 year olds around the world, we’re growing up so fast! In other words, every single minute you now upload three whole days worth of video instead of two. That’s 61 Royal Wedding Ceremonies, 841 Bad Romances, and 1,194 Nyan Cats.
That is a massive amount of video. 4320 days worth of video uploaded every day. Google has to be commended for being able to sustain that type of growth. Take a look at the birthday video below and reminisce about the more innocent days of YouTube:
It would be hard to think of a type of television that has seen a popularity spike as large as food-centric television in the past few years. At some point, people decided that it’s just as fun to watch people make food as it is to make it themselves – at least sometimes. With that revelation, the Food Network entered a period of immense popularity. Cooking shows, reality cooking competitions, food writers and chefs taking global vacations – all of these are still examples of incredibly well-liked programming on the tubes.
When you couple that buzz with the giant possibilites offered by the world of online video, you see why it’s not surprising that food television veterans have decided to try their hand at a new YouTube channel dedicated to food.
It’s called HUNGRY, and it will launch on July 2nd.
HUNGRY is a partnership between Electus media and Food Network’s Duff Goldman, which you know from the popular show Ace of Cakes. The CEO of HUNGRY is Bruce Seidel, a former top exec at Food Network. He’s the guy who oversaw the launch of the Food Network-spawned Cooking Channel.
“In the evolution of the food arena, and as original content on digital platforms continues to flourish, HUNGRY marks a new vision and attitude about all things food. Whether you love to eat, cook or drink, our dynamic original series have something for everyone,” said Seidel. “Our mission is to create highly entertaining shows and galvanize the niches that are driving the Internet food conversation forward via the incredible power and social influence of YouTube.”
You can expect to see shows involving all things food on the channel, including “culinary challenges, food pranks, and gastronomic adventures.” The channel’s management hopes that the selection of big personalities attached to do shows will help set it apart from other food-oriented YouTube channels.
As far as Duff Goldman’s part in all of this, he’ll have his own show on HUNGRY called “Duff’s Food World.” He’ll also serve as “a talent and programming consultant for the channel.”
Here’s a snippet of what Duff’s show will be like:
Get inside the head of Duff Goldman, and explore the world of food via Duff’s experiences. Duff’s Food World explores everything from one-of-a-kind dishes and dining experiences like “dining in the dark” and “naked sushi in Vegas,” to tasty and often hilarious “Internet and TV Food Clips of the Week,” to unique food festival field trips like the notorious Spam Festival or Fungus Festival (will he bring his own?). Duff picks his favorite “Food Porn Clip of the Week,” man-on-the-street food pranks and historical re-enactments of great moments in food. Duff’s Food World premieres a new episode on HUNGRY every week beginning this summer.
Along with Duff Goldman, some of the debut programming on HUNGRY will feature chefs Alex Thomopoulos, Laura Vitale, and Chris Cosentino. Popular dining app Urbanspoon is also set to debut a series on the channel.
YouTube has made no secret of the fact that they really want to push “channels.” In the past few months we’ve seen new sports channels, automotive channels, and more – all in an effort to up the original content offerings on the site.
“What once may have been considered too over the top for TV is now funny, fresh programming on HUNGRY,” says Goldman
YouTube launched a Merch Store last year, enabling independent musicians to promote what they wanted to sell, be it music downloads, concert tickets or various merchandise, right from their channels. They could promote content from iTunes, SongKick, Google Play, Amazon and others.
YouTube announced today that it is expanding the feature to all partners and that it’s adding CafePress to the Store.
“The Merch Store sends customers from YouTube to the affiliate site, and the partner sees the same revenue whether they buy via the Merch Store or directly from the affiliate,” a spokesperson for YouTube tells WebProNews.
“CafePress and YouTube have a lot in common; YouTube has an hour of video uploaded every second about almost any topic imaginable, and CafePress has a catalog of over 300 million custom products on every subject imaginable,” says Joe Schmidt, CafePress Chief Marketing Officer. “Now, CafePress products are available on YouTube to create a relevant, contextual shopping platform.”
The feature will be rolling out to partners globally over the next several months. There will be a new tab on channels called “Store”. From there, partners can choose which merchandise to show fans.
Partners will need an account with each company to list products. When a user clicks on the product, they’ll be taken to the site where it’s being sold.
This could be a big deal for YouTube partners in generating some extra revenue, particularly now that YouTube is making its way into more living rooms via various connected TVs and devices, not to mention surging tablet and smartphone use.
Google is changing the way YouTube does business and also the way they gage their success. While it used to be all about views or how many people clicked on a video, now it also matters how long people decide to view those videos. After all, if Google wants advertisers to view their services like they do television, they have to watch entire shows, not just a 30 second clip of a farmer jumping a school bus with a rocket-fueled tractor.
According to data compiled by ComScore (shown below), total views on the social video site have declined, while the amount of time spent is generally increasing. In fact, according to the graph, views have declined almost 30% since the beginning of the year. Conversely, we see a generally upward trend for amount of minutes spent on the site from March 2011 until January of this year when it fell back down, but then leveled off quite a bit.
All of this activity can be traced back to YouTube’s quest to provide more original content and to get more advertisers onboard. This is how they pay the bills. If you can remember back to the middle of April, we reported on Google’s efforts to adapt the gross rating points (GRP) system from television for use in an online arena. Their version, called the “active GRP, is an effort to help advertisers and marketeers assign value to certain spaces at a certain times.
A recent article by AdAge Digital reinforces the concept of keeping viewers engaged longer and addresses the value that has for advertisers. More engaged viewing means users are more receptive to brand advertising. what happens after a viewer sees an ad is important. For that reason Google or YouTube also tracks what happens once an ad is seen. Does it cause people to click away or do they stay and continue watching the program?
Average viewing time on YouTube has grown from less than a minute to about four minutes, so I would say it’s isn’t quite what advertisers would be looking for yet, but it is a trend in the right direction. We’ll see what 2012 brings, but I would imagine it will take more time for YouTube and Google to be working off a similar platform as television.
Well, at least Patrice Wilson has a sense of humor about the whole “Friday” cultural brainfart. The only problem is that his sense of humor has led him to record another terrible song. Oh well, it’s Friday – which means that by Saturday morning you’ll be H-A-P-P-Y. Or something like that.
You remember Patrice Wilson, right? He’s the guy who produced the YouTube Hall of Fame “Friday” video which shot young Rebecca Black to internet stardom. He also makes an appearance in “Friday,” as the guy rapping in the car.
His new song, “Happy,” is dedicated to all the haters out there. Kind of.
After “Friday” and all the negativity surrounding it, Patrice Wilson realized that the world has a lot of anger and hate. All we need is a smile on our faces to reunite as one.Spread the word and share the love!!!! Get H-A-P-P-Y.
After a two-minute self-deprecating intro, the song begins. It’s autotuned. There’s a shocked mailman, questionably young cheerleaders, a yoga class, a magic engagement, police malfeasance, racial stereotypes, and it all ends with a nice representation of the typical “hater.” Yeah, I watched the whole thing.
Check it out below:
Did you ever think “Friday” would qualify as ear bleach?
YouTube might be considering adding subscription content to its streaming platform, in a bid to attract video from larger media corporations. Any potential deal wouldn’t affect existing content with any sort of paywall, but YouTube might seek to incorporate live sports, music and entertainment offerings, according to the New York Post.
Google-owned YouTube presently has a movie rental service, and also streams pay-per-view cricket games via a partnership with WillowTV. CEO Salar Kamangar hinted at a possible premium subscription service at an industry event in January – “We’re a media platform and we want to have a business model that media partners demand.”
A YouTube spokesperson commented on the matter, “We have long maintained that different content requires different types of payment models. The important thing is that, regardless of the model, our creators succeed on the platform and viewers find more content to watch”, adding “There are a lot of our content creators that believe they would benefit from subscriptions.”
Korean film has seen a boost in popularity in the last decade, with instant classics like Oldboy, Mother, and the awesomely campy The Host receiving both critical and cult acclaim. Some of these films like Oldboy and My Sassy Girl have even received American remakes (in the case of Oldboy, rumors abound). If you’re a movie buff, going back and familiarizing yourself with the history of Korean cinema is a must.
Working together with the Korean Film Archive, we now have 70 classic Korean films available globally for free on YouTube—complete with English and other translated subtitles. The films are all available at youtube.com/koreanfilm, organized in playlists by decade as well as by director.
YouTube’s new Korean film channel currently has nine playlists, featuring films from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, as well as ones from directors Kim Ki-young, Shin Sang-ok, and Im Kwon-taek. Many of these films have been virtually inaccessible outside of Korea for decades.
If you’re worried about the fact that you don’t speak the language, don’t worry. English subtitles are provided by Google. So head on over the the channel and educate yourself on some truly important works of international cinema.
Cristin Frodella, a group marketing manager for Google Education, revealed today how Google Education is celebrating National Teachers’ Day. Over at the Google Official Blog, Frodella shared two YouTube videos that demonstrate the difference good teachers (in combination with Google services and products, of course) can make in students’ lives.
The first video tells the story of a North Carolina middle school student, Malachi, who had developmental troubles and struggled with the physical task of using pencils or pens to write. His teacher, Elaine Waters received a Google Chromebook, which enabled Malachi to improve his writing speed.
The second video shows how Gina Nunez, an Arizona college prep school teacher, was able to use Google+ Hangouts to keep in touch with her class throughout her recovery from a medical procedure. The students were able to interact with their teacher, who was at home on medical leave, almost as if she were in the classroom.
Frodella claims that the Google in Education Google+page will feature more of these stories, though none have yet been posted. She suggests that those interested in how Google hopes educators will use technology should check out the YouTube videos from last week’s Education On Air conference, and online education technology conference that Google hosted using Google+ Hangouts. The videos can be found on the eduatgoogle YouTube channel.
What do you think? Were you ever helped or inspired by a teacher using technology (Google or not) in a creative way? Leave your story below in the comments.
Justin Bieber’s latest video is a record-breaker. Imagine that.
In order to help promote the ridiculously famous singer’s latest album, the slightly misshapen marketing wizards working behind-the-scenes posted the video for Bieber’s single “Boyfriend” on YouTube. You know, in hopes that one or two people would happen by, click PLAY, and then tell all of their closest friends just how impossibly cool the latest clip truly is. Instead of a small gathering of viewers, “Boyfriend” logged nearly 8 million views in just 24 hours. That’s pretty impressive, regardless of whether or not you hate the kid with an undying passion.
Presently, the music video sports just over 18 millions views, and that doesn’t include the audio version of the song, which has amassed over 10 millions views on its own. Suffice it to say, record executives at Bieber’s label are banking on his latest musical endeavor to sell quite a few copies when it arrives later this year.
“Boyfriend” is currently the most popular video every posted to YouTube. And you know how that makes Bieber’s Twitter followers feel? Incredibly happy, that’s how! You can sample their unending love for the Bieb by taking a quick stroll through the posts embedded below.
Google is putting more of it money into content and investing in the popular YouTube channel Machinima. AllThingsD is reporting that Google will invest in Machinima during its current fundraising round which is expected to raise more than $30 million. This will raise the value of the Machinima to around $190 million.
Machinima is a video game news and pop culture YouTube channel that caters to a younger male demographic. According to their website, the channel had 1.52 billion video views in March of this year and 11 billion total views last year. There is also evidence that those viewers are watching Machinima for longer than any other YouTube partner channels. With such explosive growth, it’s easy to see why Google might want to invest in the company to make sure it keeps its content on the YouTube platform.
The AllThingsD report states that this is the first time that Google has invested in a YouTube content company. Last week Google announced that it would spend $200 million promoting premium YouTube channels. These news items, and recent Google TV announcements, mean that Google is well-positioned to take in large ad revenues from internet TV. Something tells me that this is a do-or-die time for traditional TV networks, which won’t be able to operate with their current business models a decade from now.
Channel launches on YouTube have been something of a cliche lately. Felicia Day, VICE, Lionsgate, and the Center for Investigative Reporting have all launched YouTube channels within the past month. It’s clear that the YouTube platform is finally mature enough, and the ad revenues are significant enough, for professional production companies to use as a broadcast medium.
In order to help users find topics, channels, and videos they will enjoy, YouTube today announced that it will be promoting auto-generated channels in more places around the site. These channels will be popping up in the “Recommended for You” section of the site, the channels page, and video pages.
The announcement came on The Official YouTube blog, where Mur Viswanathan, a Google product manager, outlined the layout changes that have been implemented. From the blog post:
Lots of complex algorithms are working behind the scenes to give you the channel you’re looking for, for example, being able to tell when the word ‘Chicago’ means the music band and when it means the movie/musical. We’re still tweaking everything to make sure it works just right for you, so let us know what you think of the channels or learn more in our help center.
YouTube has been auto-generating channels based on search topics, and putting them in the “Top YouTube Collections” tab, for over a year now. The channels are often based on niche topics such as “Yoga” or “Big Wave Surfing,” as seen in the picture above. The channels function the same as other channels, allowing users to subscribe and follow a topic. To tell if a channel has been auto-generated by YouTube, users should look for the “auto generated by YouTube” message below the channel’s title.
It seems that YouTube is now confident enough in their auto-generating algorithms to begin promoting the feature more publicly. What do you think? Are auto-generated channels useful or annoying? Have you spotted any of these on YouTube yet? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Kate Upton and her now-infamous “Cat Daddy” dance have been igniting inextinguishable fires in the heads, hearts, and pants of Internet users all week. Calling the whole ordeal a scandal, however, is kind of an insult to, you know, actual scandals, but since that seems to be the terminology everyone’s using right now, we’ll just stick with that for the sake of continuity.
If you’re not into curvy supermodels who spend their free time during photo shoots engaging in provocative dance routines, then there’s a very strong chance you haven’t seen the latest jiggle-fest from the girl who makes eating overloaded hamburgers looks sickeningly erotic. Professional photographer Terry Richardson talked Upton into letting him film her performing the “Cat Daddy”, a dance that I’m painfully unfamiliar with. That’s what I get for listening to music that would get me laughed out of most night clubs.
Upton, wearing a very skimpy bikini, proceeds to perform said routine in all its glory, prompting the folks over at YouTube to pull the plug on the video. Was she naked? Nope. Was she engaging in simulated sex? Not even close. Did she experience a nipple slip? Not that I could tell. However, that didn’t stop the moderators at the popular website from removing the clip due to community guidelines. Outrage promptly ensued.
“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”
So rest easy, perverts. Kate Upton and her crazy little “Cat Daddy” dance are now back on YouTube. The clip in question has been embedded below for those of you who don’t have anything better to do than watch half-naked girls shake their moneymakers online. You’re welcome. Twitter reactions are down there, as well.
YouTube’s looking to evolve from offering only a conglomeration of amateur videos and pirated clips and become a legitimate provider of premium content with its new marketing tool, Brandcast, and it’s looking to achieve that goal by pledging millions of dollars toward the campaign.
Yesterday at a celebrity-laden courtship for advertisers that featured the likes of Jay-Z, Virginia Madsen, Julia Stiles, Flo Rida, and several others, YouTube announced it was dedicating $200 million dollars to promote the premium channels throughout the Google Display Network. YouTube is investing another $100 million dollars into the creation and production of content for the premium channels, as well, so they’ll have a more Hollywood gloss to them and won’t be mistaken for the shaky camera work you see in so many of those skateboarder wipeout videos.
In case you missed the teaser that YouTube released last month for Brandcast’s debut, take a look at what YouTube has in mind.
YouTube’s been working toward its first upfront event since rumors began to circulate last September that the video site was going to launch a TV-like service.
According to a Advertising Age, Global Head of Content at Google/YouTube Google/YouTube, Robert Kyncl, wants to take YouTube into a bold new direction with online broadcasting. “We will fish where the fish are in a mighty big pond,” he said invitingly to the advertising execs in attendance. “If you want to lead, join us now for the next seven years. We can build audiences together. We can build brands together.”
So far, YouTube’s managed to attract a high caliber of celebrities to create channels on YouTube. A report from the Washington Post last October detailed how Madonna, Shaquille O’Neal, Ashton Kutcher, and Jay-Z will be a part of YouTube’s plan to eventually offer 100 channels of original programming that will produce about 25 hours of new material every day. As of today, YouTube’s practically already at that 100-channel goal as it’s channels page for new and original content has over 90 channels.
As Google TV wades into the television and production market and with the Apple TV making a separate effort, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not this is the first death knell for cable television as we know it.
