WebProNews

Tag: YouTube

  • YouTube’s NextUp Initiative Launches

    Are you a fledgling video star with thoughts of Internet stardom dancing in your head, and unfortunately, the Ark Music Factory won’t give you the Rebecca Black treatment, bridging the gap between “fledgling” and “wildly popular even though we aren’t sure why” for you?

    Perhaps YouTube’s NextUp program is what you need.

    Even though more hours of content are uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis than there are hours in a day (35 as opposed to 24), Google’s video service is always looking for more content, especially the kind that gets tons and tons of views, embeds and link backs.

    To facilitate this process, YouTube’s NextUp initiative is searching for a new video star to train, mentor and promote. The only thing the prospective Amanda Congdons of the world have to do is provide an entry submission detailing why YouTube should select them for the NextUp program.

    According to a post at YouTube’s official blog, up to 25 applicants will be selected, and those that are chosen receive the following:

    • $35,000 in funding to produce a new project, purchase new tools or advance their overall YouTube careers
    • A spot at a four-day YouTube Creator Camp in which they’ll benefit from 1:1 mentoring and learn an array of production techniques from leading industry and YouTube experts
    • Promotion of their final work and channel
    • The opportunity to become better connected with a special community of aspiring and talented content creators from around the world

    So not only is YouTube going help promote your content, a boon in and of itself, those selected will be handsomely rewarded with backer money and given a crash-course designed to improve their content’s production value.

    In other words, the chosen applicants will be financially backed and given access to valuable knowledge that can dramatically improve one’s video content by one of the most recognizable Internet properties there is. The caveat is, applicants will need to apart of YouTube’s partnership program. The blog post contains further details:

    Who should apply? Up-and-coming Partners (those with less than 300,000 subscribers) who are committed to advancing their YouTube careers and to produce the next generation of fresh, compelling content. Last week, we announced another initiative from YouTube Next, the YouTube Creator Institute – please note that eligible Partners need to choose whether to apply for either that program or YouTube NextUp – sorry, you can’t apply for both! Full program and application rules are here.

    Applicants for YouTube’s NextUp program must have their submissions turned in by March 27, 2011 by midnight pacific time. If you’d like to apply, you can do so here: http://www.youtube.com/creators.

    Winners will be chosen on April 20, at the YouTube Creators area, and considering what’s being celebrated on that particular date, it should make for some interesting video viewing at YouTube.

  • Even Negativity Brings Fame On YouTube and Twitter

    If you know the story of Justin Bieber, he gained his fame due to a talent scout discovering him on YouTube. Could Rebecca Black be the next sensation to follow in Bieber’s footsteps? Google+Reader”>Her video has already reached 9 million views on YouTube, mostly due to negativity. She already has a rather lengthy Wikipedia entry, detailing her rise in fame.

    Michael J. Nelson, a comedian, was the first to poke fun at the song. On March 11th, the day the huge view spike hit, Nelson tweeted this:

    @michaeljnelson
    Michael J Nelson    Let this be on your lips as you head into the weekend http://youtu.be/CD2LRROpph0 (it also answer the ? “what’s the worst video ever made?”) 4 days ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    Later, the viral based Comedy Central show, Tosh.0 poked fun at the song titled “Friday”:

    Rebecca Black: “Are you sure these are the lyrics you want me to sing?”
    Producer: “What are you talking about?”
    Rebecca Black: “This part where I just kinda slowly explain the ordering of the days of the week?”
    Producer: “That’s the hook, baby! We breakin’ it down for the kids! They gonna know those days!!”

    On Monday, ‘Friday’ became available to download on iTunes. For $0.99, you can own the now huge YouTube sensation. The song has received over 550 ratings, and is averaging 2.5/5 stars.

    Currently, Rebecca Black is trending high on Twitter and the YouTube views show no sign of slowing down. The true question now remains, will her success continue? The song was produced by a legitimate company, by the name of Ark Music Factory. Though her song is trending due to its widely accepted awfulness, will it lead to bigger thinks for Black?

    I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. If you haven’t listened to the song yet, here’s the YouTube video.

    (WARNING: the song is extremely catchy. If you’re caught singing it, expect laughter coming your way).

  • YouTube To Hold Interview With Israeli Prime Minister

    YouTube is inviting users to submit questions to Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu for an interview that will be streamed live on the site.

    The interview is part of the YouTube World View series and is in partnership with Israel’s Channel 2 News. The interview will be based entirely on the top-voted questions that are submitted.

    The YouTube Blog offers more details. “Whether you want to know about the popular upheavals in neighboring Middle East countries, the potential consequences of Iran getting nuclear weapons, peace talks with the Palestinians, or prospects for Israel’s hi-tech industry, ask your question at www.youtube.com/worldview, in either English or Hebrew (half of the interview will be conducted in each language).”

    “You can also submit your question via Twitter – just make sure to use hashtag #askNetanyahu.”

    On Wednesday, March 23, Prime Minister Netanyahu will do a live interview and answer a variety of the most popular questions submitted and voted on by the YouTube community. The interview will be the first event in Israel ever to be streamed live on YouTube. Questions must be submitted by Monday, March 21st at midnight GMT.

  • YouTube Launches The Creator Institute

    YouTube Launches The Creator Institute

    YouTube said today it is launching the YouTube Creator Institute, a new initiative aimed at helping content creators improve their skills.

    YouTube has partnered with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and Columbia College Chicago’s Television Department.


    To apply to the YouTube Creator Institute applicants will need to submit a 2 minute video displaying creativity, originality, and technical skills. Also 2 short free response questions: Why do you want to attend the YouTube Creator Institute and how does it fit into your long-term goals? (400 words) and Describe the most emotional moment of your life. (600 words).

    YouTube says participants will learn about story arcing, cinematography, money-making strategies and social media tactics.

    The YouTube blog provides more details. “The YouTube community will vote for two weeks between March 28 and April 8 for their favorite creators.”

    “The top voted candidates will move on to the final round, where our film and television school partners will choose the inaugural class for each of their programs, which will be announced on April 20.”

  • YouTube Buys Next New Networks, Launches YouTube Next

    YouTube announced that it has acquired Next New Networks. Rumors about the acquisition have been out there for a while, but Google has made it official.

    As our own Doug Caverly wrote about a month ago, “The acquisition would make sense in a number of ways. First, whether or not you’ve heard of Next New Networks, it’s rather big… YouTube’s been dabbling with original content for some time, and that just happens to be the specialty of Next New Networks. Finally, other Next New Networks partners include Amazon, AOL, Hulu, TiVo, and Yahoo, meaning an acquisition would provide Google with an easy way of making some important friends (and/or undercutting a few rivals).”

    “Since launching in March 2007, the Next New Networks team has built a highly effective platform for developing, packaging and building audiences around original web video programming, attracting over 2 billion views and 6 million subscribers across their partner networks of channels and shows,” says YouTube Director of Global Operations, Tom Pickett. “Within YouTube, Next New Networks will be a laboratory for experimentation and innovation with the team working in a hands on way with a wide variety of content partners and emerging talent to help them succeed on YouTube. We are thrilled with the new capability the team brings and the positive impact it will have making our YouTube partners more successful.”

    YouTube also announced “YouTube Next,” a YouTube division aimed at accelerating partner growth, which will spearhead a series of YouTube Next-branded programs and services.

    “At YouTube, we’re focused on building a great technology platform for creators, and so we leave the actual creation of great videos to the people who do it best: our partners,” adds Pickett. “This new group and the addition of the Next New Networks team doesn’t change that. But being a great platform for creators also means helping our partners get the tools and guidance they need to develop higher quality videos and drive bigger audiences to their work.

    YouTube says the YouTube Next team and programs will expand the company’s partner meet-ups and community events, increase investment in partner education and training and launch new capabilities in audience development.

    Financial terms of the Next New Networks acquisition were not revealed.

  • YouTube Hires Paramount EVP/GM

    YouTube Hires Paramount EVP/GM

    Less than a month ago, a rumor indicated that YouTube would begin paying celebrities big money in order to create custom content.  Now, a piece of the organization’s Hollywood-related plans seems to be falling into place, as YouTube’s hired a key Paramount Pictures exec.

    At Paramount, Alex Carloss held the title “EVP & GM, WW Distribution.”  At YouTube, he’ll be a member of the content acquisition team, according to Peter Kafka, who broke the story.

    Carloss’s impressive employment history should come in handy there.  Over the years, he’s worked at Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Warner Home Video, Electronic Arts, Real Networks, and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, presumably making contacts all the way.

    That could provide YouTube with a good “in” or two with respect to making deals.

    Of course, at the same time, people at Google and YouTube probably appreciate the fact that this move will annoy Viacom, which owns Paramount.

    Anyway, Kafka wrote, “[Carloss will] work with Robert Kyncl, the Netflix veteran Google hired last year to figure out its strategy for working with Hollywood and other professional content-makers, which have yet to give the giant site all the video it wants.”

  • YouTube Movie Service May Launch In UK

    YouTube users in the UK may soon gain access to a bigger and better selection of movies through the site – if they’re willing to fork over a fee.  Rumor has it that Google intends to begin testing a Netflix-like subscription service in the region.

    Claire Atkinson reported late last night, "The search giant, which has been in talks with Hollywood studios for months, is looking to launch the streaming service first in Europe, in particular the UK, before expanding to the US, said executives who have been briefed on the plan."

    Atkinson also wrote, "Google has earmarked $100 million for striking content deals with studios and other premium content providers in its quest to expand its offerings beyond the homemade videos that dominate the site."

    All of this is unconfirmed, but it makes a fair amount of sense.  Other reports have indicated that YouTube wants to pay celebs millions of dollars for custom content, so the money and the will to use it is there.

    Plus, by launching its service in the UK, YouTube would avoid going toe-to-toe with Hulu and Netflix at first, and have a bit of time to work out any kinks before exposing the service to a much larger audience.

    We’ll see what happens, in any event.  No timeline’s been established for when a launch might occur.

  • John Boehner to Answer Budget, Spending Questions on YouTube

    Speaker of the House John Boehner will be doing a YouTube interview on Sunday, February 27 at midnight ET. YouTube is calling for questions from users. 

    YouTube will use Google Moderator to determine which questions get asked. The ones with the most votes will be selected. 

    "With many U.S. states facing budget crises, and the President’s recent budget proposal being met with skepticism by Republicans, the financial health of the U.S. is capturing interest around the world," says YouTube News and Politics Manager Ramya Raghavan. "As the budget debate heats up on Capitol Hill, we invite you to submit your questions for one of the most vocal opponents to President Obama’s proposed budget plan."

    John Boehner YouTube Channel - Submit questions

    YouTube says video questions are "highly preferred," but text questions are also accepted. They don’t want the videos to exceed 20 seconds in length, and request that questions be asked directly and clearly.

    "Feel free to be creative (use props, charts, etc.) to help your question stand out," says Raghaven. "If you have time, find an interesting backdrop that may help reinforce your message. Submit your question early. The final deadline to submit is Sunday, February 27 at midnight ET."

    Questions can be submitted on Boehner’s YouTube channel.

  • YouTube To Stream NBA and NHL Games?

    YouTube To Stream NBA and NHL Games?

    Sports-seeking cord cutters might have reason to rejoice, or at least reason to hope:  there’s a possibility YouTube will become a major player in the way sporting events, specifically, the NBA and the NHL, will be consumed by their fans.

    After the success YouTube enjoyed from streaming of cricket from the Indian Premier League, Google’s online video service is looking to expand its reach by including the NBA and NHL in their sports stream lineup.

    While there’s a lot being made about how such agreements would potentially increase YouTube’s revenue stream, making them a viable with such services like Netflix’s Watch Instantly, Amazon and Hulu Plus, the fact that YouTube continues to pull in incredible amounts of traffic makes these concerns somewhat unfounded.

    YouTube Stats
    And these are almost a year old
    Image courtesy

    Nevertheless, there’s no denying how much stronger such features would make the already-powerful YouTube, but there more significant, non-business related issues at hand:

    First off, there are no dedicated streams of NBA or NHL games.  Yes, these many of these games can be found through unauthorized streaming services, but having a legitimate, powered-by-YouTube, service that offers legal streams would be a windfall both financially and as a method that further strengthens YouTube’s dominant user base.

    Considering the way the NBA and the NHL have embraced YouTube, such a partnership seems quite natural, not to mention, beneficial for all parties involved. 

    Furthermore, when you take into account the NBA’s labor issues, an additional revenue stream as powerful as the Google/YouTube platform would certainly benefit the NBA’s coffers as much as the platform offering the streams.

    Not only is YouTube looking to add the NBA and NHL, they also have their sites set on European soccer; but their vision doesn’t stop there.  According to Bloomberg, Gautam Anand, Google’s director of content partnerships for Asia Pacific, says:

    “It’s fair to say that there will be a lot more appealing sports content you’ll see on YouTube.  We have ongoing conversations with pretty much everyone.”

    Spokespersons for both the NBA and NHL were fairly mum on the topic.  The NHL offered no comment and the NBA offered a compulsory response saying they’re glad YouTube recognizes the value of live sports. Hopefully, David Stern, Gary Bettman and any other sports commissioners involved in these negotiations recognize the potential value partnering with a service as powerful as YouTube can provide.

  • Eminem Chrysler Ad Wins YouTube Blitz

    Eminem Chrysler Ad Wins YouTube Blitz

    YouTube announced that the winner of its Ad Blitz contest is Chrysler, for its Super Bowl commercial, which featured Eminem driving around Detroit. The contest was based on viewer votes. 

    "It’s been about two weeks since the Super Bowl aired, but our ears are still ringing from the noise of advertisers jockeying for position in Ad Blitz, YouTube’s contest to find the best Super Bowl ad," said Suzie Reider, Display Advertising Director at YouTube.

    "It was a great Super Bowl for mobile this year, with over 3.5 million views of the Ad Blitz channel happening on mobile devices," she said. "We received over 2.7 million votes, and in the first 30 hours after the game aired, commercials were viewed 47 million times."

    At the Ad Blitz gallery on YouTube, you can see the top 5 videos, which came from Chrysler, Doritos, Bridgestone, Doritos (again), and Doritos (yet again). 

    So while Chrysler may have taken the cake, Doritos has to feel pretty good about getting three separate spots in the top five. Pretty impressive. 

  • David Cameron To Take Questions On YouTube

    Last month, something called "World View" began when YouTube users were asked to submit questions for President Obama.  Now, the series is continuing, as YouTube users have been asked to submit questions for Prime Minister David Cameron.

    This is a big deal for Google’s video-sharing site.  Many different politicians have been happy to use YouTube at various points, making the development something other than a breakthrough, but it’s not every day that one of the most important people in the world sets aside a chunk of time for a special Q&A.

    If Cameron follows Obama’s lead, it’s likely to be a considerable amount of time, too; Obama’s video response was almost 40 minutes long.

    So if you’re interested, a post on the YouTube Blog explained, "[Y]ou’re invited to submit questions to Mr Cameron about foreign policy, national security, and how he views the present situation in the Middle East.  In addition, you can also submit questions about issues related to domestic policy, so if you’re curious about the economy, education, health, or the big society, just go to www.youtube.com/worldview to submit your question in either video or text.  You can also tweet in your question – make sure to use hashtag #askthePM in your tweet, and it will automatically be added to the World View queue."

    The deadline for submissions is midnight (GMT) on Tuesday the 22nd, and then Cameron is supposed to answer some of them on Thursday the 24th.

    The next person who will be in the World View hot seat has yet to be determined, by the way.

  • Rumor: YouTube Will Pay Celebs Millions For Custom Content

    Ever hear of the term "YouTube famous"?  It relates to a person who isn’t a household name, but might be familiar to frequent visitors of the site.  Only soon, YouTube may redefine the expression (and become much more popular) by paying genuine celebrities to create new channels and content.

    Claude Brodesser-Akner reported, "We’re told that recently installed YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar is expanding the site’s existing talent partnership initiative by making name-brand Hollywood types an entrepreneurial offer – one that will surely make their old-media employers blanch: In exchange for creating a genre-specific, celebrity-branded YouTube channel and packing it full of original, three-minute-long shows, the celeb would get to retain ownership of the channel’s content."

    Later, Brodesser-Akner added, "The talent should be very happy indeed, for what’s so astonishing is not just the offer of equity in the content, but the amount of cash YouTube seems committed to throwing at higher-quality, higher-profile web programming: Insiders tell Vulture that the expanding program aims to land at least twenty boldface-name curator-owners, with YouTube offering as much as $5 million per celeb-branded channel."

    That’s pretty interesting.  It may signify that YouTube can consistently make $5 million in ad revenue from a popular channel, which would mean a lot to both ordinary content creators and financial analysts.  Or it might show that YouTube’s hungrier than ever for eyeballs, regardless of the cost.

    Either way, it should be interesting to see what happens.  Celebrities can’t have too much of a problem yakking on camera for three minutes at a time, and $5 million is more than generous in terms of compensation.

    As long as the rumor’s true, then, we may not have long to wait before big movie and television stars start showing up on YouTube on a regular basis.

  • VEVO Second Only To YouTube In January

    A total of 171 million U.S. Internet users watched online video in January for an average of 14.5 hours per viewer, according to the latest report from comScore.

    Google sites remained the top online video content property in January with 144. 1 million unique viewers, driven mainly by YouTube. VEVO landed in the second spot with 51 million viewers, trailed by Yahoo sites with 48.7 million viewers. Viacom Digital took the fourth position with 48.1 million viewers, while AOL attracted 44.5 million viewers. Google sites had the e highest number of viewing sessions with 1.9 billion, and average time spent per viewer at 283 minutes, or 4.7 hours.

    Video-January

    Americans viewed more than 4.3 billion video ads in January, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at nearly 1.1 billion. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 503.7 million ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (432 million) and Microsoft Sites (415 million).

     

    Video-Ads

     

    Time spent watching videos ads totaled 1.7 billion minutes during the month, with Hulu streaming the largest duration at 434 million minutes. Video ads reached 45 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 32 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 44.6 during the month.

    Other findings from comScore in January include:

    *The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: Tremor Media at 46.8 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 41.9 percent and Break Media at 40.7 percent.

    *83.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

    *The duration of the average online content video was 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

     

     

     

  • YouTube Details Processing Speed Improvements

    No one could have expected that YouTube’s decision to allow lengthier, higher-quality video clips would come without a price.  Specifically, it only made sense that it would take longer for the clips to go live.  But YouTube’s made great strides in improving the processing and publishing speed for videos.

    A post on the YouTube Blog explained late yesterday that one technique "is to overlap uploads and video processing without waiting for the upload to finish.  This results in a base quality version of your video going live very quickly after the upload completes, making the link to your video active and shareable."

    Then, "The second technique, which we’ve internally codenamed Hydra (after Greek mythology’s nine-headed monster) tackles this problem by leveraging Google’s massive cloud computing capabilities.  We split a single video into small chunks and process each chunk simultaneously on different machines.  Hydra then reassembles all the processed chunks so that you see a seamless video, processed and published in a fraction of the time it would have taken to do it previously."

    The results are hard to argue with.  Apparently YouTube now processes clips seven times faster than it did in 2008, and things have gotten four times faster in the last six months alone.

    That means 60 percent of all clips now go live in less than a minute, whereas none of them beat that target last year.

    The YouTube Blog post hinted that additional improvements could further decrease wait time in the future, as well.

  • YouTube, See3 Organize DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards

    It’s time for charitable organizations to dust off their camcorders and put on their thinking caps.  YouTube and See3 Communications have partnered for the second time to present the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, a competition that will grant the winners cash, publicity, and a new gadget.

    More specifically, a post on the YouTube Blog explained that the contest is meant to be "a celebration of the best non-profit video on the site."  And the prizes include $2,500, a spot on the YouTube homepage, and a custom Flip video camera.

    As for what’s supposed to go into all this, the clips will be judged on message, use of video, quality of video, and creativity.

    Then a few other key points are the fact that March 2nd is the deadline to enter, and would-be participants must be members of the YouTube Nonprofit Program in order to have a chance at succeeding.

    Also, local groups shouldn’t worry about going up against international organizations, because there are separate categories for "Best Small Org Video," "Best Medium Org Video," "Best Large Org Video," and "Best Thrifty Video."

    Good luck to the organizations that choose to become involved.

  • YouTube Attracts 8.4 Billion Streams In January

     Online video usage in the U.S. is up significantly from the same time last year as time spent viewing video on a PC/Mac/laptops from home and work locations increased 45 percent, according to a new report from Nielsen.

    The number of unique online video viewers only increased by 3.1% from last January, but the level of activity was up as viewers streamed 28% more video and spent 45% more time watching. Total video streams also saw significant year-over-year growth, up 31.5% to 14.5 billion streams.

    January saw new entries to the top 10 most popular video brands  with music and entertainment site VEVO and video rental site Netflix entering at #3 and #9, respectively. Still a relatively new site, VEVO is showing signs of potential with over 32 million unique video viewers during the month, fewer than 100,000 viewers behind Facebook.

    YouTube continued to be the most visited brand in January with 8.4 billion video streams followed by Hulu with more than 813 million streams and VEVO with more than 346 million streams.

     

    Top-Video-Brands

     

    When looking at the most engaging video brands – as measured by time spent – Netflix was the top destination as the average U.S. video viewer spent over 11 hours watching video on the site from home and work locations.

    Nielsen also found 7 of the 10 most engaging video brands also saw double-digit increases in average time per viewer. U.S. video viewers nearly doubled their time spent viewing video on Veoh, spending 2 hours, 16 minutes on average in January. Justin.tv also saw notable growth as U.S. viewers increased their video viewing time on the site by 56% from last month.

     

  • YouTube, LG Partner Over Mobile 3D Video

    Owners of Android smartphones made by LG may soon begin to lead the way when it comes to mobile 3D video.  YouTube and LG announced a partnership this morning that will result in users being able to view, record, and share 3D clips without glasses.

    Compared to needing spectacles and being limited to a handful of special big screens, this arrangement should provide viewers with a more convenient experience.  It also promises to increase the selection of content available.

    Francisco Varela, Head of YouTube Platform Partnerships, explained in a statement, "3D technology has traditionally been reserved for the major Hollywood movie studios.  With the new LG Optimus 3D anyone anywhere in the world can shoot 3D videos, upload them to YouTube and share them with their friends.  We’re excited to see the creative videos our community captures and shares with this new technology."

    Unfortunately, not much else is known at this point.  The phone’s specs are a mystery (aside from the fact that it’ll be "dual-core, simultaneous dual-channel and dual-memory"), and LG hasn’t hinted at a price.

    For that matter, we’re not sure how many people are clamoring to see 3D content on their cell phones, never mind create it.

    This move puts YouTube and LG in a good position if mobile 3D video becomes popular, at least.

  • Acquisition Rumors Again Connect Google, Next New Networks

    Rumors have indicated that Google could acquire a company called Next New Networks since at least December, and as of now, neither company has anything to announce.  A new round of reports has surfaced, however, indicating that the purchase might soon occur.

    The acquisition would make sense in a number of ways.  First, whether or not you’ve heard of Next New Networks, it’s rather big.  The company claims to have scored 1.5 billion views, more than 5 million subscribers, and 10 Webby Awards since its launch in 2007.

    Also, YouTube’s been dabbling with original content for some time, and that just happens to be the specialty of Next New Networks.  (The two organizations actually partnered prior to December, so everything presumably went well.)

    Finally, other Next New Networks partners include Amazon, AOL, Hulu, TiVo, and Yahoo, meaning an acquisition would provide Google with an easy way of making some important friends (and/or undercutting a few rivals).

    So stay tuned.  And although nothing’s certain, Jessica E. Vascellaro and Amir Efrati wrote with respect to dollar amounts and timing, "Google is expected to pay tens of millions of dollars for the New York-based company . . . .  [A] deal could be announced in the coming week."

    We’ll be sure to report any significant updates.

  • New Google Acquisition Could Be A Key To Company’s Social Battle

    Earlier this week, it was revealed that Google had acquired fflick, a site that lets you log in with your Twitter account, and see what your friends have said about movies. 

    According to Jason Kincaid, who first reported on the acquisition, fflick had always planned to expand beyond movies, with that just being the first vertical. It seemed to make sense that Google would take advantage of this to improve its social search features, including Hotpot. I was not alone in this thinking. 

    Having your Twitter friends’ opinions about things you search for right along with the rest of your search results could be pretty valuable. 

    fflick - see what you friends are saying about the movies

    I was somewhat surprised to see Google announce the acquisition the next day on the YouTube blog, saying that the fflick team would become part of the YouTube team. Don’t get me wrong, this makes sense too, as a way to make YouTube (Google’s greatest social asset) more social, in the way Google described.

    "Many of the YouTube videos you watch and love are also shared on sites beyond YouTube.com," said YouTube Group Product Manager Shiva Rajaraman. "Our site is built, in part, on social tools like comments, video responses and ratings. In recent years we’ve worked to integrate these social signals across other popular social platforms. For example, we see more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link, and over 150 years worth of YouTube video is watched on Facebook every day." 

    "We’ve always believed that there are great conversations happening all the time off of YouTube.com, and that commentary has the potential to enrich your experience when watching and discovering video on YouTube itself," added Rajaraman. 

    Reading a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article about Larry Page’s 3.0, one paragraph in the six-page article caught my eye. It as talking about Google’s "social layer" initiative that is supposed to help it compete with Facebook. It’s been most recently referred to as "Google+1", and the project is being led by Google’s Vic Gundotra. The article says:

    Two sources familiar with it, who asked not to be named because the project is not yet public, confirm that it is tentatively called Google +1 and that it is designed to cull data about relationships among users from current services such as Gmail and YouTube. Google will then let users share material through those connections, while using the information to make other products more social. Search results may be skewed toward pages that your friends found useful—for instance, a Google Maps query for nearby Italian restaurants could return one that was positively reviewed by someone you know. (emphasis added).

    With this in mind, fflick may play a role in the big picture after all, even as part of the YouTube unit. I can only speculate and try to put some puzzles pieces together, but something tells me the fflick pick-up is more than just a way to talk about YouTube videos, especially when you also consider Google’s much-increased focus on local and social. 

    Thoughts?

  • YouTube

    While YouTube has featured the iFrame embed capability for about six months now, they’ve quietly promoted this method to be the primary embed format, all in an effort to further the transition to HTML 5 protocols.

    Until recently, the standard embed format used the object tag, like so:

    <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wsZ8h9_X-A4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wsZ8h9_X-A4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

    But now, when a user depresses the embed button, they are greeted with this:

    <iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UcnEIgmq8iw" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen></iframe>

    As indicated, the ability to use iFrame embeds has been around since July of 2010, but the change in default embed format reveals YouTube’s preference for an HTML 5 world.  Users can still use the orginal <object>-based embeds by selecting the “Use old embed code” selection if desired.

    In terms of compatibility, at least one WordPress blogger — the author of this post — indicates their blog’s backend stripped the iFrame tag out, making the new style unusable.  Granted, the iFrame removal could be because of any number of WordPress plugins — the SEO plugin is one suspect — nevertheless, there are some compatibility issues with YouTube’s new format.

    Considering iFrames aren’t necessarily SEO-friendly to begin with, something the ReelSEO blog discusses here, perhaps the WordPress bloggers of the world should continue using the old embed style, or perhaps disable their SEO plugins.

    More from ReelSEO:

    iFrames are, generally speaking, not a good thing for SEO. They are, by definition, displaying content on a page that belongs to an entirely different webpage.  So your site won’t typically get any of the ranking benefits you might expect if the content was directly on your page… If you embed videos frequently, and care about ranking for terms related to those videos, I’d say it’s probably time for a major round of rank testing.

    And with that, YouTube is firmly in the HTML 5 corner, although, they are kind enough to throw a bone to those who prefer the old embed format. 

    I’m looking at you, WordPress bloggers.

  • Google’s fflick Aimed At Making YouTube More Social

    Yesterday, unofficial news came out that Google had acquired fflick, which is a site that lets you log in with your Twitter account and see what your friends have said about movies. Today came the official announcement, and while it didn’t provide any financial details, word is that the price was about $10 million. 

    Messing around with fflick for a few minutes, it was easy to envision the product being integrated into Google’s social search offerings, and possibly its recently launched Hotpot, especially considering that movies were said to be only the first vertical used by fflick. In other words, why not do this with local businesses, or any other kind of product or brand? 

    While this isn’t necessarily out of the question, Google’s announcement today came via the YouTube blog. fflick is becoming part of YouTube. Didn’t see that coming. 

    fflick - see what you friends are saying about the movies

    With the fflick team, Google says it will build features to connect YouTube uses with videos talked about all over the web, and to "surface the best of those conversations for you to participate in."

    I guess that makes sense too. 

    "Many of the YouTube videos you watch and love are also shared on sites beyond YouTube.com," says YouTube Group Product Manager Shiva Rajaraman. "Our site is built, in part, on social tools like comments, video responses and ratings. In recent years we’ve worked to integrate these social signals across other popular social platforms. For example, we see more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link, and over 150 years worth of YouTube video is watched on Facebook every day."

    "We’ve always believed that there are great conversations happening all the time off of YouTube.com, and that commentary has the potential to enrich your experience when watching and discovering video on YouTube itself," adds Rajaraman.

    Now, Google has been talking about adding a social layer across many of its products, and this would seemingly fit that bill. Let’s not forget that while Google is often criticized for its social media efforts, it does own YouTube. With YouTube being the company’s greatest social asset, it would still not be surprising to see some of this stuff turning up in Google search results.