Good article on the do's and dont's of social media for the college aged students.

Not only is creating a YouTube channel or video a great way for the average person to increase their SEO, it's even better for a company to give it a try. Studies have shown that most people don't stick around for a pre-roll ad on YouTube, so why waste the money when you can promote something for free that people will actually watch?

So you still have to go to one site to check your email and then another for Twitter and yet another for Facebook? Who has that kind of time!? Not anymore, now you can use multiple plug-ins right in your email client to interact with all of your social media sites. What client you use decides exactly what features you can add.

For example, if you use Google Mail you can add a nifty plug-in called Xoopit. This lets you integrate all your images and videos from your Gmail to places like Flickr and YouTube. You can also share it through Facebook or your blog.

Okay, so maybe you're the one person that doesn't have Gmail and you use Microsoft Outlook. With Outlook you can add OutTwit, which sounds pretty much like what it does. It adds a toolbar that allows you to send new posts to Twitter as well as read and reply. To keep all of your precious Tweets organized you can add a folder called Tweets (of course).

There are plenty more fun and functional plug-ins that could help you be a little more organized and thrifty with your time.

For all plug-ins, check it out here.

Today, sealed documents in the copyright infringement lawsuit (Viacom vs. YouTube) were made public. YouTube's main defense against Viacom's attack is that Viacom secretly uploaded content to YouTube and publicly complained about it being there. Viacom also tried to buy YouTube a bunch of times, suggesting that the $1 billion lawsuit is an attempt to cash in after the fact.

If this is true, Viacom forced bad PR on YouTube with unethical tactics when they couldn't profit off of them initially in order to steal revenue.

This move is going to cause a backlash of rescinded goodwill against Viacom. The public hates unearthed schemes more than just about anything.

A group of talented students at the Rochester Institute of Technology has just released a video about the destruction in Haiti. They put in over 70 hours of work into this philanthropic effort and would appreciate your help making this video go viral.

Your help will remind people that the problem in Haiti has not gone away. Do not let people forget!

Here the link to the YouTube page.

YouTube has an array of content and users, with some of its users being younger. A lot of the content uploaded on YouTube may not be suitable for all ages. Also, some users may just be offended by certain videos appearing in their results. In order to minimize this from happening YouTube has created a new feature called Safety Mode to add more controls. This new option is located at the bottom of any YouTube page beneath Countries and Languages. This option can be turned on and off at will. The types of videos that would be filtered out through this option would be videos with nudity or violence. Also, another benefit to Safety Mode is that by default it hides all comments, which you can have drop down, however profanity is blocked out by asterisks. I think this is a helpful feature, especially for people with children who are surfing the Internet at a young age. It adds a little more sense of security in regards to the content they will be viewing.

Since we discussed social media in class today, I thought that it would be interesting to blog about it this week. All of us are aware of the fact the social media marketing is vital to any marketing campaign today. But do you know the statistics why it's so critical? Or more importantly, do your clients know why it is important? When you're trying to sell your client on a social media campaign, have them take a peek at this video, because it will change even the most reluctant mind to one of accepting social media.

YouTube has recently launched a music video search tool similar to that of Pandora, called Disco. Disco allows you to search for an specific artist and suggests similar artists and music to what you typed in. The only "glich" so far is that it suggests mostly music from the artist that you type in not so much just similar music from different artists.

More info can be found here

YouTube announced today that it will begin offering movie rentals on its site. Starting small, users will be able to rent one of five films from the Sundance Film Festival by using their GoogleCheckout accounts. However, YouTube is already in the works to expand this collection to include movies from the education and health industries.

While this may not be much right now, it is easy to see where this step could lead. Youtube could easily become the next Netflix if it begins to offer access to popular full length films from its site. It is already taking steps toward making its site more HD compatable, allowing for better quality on a big screen format. This could become a very profitable business model for YouTube if they continue to keep making these steps toward improving their site.

To read the original article, click here.

Snagfilms is the online driver of feature length and meaningful videos, and is not trying to be the next YouTube. It is reaching out to a different online user and not the stereotypical web user. They are targeting those who seek longer video content of high quality. Some examples of the titles they carry are "Super Size Me" and "Blind Spot." However, like YouTube the content is free and they bring in revenue through advertising and a revenue split from DVD buy offers. The user is able to embed the films on their own website or blog, which is where the "snag" in the title comes from.

There is a music video named "Twista ft. Do Or Die-do you" that is topping the YouTube view list with 79,441,058,538 views and we can't figure out why. It is obviously a fake number yet YouTube still has it on top which is giving it a lot of unnecessary attention. We are now trying to figure out how one can inflate their number of total number of views on a YouTube video and how long it will take their administration to fix it. If anyone has any idea how this was done Mashable is trying to get the answers. You can read the whole article by clicking here.

200th POST ON CLASS BLOG: Thank you very much...


After reading the post about how Online Video Ads are Booming, I came across this article about how Google will begin testing "skippable" pre-roll ads in videos on YouTube this week, and how it could lead to a new advertising model.

People who find the video they are looking for have the option to skip the ad and go directly to the content. This can open a whole new look at how people view ads online and what ads actually work. It will give Google (along with partnering companies) better insight on human behavior.

"The test that determines if and when people watch the video clips will provide Google with insight into the type of person who may skip an ad, what type of ad they might skip, and what piece of content does better than another. Google also will look at whether some ads are skipped in a specific portion of the session. Does the person skip the ad in the first video versus the third during a 30-minute time slot while on YouTube? "

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=117200

This article talks about how to build your personal brand using YouTube. Because YouTube is one of the largest sharing networks out there it is extremely useful, consumers who view your post will feel like they know you by watching the video, which is an extremely powerful medium. Users can then link their YouTube posts to their facebook, linkedin, myspace, or blog account, giving them the advantage of distribution to friends and followers.
I thought this was pretty interesting, espeically because it is about personal branding and how to use a medium that is extremely powerful and popular, but extremely simple and easy to do.

Read more at....
http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/youtube-personal-brand/

Since the DroidDoes advertisement came out, there have been spoofs popping up on Youtube in retaliation. The ads are made by iPhone users who respond to the Droid ad in the same fashion as the original commercial by saying "iDont Care" and "iDont buy brands who bash other brands." You can read more and see the video by following the link below.

http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/idont-care/

Friday marked the third anniversary of Google's purchasing of YouTube for $1.64 billion. Though this past Tuesday Google head Eric Schmidt admitted he overpaid for Google by around $1 billion (^1). The question remains, for a company with very little revenue why did Google pay that much for it? Schmidt's attorney, Stuart Jay Baskin, said "they (YouTube) had indicated to us that they would be sold, and we believed that there would be a competing offer."(^2) Basically if Google didn't, someone else would have.

(^1) http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114946&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=&page_number=0

(^2) http://mashable.com/2009/10/06/google-youtube-1-billion/

When I was co-oping over the summer, some employees have gotten complaints for being on their Blackberrys during work. Even though it's during our lunch break, we were not allowed to use them and I always wondered what the big deal was. Which is why I was excited when I found this study:

The study done in Australia about how people that take short breaks to browse YouTube or Twitter are more likely to get more work done. It lets us relax and then when we're ready, we can focus on work again. So I guess there's no harm in watching a video or tweeting at work anymore!

http://www.switched.com/2009/04/03/be-more-productive-tweet-and-watch-youtube/

In an article titled "Google's YouTube Finds Money In Analytics" Laurie Sullivan of MediaPost.com writes about how Google can give copyright holders a tool to "track viewer sentiment to determine the best distribution and marketing strategy for music, video and other content clips that are generated and uploaded by the community." Think Google Analytics for YouTube...

YouTube accounts for 99% of all videos watched on Google sites, representing over 40% of all videos that are viewed online. Combining their content management feature with YouTube Insights, a free analytics tool that lets media companies mine information, could help copyright holders generate revenue from the data and in return boost profits for YouTube.

"It allows content owners -- such as music labels, movie studios and advertisers -- to compare audience demographics between "claimed videos" and "official versions." It also provides data and insight into Web sites or search terms that drive the most traffic to versions of the content uploaded by YouTube members. "

- If you want to read more, follow this link to the article on MediaPost.com

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114409