Archive for the ‘YouTube’ Category
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Reality TV has become superfluous. It’s cheap to produce, and highly addicting to watch.
But there’s a next level of “reality” that YouNow hopes to bring to Internet television. Where the television audience has multiple roles, including viewer, judge and even contestant. For instance, let’s say YouNow offers a Country Artist of the Week competition. You use your webcam to broadcast your talent. And in real-time, the Internet audience either votes you down (gong-show style) to skip to the next contestant, or votes you up to extend your airtime.
In theory, I love this idea. Especially the real-time audience-as-judge aspect. But, as this gains in popularity and you have 10,000 people vying for air-time, how do you decide on who gets air-time? But, if they can figure this out, I think it’s a brilliant idea.
Tags: internet-consultant, YouNow
Posted in Digital Video, Internet Marketing, YouTube | No Comments »
Monday, October 10th, 2011
The latest round of Google Panda updates - algorithm updates that affect the universal search engine rankings - have bitten again. This latest update, dubbed “2.5″, has resulted in a new tumultuous list of winners and losers.
The losers? Press release distribution sites, e.g. PRNewswire and BusinessWire. The winners? Google sites, including YouTube and Android.com.
Unfortunately, it’s a little hard to figure out the rhyme and reason to the winners and losers list, without understanding specific company practices. Industry thought leaders claim that authorship markup should be your next step if you are struggling to avoid Panda bites, as Google seems to be ever more concerned with original authorship of content. And dare I take a leap when looking at the winners list and say that Google is valuing video more and more?
Tags: 2.5, android, BusinesWire, google-panda-update, PRNewswire, Search-Engine-Optimization, search-engine-rankings, YouTube
Posted in Digital Video, Google, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube, android | No Comments »
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Bigger companies have started becoming more big-brother about what their employees access at work in terms of Internet usage. Banning streaming audio. Streaming video. Even social media.
But, a full 25% report watching news clip via work computers, and 4% even claim watching feature-length films at work.
But even for companies with uber-strict usage policies, the prevalence of smartphones mean that your employees don’t need your network to get their YouTube fix anymore.
In fact, 47% of those surveys claim they hide their mobile phones under their desk to stream online content. And 42% get their Anry Birds and Paper Toss fix while in the bathroom.
Tags: angry-birds, internet-marketing, mobile-marketing, paper-toss, YouTube
Posted in YouTube, mobile-marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Video utilization has been a Web best practice for a while now. It engages. People like video. Hey, beats reading, right?
But if you’re using video as a content replacement – a text replacement – how can you take advantage of the SEO benefits of video?
First, you need to understand that when you’re dealing with video, you’re dealing with two search engines, specifically the biggest two search engines in the world – Google and YouTube. Google will display videos directly within their standard search engine results in certain cases – so when you embed a video on a specific page of your site, make sure that video is optimized similarly to the page as well. That video may actually have a better chance of making the first page of Google than the content page itself.
YouTube makes it easy to optimize your video, including inserting a keyword-rich title, description, tags and even annotations.
Tags: internet-marketing-company, Search-Engine-Optimization, seo, YouTube
Posted in Digital Video, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube | No Comments »
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
If you have a Google account, you may have experienced some design tweaks lately while utilizing the Google search engine.
Now, Google isn’t coming outright and saying it, but you have to assume that the timing of this redesign means that it’s meant for Google Plus integration. Especially since the first button on the new black header is the Google + link, for those who have the account.
In fact, at the same time, YouTube is playing around with a redesign they’ve called Cosmic Panda. It’s a re-design too, but perhaps it’s meant to better integrate with Google Plus, which is definitely designed specifically for sharing YouTube videos?
But, Google claims that the focus of the re-design is really on device-agnosticism. That your Google experience will be seamless no matter if you’re using it on your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone.
Tags: cosmic-panda, Google, Google-Plus, search-engine-marketing-agency, social-media-marketing, YouTube
Posted in Google, Google Plus, Search-Engine-Optimization, Social Media, YouTube | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
YouTube fans have been living in fantasy land for a while now. Free content. No ads. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it is. Because YouTube had been hemorrhaging money since its creation. But, because of that focus on the user experience, YouTube has grown into the biggest platform of user-created video in the world, as well as become the world’s 3rd largest search engine.
…and now it’s time for Google to get paid. That’s why you’ve been seeing in-video ads for the past year. And with the release of a new advertising option called First Watch, the way you experience YouTube ads is about to change.
With First Watch, advertisers can purchase pre-roll ads that run on a user’s first view of a YouTube video each day. Now, there’s no “good” time to show someone an ad. But perhaps, upon portal entry to YouTube, one’s attention level is at the highest. And if, as a user, you know that’s the only ad you’ll have to watch all day, maybe it’s a win-win?
Tags: first-watch, Google, google-marketing, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube-ads
Posted in Google, Search-Engine-Optimization, YouTube | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Along with tapping celebrities to develop content specifically for YouTube, the Google-based company is looking to expand their movie rental service as well. In fact, they have added 3,000 new titles for rental in the U.S., accompanied by reviews and behind-the-scene extras.
It will be interesting to see if YouTube sticks to their current a la carte rental price offering, if they move to a monthly subscription (e.g. NetFlix) or if they stick to their ad-based monetization, which they currently incorporate on popular user-developed videos.
My only fear about this expanding into a true Netflix competitor is that they’re starting late to the game. Netflix has done a simply incredible job of securing production studio partnerships, and securing the rights to more and more content. If YouTube just gets the leftovers, there’s not going to be much reason to switch.
Tags: advertising-on-google, Google, netflix, YouTube
Posted in Google, YouTube | No Comments »
Friday, April 15th, 2011
For the past year, people have been suffering through the technical live streaming problems of Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, wondering why one of the big players wasn’t stepping up with an alternative.
Consider yourself stepped. YouTube has officially, albeit tentatively, entered the live streaming world. As of now, you can go watch live programming streaming on YouTube. This includes a small variety of concerts, how-to demonstrations and monologues. LIVE. YouTube has been clear about its efforts to turn into television. Not just a television station. But TV itself. Where all content lives.
Unlike UStream.tv and Justin.tv, streaming capabilities with YouTube Live have not been offered to the general public (likely out of ChatRoulette fears). But when that happens, the democratization of live TV will have happened as well.
Tags: chatroulette, internet-consulting, justin.tv, live-streaming, ustream.tv, youtube-live
Posted in YouTube | No Comments »
Monday, April 4th, 2011
The hype behind QR codes is still way bigger than the actual success stories. Yet, we see in other countries, like Japan, where they work tremendously well. So, what has to happen here before QR codes really take off?
When you currently see a QR code, odds are you shouldn’t be. It’s simply being used for the hype, rather than turning a print piece interactive by coding to a YouTube video or something like that. While on the other hand, there are a very slight few amazing examples of companies using QR codes in an exceptionally clever way.
The problem is that until QR codes go mainstream, these amazing uses are probably only being seen by a very small proportion of the company’s user market. In short, what has to happen is that smart phones need to come with QR code apps already installed, and people need to be able to know how to intuitively use them.
Tags: internet-marketing-consulting, mobile-marketing, QR-codes, YouTube
Posted in Smartphones, YouTube, mobile-marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
Does it weird anyone else out that more and more mainstream media outlets are trying to become Web 2.0 friendly? Integrating social media within their programs and such. In fact, ESPN and YouTube have publicly made a call for your user-generated content, including children’s original sports highlights and more.
Will ESPN turn into Fail blog or America’s Funniest Home Videos? This “Your Highlight” promotion will consist of a winner picked from a selection of favorite entries, with the winning video shown on SportsCenter itself.
What are we to make of this evolution? Is this simply a way for mainstream media to vamp up their Web content, more than actually evolving their real content? Or are we seeing a cataclysmic evolution in the way users help create programming?
Tags: espn, Social Media, web-2.0, website-marketing, your-highlight, YouTube
Posted in Digital Video, YouTube | No Comments »
