Tag Archives: YouTube

YouTube launches new trending news feature

Leave a reply

YouTube has announced the launch of YouTube Trends, which was officially unveiled last week.

In a more detailed explanation of the new tool yesterday a blog post on the site explains how the new feature will use algorithmically-generated feeds to highlight trending news, topics and videos.

The site also offers a ‘top videos’ module and a blog with more in-depth explorations of videos, trends, news, and cultural phenomena as seen through the lens of YouTube.

We’ve also created a Trends Dashboard that lets you quickly explore what’s popular in different cities in the U.S. and around the world, as well as within specific demographic groups.

YouTube and National Geographic launch video competition

Leave a reply

YouTube and National Geographic have partnered to launch the ‘Planet Inspired’ competition. The project calls for short film entries highlighting environmental issues which can be made using original content, or with footage filmed by National Geographic reporters.

The most original entries will be voted on by the YouTube community, and the winner will receive a National Geographic weekend photography workshop and $1,000 gift card from The North Face.

Shiny Media hits 30m views on YouTube

Leave a reply

Shiny Media, a company that produces websites across a number of areas including fashion, technology and lifestyle, has achieved 30 million views on two of its YouTube channels, Shiny Fashion and tech-based Shiny Media.

Shiny Media co-founder, Ashley Norris, says in a blog post: “Over the years we have had some very talented individuals producing our videos, some of whom have gone on to other great things. Our success owes to understanding that it is the content, not the quality of the video production that creates a YouTube hit.”

“Some of our early videos were very ropey, but they still attracted huge audiences because they offered footage of products before anyone else.

Norris is evidently extremely proud of the company’s achievements. He mentions the constant addition of new video content helping the website look fresh. “We almost always add three or four new videos each week and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We have great presenters and we are serious about promoting the videos”.

YouTube publishes footage from Life in a Day project

Leave a reply

The results of YouTube’s documentary experiment ‘Life in a Day’ are now up on the project’s channel.

Life in a Day, which invited the public to submit videos documenting their experiences on July 24, received a total of 80,000 videos from 197 countries. YouTube claims it is the world’s largest user-generated film.

Director Kevin Macdonald and producer Ridley Scott will be using some of the footage to produce a feature-length film to be premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Why every independent news site should have a YouTube channel

1 Reply

John Hillman is editor of PC Site and head of publishing and projects at Net Media Planet.

With video in the ascendancy many independent online publishers and bloggers are beginning to feel that offering video content is a necessity rather than a nice optional extra. Yet creating editing and hosting a video can be an expensive and time consuming business that isn’t always easy to get right.

However, building a YouTube channel to sit alongside your indie website, whether it’s a blog, online magazine or hyperlocal, is much easier than many people would think. You can build the channel out to look exactly like your existing site, and with some good content and clever use of title tags you could find yourself attracting lots of new readers that may never have found you otherwise.

The figures speak for themselves. People searching for videos on YouTube make up a staggering 25 per cent of all of Google’s search volumes; it stands to reason therefore that anyone serious about increasing their readership should be tapping this rich source of traffic. When you also consider that Google now automatically displays a selection of YouTube videos in its search results, the opportunity for drawing new readers to your site should be obvious

As an independent online publisher we’ve found that YouTube has a lot to offer, providing us with a platform on which to publish unique video content, increasing our readership levels and helping us build our reputation as a quality online technology site.

Video equipment

Fortunately online video is valued more for its content than its production value, so while big news organisations may spend thousands on AV equipment, any indie publisher can get going with tools as basic as a Flip video camera and an open source video editing programme. This amounts to a total cost of around £150.

At PC-Site we use Flip video cameras all the time. They are cheap, small and fully optimized for the internet. This lets you get on with making basic videos without having to worry about such unfathomable tech conundrums as codecs fighting each other on the timeline.

When it comes to editing software there are lots of open source options out there, but Camtasia Studio works exceptionally well as both a movie editor and for creating screencasts. It costs about £220, which is excellent value for money. It also lets you automatically upload directly to your YouTube channel once you’ve finished the production process, saving you time. Alternatively we use TubeMogul to upload our videos as it enables us to do it across multiple sites, such as YouTube, HowCast and Vimeo simultaneously.

Branding your YouTube channel

This is a very important part of the process. It takes surprisingly little to give both your videos and your YouTube channel a quick makeover so that they reflect your blog or website.

Using Adobe Fireworks, for example, you can quickly mock up a little logo, if you have one, which will sit nicely in the corner of your screen during playback. Those of you with Adobe Illustrator skills can even create an ident to give your videos that real ‘TV Channel’ look. All of these things require a bit of extra effort but they really make a big difference to the finished product.

Your YouTube channel itself can also be branded by uploading a suitable background image that fits with your blog or website, and by going through the YouTube registration process you will be able to choose how the URL ends, also giving you that extra brand uniformity.

Once you’ve customised your videos and YouTube channel you can use the ‘sharing’ button to automatically syndicate your videos through your various online social networks, and you can embed your videos on your blog or website. You can also link your YouTube channel directly with your blog using the ‘blog setup’ button, this way your videos will post straight to your website from YouTube.

Getting it all up and running does take a small investment from you in terms of time, problem solving and creative thought, but the benefits that come from it are well worth the effort. One of our videos got nearly 30,000 views in a couple of months, all from just a cheap video camera a free video editing platform and the benefits of YouTube’s vast army of viewers. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

More from John Hillman on Journalism.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @johnjhillman

Crowdsourcing hits the silver screen with YouTube’s ‘Life in a Day’ experiment

Leave a reply

On 24 July film-makers will have the opportunity to take part in a cinematic experiment aiming to create the world’s largest feature film.

Entrants to YouTube’s Life in a Day project, which boasts film director Ridley Scott as its executive producer, will have 24 hours to record a snapshot of their life on that date and upload it to the project’s YouTube channel. The best footage will be selected and edited by director Kevin Macdonald for a feature film to premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Anyone whose footage is used will be credited as a co-director, and all submissions will feature on the Life in a Day YouTube channel irrespective of whether they make the final cut.

The following instructions to take part are posted by the project:

  • Visit the Life in a Day channel and learn more about the project. Be sure to read through the steps you need to take to participate and the guidelines for creating your video.  Also check out some of the sample videos for inspirational ideas.
  • On July 24, capture your day on camera.
  • Upload your footage to the Life in a Day channel before July 31.


YouTube grant programme – a step closer to Google as a publisher?

Leave a reply

Last week YouTube announced its new Partner Grant Program:

The goal of YouTube Partner Grants is to act as a catalyst by infusing additional funds into the production budgets of a small group of YouTube partners who are at the forefront of innovation. Funds from YouTube Partner Grants will serve as an advance against the partner’s future YouTube revenue share.

Any partners are eligible – including news organisations – and some of the features on offer, such as tracking user engagement and subscriptions, would be particularly attractive to news channels on the site.

Parent company Google has long maintained that it is not a publisher, but could investment via partnerships with publishers and producers of video be a step away from this defence?

A spokesperson for Google gave Journalism.co.uk a short, definitive answer – no.

Our specialty is certainly not creating the content. We leave that to the experts. But we’ve seen some amazing content creators rise up over the years to get audiences that rival network television. Our goal with Partner Grants is to give these folks who are often doing 360 degrees of the content creation, production and marketing process, additional funds that they can use to buy better cameras, invest in more talent, or beef up their marketing. We look at this as a small first step in the broader evolution of partners on YouTube, but a giant leap forward in the evolution of online video.

Mumbrella: Fairfax Digital responds to online video complaint

Leave a reply

Fairfax Media, one of the main newspaper groups in Australia, has been taking external YouTube video and re-publishing it in their own media player, says Tim Burrowes of Australian marketing and media site, Mumbrella.

When the YouTube content is embedded on other sites, it’s a benevolent little ecosystem – the site gets free content, YouTube gets revenue and the creator gets revenue. So it’s a shame that Fairfax Digital’s answer to this is the sort of thing that gives traditional outlets a bad name – lifting the content.

Since Mumbrella raised the issue, Fairfax has responded and says it is looking into the complaint. In the meantime, it has changed the video clips noted by Burrowes, and is now using the embedded YouTube player.

Full post at this link…

Landmark decision clears Google of copyright infringement in YouTube case

Leave a reply

Viacom’s $1 billion legal battle with Google, over YouTube’s hosting of allegedly copyright infringing video clips, has come to a landmark conclusion.

The lawsuit was thrown out after a judge found the search engine giant’s video site had not breached the ‘safe harbor’ provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

This enables online sites like YouTube to avoid liability if not given sufficient notice of the infringing material.

In a comment on their company blog, Google said the ruling will have a huge impact on the online communications world.

This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.

Reporting on the ruling on their news feed, Viacom say they will appeal the decision.

We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions. We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible.

See the full ruling below, courtesy of Scribd.com.

Read an analysis of the ruling here….

YouTube blog: Assessing risks and protecting subjects in human rights filmmaking

Leave a reply

As part of a new blog series with human rights video advocacy and training organisation WITNESS, Youtube has posted a training video on its blog for journalists interested using video to report on a human rights issue.

The latest videos features advice on how to protect your subjects and yourself as a filmmaker.