Who says nothing good comes from getting deadpooled?

Blake Machado was the winner of a YouTube announcement contest we held a couple weeks back. He was the first to guess correctly that YouTube would come out with some new APIs to spread its influence over the web. The prize was an iPod shuffle.

Turns out YouTube’s announcement was particularly poignant for Blake given his connection to the previous deadpooled Stage6. As he revealed to us after winning:

Ironically guessing/winning this is bitter-sweet. I was the PM of
Stage6 and this is an area where we had planned to beat YouTube to the
punch and gain some, hopefully, extremely positive results. We would
have as it was scheduled for Feb. release — oh well.

So how’d we comfort him in his time of need? Etched a reminder of that deadpooling into his “consolation” prize, of course. You’re welcome, Blake.

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Filed under: Business, Internet, Video, Google

Google, reigning king of exhaustive analytics, has just released a specialized analytics tool for YouTube, aptly named YouTube Insight.

YouTube Insight is a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about their uploaded videos. In other words, if you’ve ever wondered who is watching your latest solo diatribe about the benefits of Proactiv Solution (we were wondering that too…), that information is now one click away.

YouTube Insight tracks information such as the geographic region of your viewers, how popular your video is relative to other videos in a similar market, and more.

The currently available data can be found by clicking under the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos. Look for much more data to be added in the future.

Of course, this isn’t just for the Mentos and Diet Coke uploaders. Eventually, as YouTube becomes more monetized, these same metrics will provide valuable data to partners and advertisers, so that they can adjust their marketing to reach the viewers they most desire.

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Google has announced that YouTube users will now have access to in depth statistics for their videos.

Stats include how often videos are viewed in different geographic regions and how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. The lifecycle of videos is tracked, including how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

To quote Tracy Chan from YouTube:

“Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.”

To access the statistics, users click on the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.

More analysis to follow; at the time of writing all I get from YouTube when clicking on my account button is the twin messages of “This functionality is not available right now. Please try again later,” and “We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we’ll be back 100% in a bit.”

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Filed under: Internet, Google, Googleholic

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google, the day-late, extra-tasty edition!

This edition covers:

• AJAX Language API
• Google Analytics benchmarking goes live
• YouTube 2007 Video Award Winners
• Google Apps get newest Gmail features

Continue reading Googleholic for March 22, 2008

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Filed under: Internet, Video, P2P

Apparently live video streaming isn’t the only new feature coming from internet video Joost. Company CEO Mike Volpi tells Portfolio Magazine that the company is also working on a browser-based version of their software.

Right now in order to watch Joost content you need to download and install a standalone application which connects to Joost’s peer to peer network. And while Joost has gotten an awful lot of attention for changing the way we think about online video over the last few years, it turns out that a relatively small number of people have actually bothered to install the Joost client, while hundreds of millions of users regularly watch videos in their web browsers.

It’s not exactly clear that Joost offers much to pull people away from popular sites like YouTube, Hulu, and DailyMotion. Sure, Joost has full length movies and TV episodes, but so does Hulu, and to be honest, Hulu has far more popular content than Joost.

[via Silicon Alley Insider]

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Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Beta

Microsoft may have added “Internet TV” to Vista Media Center last year, but all you get right now are selected clips from MSN Video. If you want to watch YouTube, MSN Soapbox, and DailyMotion videos on your Windows Media Center system, you might want to check out Yougle, a third party plugin for Vista Media Center.

Yougle lets you search the sites we mentioned, plus Flickr, Yahoo! Music, and several other online audio, video, and image sources. The latest beta version of Yougle includes a number of improvements to the program interface, better parental controls, and an option to enable adult content.

[via Ian Dixon]

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Amid the recent protests and violent crackdown in Tibet, the Chinese government is closing off all media access to the region and censoring reports about Tibet inside China. That includes not just CNN, but YouTube and Google News. Both Google sites have been blocked from the Internet in China. News reports about the protests and images that appear to come from inside Tibet are available on YouTube (see the slide show embedded below—warning it shows graphic images of bodies in the streets—and a CNN report). To prevent its citizens from seeing these videos or reading about them, the Chinese government has taken down all of YouTube and Google News inside China.

This isn’t the first time YouTube has been censored. Last month, Pakistan ended up taking down YouTube worldwide for a couple hours because of some supposedly “blasphemous” videos on the site. And in September, Myanmar blocked the entire Internet during a period of political unrest.

The question is: What will Google do to restore access to YouTube and Google News inside China? China is a big market that Google needs to be a player in. Will it voluntarily strip out all videos or news items about Tibet? Or will the Chinese government just figure out how to strip them out itself? There is a precedent here: in China you cannot find a lot of information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on the Web, including the famous image of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks. Most young Chinese have never seen that image.

I am speculating here—there is no indication that Google has been asked to remove information about Tibet or that it would do so. But if it were to do so, then it would become complicit in China’s censorship. That might have to be the price it has to pay to give the Chinese access to all the other information on YouTube and Google News. The alternative might be a permanent ban.

Which option is the lesser evil for a company that has pledged itself to do none whatsoever?

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In mid 2005 I profiled YouTube for the first time. As Steve Rubel noted, the best way to describe it was “like Flickr, but for videos.” At the time few people saw the massive upside for YouTube, which was built completely on freely available Flash technology from Adobe. Flickr seemed like the far more interesting product.

Just a few months earlier Flickr had been acquired by Yahoo. And given how slow things were moving in 2005, few people thought YouTube would have the kind of success that Flickr had seen. But just a year later YouTube was suddenly worth $1.65 billion, and users were frustrated that they could upload their vacation photos to Flickr, but not the videos.

Yahoo has long promised to bring video to Flickr. In May 2007 co-founder Stewart Butterfield told us that users would be able to upload videos “soon.” This was reconfirmed in August 2007. But now, nearly three years after Yahoo bought them, and on their fourth birthday as a company, users are not able to upload videos to their Flickr accounts.

But rumors are flying that Yahoo intends to integrate video into Flickr very soon, perhaps in the next three weeks. Part of the delay may have been a long internal debate about how to make Flickr Video special and distinct from what YouTube already offers. They apparently have come to some product decisions, and will be making an announcement soon.

Yahoo PR and other employees are still dead quiet on the subject (I asked every one of them at the party tonight), but the buzz is growing and the leaks haven’t been totally contained. Get ready for Flickr Video. It’s coming. Really.

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Erick got all excited, but in the end it was a bit of an anticlimax. YouTube’s big announcement today is more open API’s that will allow developers to upload videos and video responses from any where.

From the YouTube Blog:

We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible…Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.

For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause….

The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.

If anyone won the iPod, Erick will let you know in the morning.

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YouTube is making a big announcement tomorrow morning. Could it be live-streaming? (We’re told not). High-definition video? A partnership with Hulu? (That would be so hot). A new Website design? Dialing up the advertising? Another way to get on mobile phones or big-screen TVs? Or as was leaked in February, better video-editing tools, personal video recommendations, better advertiser analytics, or new “tentpole” content (The YouTube Games, Living Legends, The YouTube Global Gathering)?

We’re not sure. If it is none of the above, and you are the first person to guess correctly in comments, we will send you 2 GB iPod Shuffle (you must include your real e-mail address in the comment form for us to be able to reach you). If it is one of the above options, then we’ll give the iPod Shuffle away randomly (or to the best overall comment as determined by me).

Given the public launch of Hulu tomorrow, that would be my guess. (And, no, I am not eligible for the iPod prize). A partnership between the two video sites would make sense. YouTube is already sharing advertising dollars with other media companies and producers of popular videos. Why would Hulu be any different? Speculate away.

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