Zuckerberg once had his morning Bud Light right out of a red plastic cup, friends. So there’s hope for us.
The clip, writes TechCrunch, shows Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook’s Palo Alto office in June 2005… (and is) apparently part of a longer 40-minute-interview from a documentary about millennials shot by Ray Hafner and Derek Franzese.
It tells the 2004 story of starting at Facebook, Harvard (where 2/3 signed up), Columbia, Yale and Stanford… then about 29 schools. “Now we’ll go to parties on campus, and we’ll be in someone’s room and there’s The Facebook on the screen,” he’d say.
If you're just finding out about the "exploding whale" or "Friday, Friday" you may need this post.
Remember that video curation was supposed to be all the rage last year and 2011? I’m still not seeing it get enough attention, but that will change as online-video consumption moves from desktop to simpler devices: mobile and remote controls. Why? Sans keyboard, it’s just not as easy to self-select videos, so we’ll need simpler controls (more Roku/AppleTV, less Sony’s 400-button, 2-dial TV remote control) … and better aggregators.
The answer lies in a careful mix of three (3) important variables:
crowdsourced (liked people like me),
editorial (someone whose taste I share) and
personalized recommendations based on my history/preferences.
In the meantime, I’ll offer a few favorite places that are directionally close, and invite you to add yours in comments (it’s participation time). Together we can perhaps create an aggregation of aggregators. A curation of curators. Then we’ll create a big ass website that collects them all, and we’ll sell $1 CPM banners on them and become hundredairs.
Reddit Videos: The kids at Reddit have good taste. Period. I want to be a Reddit influencer when I grow up.
There's no contextual purpose of this photo. I just wanted to get your attention and remind you to list any good places where you discover videos before they're cliches.
Popscreen (which is kinda cool because you can search “now,” 7 days” and “30 days”).
eGuiders is a curated site, and I think I am/was an editor. But I forgot.
Martin Michalik pulls together the most viral videos on Viral Blog’s “Viral Friday.” At least you’ll know what to talk about on the weekend.
Zocial charts videos that are trending in social tweets/posts (Twitter, Facebook). Unfortunately I’d already seen most of what surfaced here.
YouTube Charts is a hidden gem on the website. It’s getting harder not easier to find recently popular videos, and instead becoming more “channel and theme” focused. But here’s YouTube “live” and here’s the page that should be more obvious on the website: the “chart” page which allows you to custom rank videos by category (humor, music), by period (day, week, month, all time) and finally by feature (most-viewed, highest rated, most liked).
One of the most valuable functions on YouTube ("charts") is hard to find
Ray William Johnson culls together some “common denominator” clips in his daily videos, but I’m not sure if he’s catching viral videos before they’re viral or simply turning them viral based on his own popularity. Do you like him or Tosh 2.0 better? Hey Tosh, I was on Rabbit Bites 2 years before you, so suck it.
I’ve been writing a bit about currated content, and now I remember when this caught my attention. Daisy Whitney reports on Hitwise’s Bill Tancer (author of Click) and how he answers the question:
What are the people who were early adopters of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube doing NOW?
Hitwise tracks tens of millions of people via ISP data, and could identify a collection of those who were early to social media. By watching their recent ISP data, we can fairly accurately predict the next big thing. I’ve searched but can’t find the information about this that Tancer provided at the iMedia Connections event in Vegas.
At today’s iMediaConnection “Breakthrough Summit” in Vegas, Hitwise’s Bill Tancer (ilovedata.com) told hundreds of leading marketers about three trends based on research of “early adopters.” Tancer will release the data this week on his blog, but here’s what matters:
Tancer developed three classifications of “early adopters,” in part by isolating the people who began using YouTube in the early days (fall 2005). He and his team observed their recent web behaviors (via Hitwise’s panel of 10 million US and 25 internationally), and noticed two video-related trends.
First, early adopters are shifting from finding videos via “most popular” (crowdsourced) content to portals with editorial viewpoints. Remember when YouTube editors picked what was on the homepage? Seems these early-adopters want their help again. Maybe your blog featuring your favorite new videos will be more useful to us than the most-viewed pages? Certainly there are some of you who send me videos, and I’m far more likely to trust Nutcheese or Jan’s opinion about something I should watch.
Second, video and social-media are colliding. These “avant garde” peeps want more social-media tools mixed with their video content. YouTube, in an attempt to attract more mainstream users and monetize content, has minimized its attention to social-media tools that facilitate dialogue adjoined to video. Instead, the videos “spotlighted” are chosen presumably based on a) “hot” trending videos, b) videos which captivate viewers longer (relative to similar videos of the duration), and c) based on content that commands higher advertising revenue. I’m not sure I fault that algorithm, but it may not satisfy the early-adopters. If Tancer is right, perhaps there will be a surge in Facebook or other social-media sites offering video as an add-on (either hosted or via embedded YouTube widgets).
Third, he expects to see more mobile-driven sharing of video and other content. So watch for sites like TwitVid (I’ve been asked by TwitVid founders to advise the company, and Alexa shows the site is taking off). The site allows for sharing of video content using the Twitter API and login.
I’m keenly interested in any WVFF readers who might have been among these early adopters… people who joined YouTube even before I did (in January 2006). How are you finding videos now?
Via your subscriptions (which is again broken, causing subscribers to not see recent videos from those to whom they’ve subscribed)?
Or have you found a niche site that alerts you to the most interesting content? There are no shortage of sites that track trending videos, but are there blogs or websites you use to find videos that aren’t crowdsourced? Will Renetto solve it all via RenettoTube or Sorff.com or Vloggerheads!? See Renetto announcing Sorff.com in this video.
This could be a new niche for people who watch lots of videos, and have knack at finding videos that many other people may enjoy. Perhaps in the next months, we’ll begin “subscribing” to individual’s “favorites” (which YouTube functionality permits) because we trust their opinion of good content.
Perhaps the day of the YouTube editor (or even novice) is soon to return. I’m going to try using Twitvid now that I learned how to do so via my Blackberry.
Huffington Post shows us a YouTube video that shows Jesse Eisenberg (played here by Mark Zuckerberg) in a rare pre-fame and wealth interview.
