Tag Archives: YouTube

Hiding Gibberish Comments on YouTube

You can hide YouTube comments now with Google Chrome (see article on CNet). 

Writes Matt Elliott: 

Comments on YouTube are largely gibberish, mean-spirited, or profane. A Chrome extension lets you set a variety of options for YouTube videos, including hiding comments.

Really? Gibberish? That’s weird. All the comments I get on this blog (and my videos) are usually intelligent, positive and constructive.

Want to Reach Minorities: YouTube Stars Have Audiences

“Who Are Today’s YouTube Stars?” is a recent story title from The Washington Post

Hayley Tsukayama also wrote a Post article about minorities reaching more individuals than popular television shows:

…Almost most each of (Kevin Wu’s comedy) shows command at least 2 million views — rivaling the nightly TV audiences of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

A disproportionate share of YouTube’s top personalities are minorities, writes Tsukayama. Yet the popular shows on mainstream television have stars are largely white. “These minority-produced, home-grown shows are drawing massive audiences — the top one has 5.2 million subscribers — enough to attract the attention of major advertisers.”Ryan higa youtube minority

Ryan Higa (above) is a Japanese American comedian and that top YouTuber mentioned by Tsukayama. Higa has the second among all YouTube channels, with videos viewed 1.1 billion times.

Michelle Phan, the Vietnamese American beauty guru, is 20th among YouTube’s most popular channels, has become a spokeswoman for Lancome.

And here’s the clincher:

Nearly 80 percent of minorities regularly watch online videos, compared with less than 70 percent of whites, the Pew Internet & American Life Project says.

YouTube Partnership Requires Computer, Pulse

YouTube, once extending “partnership” status to select video creators, announced this week that it would invite anyone to become a YouTube Partner — as long as they own a computer and have a pulse. Animals are not excluded.

Here’s the news as announced in the YouTube Partner blog:

Whether you’re a novice or a mogul, we’re committed to helping you meet your goals as a YouTube partner…. So starting today, we are updating partner eligibility across 20 countries (listed below) where the YouTube Partner Program has launched. YouTube uploaders in these countries can become YouTube partners by enabling their YouTube accounts, and successfully monetizing at least one of their videos.

Youtube partner cat kitten

Reactions to the news varied. Here’s Ben Hughes saying he’s happy more are allowed, and looking back fondly about how big of a deal it was when he was accepted after a few denials.

I remember being a bit jazzed (as seen in this video that was picked up by some national news). Wifeofnalts was less jazzed.

YouTube Founders May Provide Custom Magazines

YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen may be hoping to do for digital magazines what they did for online video.

Zeen logo

According to Fusible, the duo have launched Zeen, and you can reserve your username for this cryptic new offering that may allow users to create and share custom magazine currations. Zeen announced on April 7:

In the last 24 hours, YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who now run AVOS, posted a “Coming Soon” page on the website Zeen (a take on the word zine, which commonly refers to a narrowly focused self-published magazine).

Of course PC Magazine‘s Dave Murphy offers some sage caution:

…here’s hoping the general Internet population doesn’t launch 6,000 different cat magazines once Zeen goes live.

Let’s recall their announcement video having been acquired by Google, and wonder if we’ll see a similar video when they’ve sold Zeen to their former employer, Facebook or Yahoo…

Skyrim Homage: One Voice. One Violin. Epic Video.

Yes, Virginia. You can still go viral… if you have an original idea and push production to a new level. It also helps to pay tribute to a popular video game.

Here’s a video homage to Skyrim Elder Scrolls (a video game), an epic video that’s been seen more than a million times in the past few days. It features 120 tracks of Peter Hollens‘ voice and Lindsey Stirling‘s violin. The musicians are also the video’s actors, and the video was shot in Provo, Utah late last month. As one YouTube commenter states, “why is this not the most watched video of all time?

The duo began tracking the song in early March, and it helped that Hollens is friends with Larry Kenton, the original arranger for the video game’s score.

“Over beer and some sushi we discussed Skyrim, and I asked if he thought it would be a good idea to cover it,” said Hollens. “Then I talked to Lindsey Stirling about doing it together; she is not just insanely talented but incredibly nice.”

Stirling’s friend, Devin Graham, shot the video using the new Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera, with a 18-35mm and the Glidecam 2000 pr thingy.  The video was edited in Final Cut Pro by Lindsey, and the special effects were done by Warialasky.

Stirling’s participation, said Hollen, surprised him. “It blew me away cause she’s the BIG wig, and that never happens on youtube…  She saw a video I did with another YouTuber, and wanted to work together. This when she had 300,000 subs and I had only about 15,000. That’s RARE nowadays.” Hollen’s subscription count has practically doubled in the past week, a direct result of the Skyrim video catching fire. It helps that Hollens has some other popular videos including this Katy Perry Fireworks cover.

Hollens told me he read my book too, so I’d like to take credit for the entire thing… seriously, though, see links below to learn more.

online video marketing youtube

Download the song off itunes http://bit.ly/SkyrimTheme
…or at this link http://bitly.com/SkyrimDownload

Peter Hollen’s channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/peterhollens

Devin Graham cinematography:
http://www.youtube.com/user/devinsupertramp
Warialiasky on special effects work.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Warialasky
This was their own arrangement of the main theme from Skyrim Elder Scrolls which was composed by Jeremy Soule.
Arr. Tom Anderson – http://www.random-notes.com
Edit: Ben Lieberman – http://audiogenix.net/
Mix: Bill Hare – http://www.dyz.com

Peter and Lindsey on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/peterhollensmusic
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lindsey-Stirling/132255980139931

“Am I Pretty or Ugly” Girl Pretends to Be 21-Year-Old Artist

Sophie Roessler’s “Am  I Pretty or Ugly” video caught some media attention and a quarter of a million views.

So what did the tween do? Like anyone else, she pretended to be a 21-year-old artist who knows all about the “struggles a girl transitioning into womanhood must go through.

Roessler claimed the video “acted as a social experiment as well as commentary on this disturbing trend, and has recently gained a lot of media attention, from jezebel.com to Good Morning America.”

Whatver, Sophie. You’re pretty. A pretty good tween liar.

YouTube Boot Camp

Need a boot camp on YouTube marketing? Too lazy to read a whole book?

Here’s a four-part series featuring Greg Jarboe, author of “YouTube Marketing: an Hour a Day“<" and President of SEO-PR. Jarboe is joined by Mark Robertson, founder of the world’s leading online video marketing resource, ReelSEO.com. The training course reveals “the secrets of YouTube video marketing.”

These four webcasts will provide marketers with “an in-depth review of the YouTube video marketing strategies and tactics that are essential for an effective YouTube video campaign.” It includes live sessions and recorded archives, presentations PDF’s and checklist templates.
To learn more, check this post on reelseo.com.

Greg jarboe speaking

How Many People Are Watching Online Video in 2012?

comScore reports that 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion videos of online video content in January. YouTube ranks first with 152 million views, and the rest of the pack (Sony’s VEVO, Yahoo, Viacom, Facebook) attracted about 45 to 52 million viewers (about one third of the Google-owned leader).

Some interesting statistics from this month’s comScore report:
> 84.4 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
> The duration of the average online content video was 6.1 minutes, while the average online video ad was forty seconds.
> Video ads accounted for 12.2 percent of all videos viewed, but just 0.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

YouTube viewers watched 18.6 billion videos in 2012’s first month, and that’s 4 per day per person (by my calculations, which haven’t been reviewed by Stalkerofnalts).

And how about ads? We viewed 5.6 billion video ads in January, with Hulu again leading with 1.4 billion ad views. The advertising networks (who stream ads on a variety of properties) ranked next, with Adap.tv at 652 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 598 million, Tremor Video with 580 million and Specific Media with 398 million.
Finally- YouTube channels? Warner and Vevo lead the pack, but Machinima and Maker Studios (aggregates of top YouTube channels) are third and fourth.

And here’s a photo of my niece and nephew.

Nephew and Niece of Nalts

Can a Search Engine Detect and Rank Comedy? Google Tries.

The newest funny cat on YouTube says No No No No

Look out “I Are Cute Kitten.” There’s a new cat in town, and she says No No No No. And according to research it’s the funniest video out there.
Google is trying to create an algorithm that ranks a video in terms of humor/comedy. Here’s an article about the subject, and here’s a BBC World Service Radio interview I just did live on the topic. Humor is a difficult thing for a computer to detect, but I do think we can collect viewer reactions to draw conclusions.

I spoke last year at the International Society for Humor Studies (see presentation) and the academics and psychologists were having trouble agreeing on the constructs and classifications of humor. It’s a bit like sculpting fog to predict what makes us laugh.
Can Google do it? It is a company made up mostly of engineers. It won’t be an easy or precise task, but I won’t rule it out.
Naturally I DO think that humor can be researched based on human reactions. That’s why (as seen below) I always test my videos behind one-way glass with indepth interviews and focus groups.