YouTube has just added 3,000 new movie titles for rent in the U.S. At the same time, YouTube is also bolstering its investment in the content that’s already being viewed by hundred of millions of people on YouTube. The 20,000+ YouTube partners — folks like Machinima, Annoying Orange and Ryan Higa — are producing original content for the web and commanding TV-size audiences for their own brand of programming.
This trend started back in October 2008, when the video sharing site starting to test full-length programming. As Search Engine Watch reported in “Beam Me Up, YouTube!,” the video sharing site started by offering “Star Trek,” “MacGyver,” and “Beverly Hills, 90210″ through a deal with CBS.
The General Election in Canada on Monday, May 2, 2001, could turn out to be a real nail biter, but Canadians who tweet or post local results from the national election online before polling stations close in all six time zones face fines. So, while waiting patiently to discover the outcome, there will be plenty of time to watch the “Top YouTube videos of Canada Election 2011.”
First, check out “RMR: Rick’s Rant – Vote” from the Rick Mercer Report.
In an exclusive announced on Tuesday, The Wrap reported that YouTube will be launching a movie on demand service for mainstream Hollywood movies. The move touted as a challenge to the iTunes service includes Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal, but so far Paramount, Fox and Disney have declined to join.
The news followed hot on the heels of a Next Web article on Monday about the emergence of full length pirated movies on the video sharing site. There is some speculation that these pirated copies are getting through due to some changes in the filters in anticipation of the new Hollywood deal.
I’ve started to gather examples of contagious viral videos being shared on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs in preparation for the Next Gen YouTube Marketing session at SES Toronto 2011. And here are three candidates that could be included in my presentation.
First, there “The T-Mobile Royal Wedding.” Yes, I know that the video was made in the United Kingdom. But Canada is a federal state that is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. Plus, the video was the #27 most viewed this week in Canada.
Hot on the heels of their latest ‘Live’ landing page, is the news that the BBC’s coverage of the royal wedding will be streamed live on YouTube on The Royal Channel, dubbed “the Official Channel of The British Monarchy.”
It is with some humility that, in discussion with Google’s PR team in the UK, SEW found out that this is an altruistic collaboration with Clarence House and the footage will be provided by the BBC.
No money for the rights to broadcast has exchanged hands. YouTube has built the app free of charge but, what is much more impressive, is that the bill for streaming costs will be footed by Google.
Yesterday we reported that AOL leapt 5 spots to be the number 2 online video destination in March, according to ComScore Video Metrix.
Where people go to watch online video metrics is currently a more interesting statistic than search share because, whilst the top position rarely changes (it’s always YouTube), the other players shift positions quite a lot.
There is still a lot of opportunity in the industry as consumers are gradually shifting their viewing habits from terrestrial, satellite and cable transmission to online video. Content producers are also starting to take note by licensing shows to online only channels like Hulu, Netflix and Crackle.
This copyright lesson from YouTube featuring the homicidal, suicidal and just plain crazy cute fluffy characters of Happy Tree Friends highlights some of the risks of copyright infringement, and explains what sorts of content are subject to copyright. It also tells you what to do if you find your copyrighted work has been uploaded to YouTube.
This easy to understand, and fun to watch video is a lot less graphic than many of the Happy Tree Friends videos, but nonetheless it’s a very effective way to communicate copyright infringement, and is likely to appeal to many who wouldn’t understand some of the aspects of copyright explained.
First Orbit, a film made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first man in space, and celebrate the first International Day of Human Space Flight is being featured on YouTube today.
However, don’t expect a 10 minute short! The film is one hour and forty minutes long and recreates the entire journey made by Yuri Gagarin with footage shot from today’s international space station.
YouTube is also celebrating the day by with a curated homepage which spotlights footage about Yuri Gagarin and the first manned mision into space, and follows suit with todays Google Doodle with a unique YouTube logo.
YouTube is reportedly ready to spend $100 million to develop original ad-supported programming to populate about 20 new niche “channels,” according to a Wall Street Journal report.
YouTube will reportedly:
- Spend up to $100 million on “low-cost content designed exclusively for the web.”
- Change its home page to highlight “about 20 or so” niche channels (e.g., sports, arts) comprised of this original programming.
- Assemble more channels from existing content.
- Integrate new social networking features to help users identify video popular video content (on a seemingly related social note: in a move to consolidate user information, YouTube recently forced users to connect their accounts to Google accounts).
The Google Panda update set off fireworks on February 24. But an even bigger change to YouTube search results has slipped under the radar despite the fact that YouTube is the second largest search engine.
Now, Google is constantly tuning its algorithms, but many of the changes it makes are so subtle that few people notice them. However, the Panda update was “a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking — a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries,” according to The Official Google Blog, so the company let people know what was going on.
