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.
Did you know that YouTube generates over 2 billion views per day? That means that the video sharing site, that started life as a home for videos of sneezing pandas, piano playing cats and “lonely people talking to themselves”, is reaching the tipping point where the “network is the content”.
Put another way, YouTube has such massive reach now that it can operate like a traditional broadcaster, meaning they can invest in original programming and beginning today, streaming live events.
YouTube have been experimenting with streaming live events for some time, with the Indian Premier League featured live on YouTube just over a year ago.
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.
If you have a YouTube account and it is not tied to a Google account you may not be able to log in in a few weeks, according to the YouTube blog. All YouTube accounts have to be tied to a Google account. Whether this is to help improve the service, or a tie to their non existent Social Circles, or a consolidation motivated by tracking to avoid any potential privacy issues later has yet to be determined.
What is obvious is Google is consolidating user information and this move will help push whatever their social play is. Right now they list what is last watched next to posters names.
It was time for celebration when Next New Networks was bought by YouTube – the video arm of Google. Their company COO Liam Collins led the way with a table dance – though his name suggests Irish heritage it definitely was no River Dance.
According to a study by Netpop Research, users of YouTube are more likely to recommend that site than users of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media websites are likely to recommend those sites.
Using what is called the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure user satisfaction, Netpop Research found that YouTube is likely to be recommended by 50 percent of its users, followed by 36 percent of Facebook users, 33 percent of Groupon users, 30 percent of LinkedIn users, and only 11 percent of Twitter users.
There’s an old adage that recommends that you “fish where the fish are.” Well, President Barack Obama was answering questions on YouTube yesterday while Vice President Joe Biden was tacking questions on Yahoo Answers. Do you think they know something that marketers should know about where the fish are?
According to The State of the News Media 2010 by Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, only online news and cable news have seen audiences grow during the past three years. During the same period, the audiences for network news, local TV, magazines and newspapers have declined.
The YouTube Team launched a new YouTube home page yesterday.
Let’s take a close look at what the YouTube Team did. Firstly, they ‘experimented’. Hey, that’s not my choice of words! On the Official YouTube Blog, they say that “the goal of this experiment was to put more of an emphasis on ‘videos for you.’”
To pave the way for this experiment, they removed some of the less-used modules such as “Videos Being Watched Now.” Then they moved modules like “Spotlight” and “Featured Videos” over to the right side.
Yesterday, the YouTube Blog buried its lead. Midway through a post that proclaimed “Music videos now on YouTube app for Android,” was the really important news for marketers: “YouTube now exceeds 200 million views a day on mobile, a 3x increase in 2010.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. Making VEVO’s extensive library of official music videos from artists like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kanye West, and U2 available on the YouTube 2.0 app for Android will be of interest to my kids.
Today, the YouTube Blog took an informal poll of its own team and industry reporters — including Zach Rodgers of ClickZ — to find out their favorite YouTube ads of the year.
On top of the list was “Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” with more than 25 million views. Yes, he’s still on a horse.
Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Another YouTube ad in the list is Toyota’s “Swagger Wagon,” with 7.6 million views.
