YouTube’s top trending videos of 2012: Gangnam Style, Gotye, KONY 2012, Call Me Maybe, Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney, more

Jordan Kahn

YouTube is once again doing its annual “YouTube Rewind” to shed some light on the top-trending videos of 2012. Google updated its YouTube Rewind Channel to include the last year’s worth of the most popular YouTube videos alongside some stats for each. For instance, Google noted the KONY 2012 30-minute documentary was the most shared video in the world during March, but PSYs’ Gangnam Style was able to top the majority of lists after approaching 1 billion views and becoming the most viewed YouTube video of all time in less than half the year.

YouTube’s top trending list globally is below, followed by the list for Canada, but you can head over to the YouTube Rewind Channel to see the top-trending videos for your country.

Top Trending YouTube Videos:  

  1. PSY – GANGNAM STYLE (강남스타일) M/V 
  2. Somebody That I Used to Know – Walk off the Earth (Gotye – Cover) 
  3. KONY 2012 
  4. “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen – Feat. Justin Bieber, Selena, Ashley Tisdale & MORE! 
  5. Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney. Epic Rap Battles Of History Season 2. 
  6. A DRAMATIC SURPRISE ON A QUIET SQUARE 
  7. WHY YOU ASKING ALL THEM QUESTIONS? .. #FCHW 
  8. Dubstep Violin- Lindsey Stirling- Crystallize 
  9. Facebook Parenting: For the troubled teen.
  10. Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall from 128k’ – Mission Highlights 

Top Trending YouTube Videos in Canada: Read more

YouTube to live stream Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, also adds 22 AOL-curated channels

E. Betters

YouTube is continuing its dominance in the online video space today by announcing plans to live stream the 2012 Presidential and Vice Presidential debates and launch AOL’s entire original video content library through 22 curated channels.

Woah. Google launched the YouTube Elections Hub in August as a complete video resource for all-things political until the U.S. Election Day on Nov. 6. The Hub features videos from politicians, parties, and well-known media, as well as shared coverage with live and on-demand content from ABC News, Al Jazeera English, BuzzFeed, Larry King, The New York Times, Phil DeFranco, Univision, and the Wall Street Journal.

Now, according to the official YouTube blog, Google announced the Hub would broadcast the four general election debates starting Oct. 3 at 9 p.m. EST:

Throughout the month of October, President Barack Obama and Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney will go head-to-head in a series of highly-anticipated general election debates. This year, for the first time, you can watch the debates live and in full on the YouTube Elections Hub, via our partners at ABC News, who will be live streaming all four debates on the ABC News YouTube channel. No matter where you are in the world or how you’ll be accessing the internet, you’ll be able to watch the most important events of the 2012 election on YouTube.

YouTube will also post highlight clips at YouTube.com/politics after the debate for the busy folks unable to tune-in live.

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‘Gayglers’ celebrate LGBT Pride Month, World Pride [Photos]

E. Betters

Google is once-again touting support for the LGBT community by participating in worldwide Pride events and expanding company-wide benefits.

According to “Gaygler” Randy Reyes on the official Google blog: 

We encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. And this month Googlers, Gayglers (gay Googlers), and their families and friends took this spirit to the streets in Pride parades and celebrations around the globe. In Sao Paulo, a group of 50 marched as a Google contingent for the first time ever. In San Francisco, more than 1,000 Googlers and allies marched (nearly doubling the number of people we had in 2011!). In New York, more than 700 of our friends and colleagues took over 5th Avenue marching alongside our double-decker Pride bus. And this weekend in Singapore, we’re sponsoring the Pink Dot celebration for the second consecutive year.

Reyes further revealed action-based plans to celebrate World Pride in London this year. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company will host a ”Legalise Love” Conference at Google London, with hopes to ”eliminate homophobia” and “decriminalize homosexuality.”

Google also significantly increased coverage of transgender health care for its U.S. employees. Transgender-inclusive benefits, such as “transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care,” now receive a lifetime maximum coverage of $75,000.

“Next month we’ll carry the energy of Pride into our fourth annual company Diversity & Inclusion celebration, the Sum of Google. The Sum is an opportunity to celebrate and engage in a discussion about diversity and inclusion across our offices around the world,” Reyes concluded.

A picture gallery is below.

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Jon Stewart pokes fun at Google Plus

Seth Weintraub

Poking fun at Barak Obama’s recent Google hangout and the greater Google Plus, late night comedian Jon Stewart called Google Plus “that thing on top of Gmail that you can’t make go away”.

Google plus, even if it is “that annoying thing on top of Gmail” for some is becoming quite popular it seems.  Google Plus also won a Crunchie last night. Read more

Google launches US edition of ‘Politics & Elections’ resource for 2012 elections

Jordan Kahn

Previously only available to Egyptian users, Google launched (via Mashable) a new “Politics & Elections” landing page today for the United States – a day ahead of the Iowa Caucuses at Media Filing Center on Tuesday. The website acts as a hub to information on the 2012 elections, providing the ability to filter news articles and video by candidate or specific issues like the economy, immigration, or healthcare.

Along the right side of the page are links to resources like the Google+ Politics & Elections page, the YouTube Politics channel, and the 2012 Political Calendar on PBS. Also available are two interactive tools: “Trends” and “On the Ground”.

Clicking Trends gives you an interactive graph and timeline that charts trends for each candidate based on search volume, mentions in Google News articles, and views on YouTube channels. Clicking Play will let you watch how trends have changed for each candidate through the days, month, or years. The On the Ground tool provides a Google Map with links to election related events as shot by YouTube users.

According to Mashable, Google will also display content from the new website on large screens at the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday. They will also be holding Google Plus hangouts live from the event.

President Barack Obama joins Google+

Jake Smith

President Barack Obama has officially joined Google+ today. President Obama can already be found on Twitter, where he actively — and his staff — make posts throughout the day. On his first day the President has already made three posts, which is pretty active for day one. As he begins to learns the ropes, the President could use his Plus profile more as a blog than anything. It will be interesting to see if the President uses Google+ Hangouts to communicate with citizens, as some of his opponents already have.

Welcome to the Obama 2012 Google+ page. We’re still kicking the tires and figuring this out, so let us know what you’d like to see here and your ideas for how we can use this space to help you stay connected to the campaign.