The video-sharing website launched YouTube Video Editor last year, but now its latest editing tool allows YouTube to automatically detect any stabilization and lighting issues…
Google opens its registration for its annual I/O conference on March 27. Remember, tickets sold out last year in under an hour so set your alarms!
The conference also moved from May to June this year where Google will debut many new technologies, including some Glasses hopefully. While we do not have official word on the Glasses “Project WingFront,” we were told by a Google employee that this year’s I/O was going to be “totally insane.” Perhaps so insane that Google moved from a two-day format to three days this year.
YouTube often provides live streaming of special events from concerts and its own product unveilings to media events and the recent Google+ hangout with President Obama. Today, over on the Official YouTube blog, we learned live streaming is now opened to everyone in the YouTube Nonprofit Program. In the blog post, YouTube noted it live streamed a play from the American Foundation on Equal Rights last Saturday, as well as various events on World AIDS Day. Now all members of the YouTube Nonprofit Program open to those in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada can enable live streaming by following these instructions. You can learn more about applying for the program here. Expand Expanding Close
Software giant Microsoft took to video sharing service Vimeo to disseminate its new commercial promoting the Internet Explorer 9 browser. Tentatively named “A More Beautiful Web,” it features a soundtrack by Alex Clare and fast-paced (albeit a tad amateur-looking) MTV style editing. Both treats are not usually associated with neither the Microsoft brand nor the company’s dull television advertising.
While watchable, it does not hold a candle to Google’s memorable Chrome advertising. The 60-second video highlights the browser’s headlining features, such as hardware-assisted canvas rendering, high-definition video playback, rich web apps like Chillingo’s “Cut the Rope” game, and more.
Two important observations here:
1. The commercial was a Vimeo exclusive at post time— despite Microsoft’s official presence on YouTube, including the Internet Explorer team’s channel. It is interesting that Microsoft chose to tap a rival video sharing service and not leverage the world’s most popular destination for online video to get the word out. An anti-Google move, cynics might say.
2. Per data from StatCounter (see the chart below), the Windows maker’s possible motivation to bypass YouTube likely includes Internet Explorer’s continuous downward spiral. It has been a trend, not a temporary hiccup. Last summer, Google’s Chrome claimed one-fifth of the worldwide market for browsers and is now No. 2 in some key markets that traditionally favor Microsoft’s product.
Microsoft appeared late to the party and has lost momentum in browser innovation that now almost exclusively belongs to Google and —in small part— to Apple and its Safari browser. If it were not for big businesses’ reluctance to upgrade to a more modern browser, Internet Explorer would already be severely beaten in browser wars.
I am a huge fan of National Geographic’s documentaries on the narcotics industry, especially shows like “Drugs, Inc.” and “Banged Up Abroad.” To be perfectly clear, I am enjoying them for educational purposes only. Now, touching on this age-defining question, Versus from Intelligence2 teamed with Google to bring a debate on the drugs industry to its users.
It is chaired by BBC newsreader and presenter Emily Maitlis and will also feature WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, British tycoon Richard Branson, English entertainer Russell Brand, the former presidents from Mexico and Brazil, and others.
It is the first in a series of global debates in co-operation with Versus that will occur through Google+ Hangouts and stream on YouTube. A post over at the official Google blog said the first motion up for debate is: “It’s time to end the War on Drugs.” You can join the hangout on Google+ here.
YouTube is bringing new capabilities to its popular captioning feature, according to today’s blog post by the search engine giant. The company added Japanese, Korean, and English language to auto-captioning and transcript synchronization features. Captions and subtitles are now supported in 155 different languages. Movies and Shows information finally show available subtitle languages, and users can now search for memorable quotes in closed captions.
This is accomplished by adding “, cc” to any search or clicking Filter > CC after searching to only see results with closed captions. The CC icon in the bottom-right of the video player now lets you change the font size or colors for captions. YouTube now supports broadcast captions for precise positioning and styling (check out this demo) in various industry formats, such as .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL and closed captions created for TV or DVDs or those in MPEG-2 files with CEA-608 encoding…
A new comScore research study revealed that United States viewership in January 2012 suffered a slight decline from December 2012, also proving Google was right to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into getting premium partners for content on YouTube. Last month, 181 million online users in the U.S. consumed nearly 40 billion online videos, which is a drop from 43.5 billion clips watched by 182 million users in December 2011. On average, we watched 22.6 hours of online clips with a 6.1-minute duration for each clip.
The search and Internet giant continues to lead the online video market with 152 million unique viewers. Google-operated websites cumulatively account for a whopping 18.6 billion views. Rival Hulu and VEVO delivered 877 and 717 million views, respectively.. In addition to Google websites, VEVO (51.5 million), Yahoo websites (49.2 million), Viacom Digital (48.1 million) and Facebook (45.1 million) round-up the top five online video destinations in the country.
Be advised that comScore defines a video as any streamed segment of audiovisual content for both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, such as television episodes with ad pods in the middle, each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream…
The YouTube team announced a few updates to YouTube Channels on its YouTube Blog today. The major addition to Channels include the ability to promote your Google+ profile (as seen to the right). Viewers can now click on Google+ Profiles from YouTube, signifying Google is continuing its push to integrate Google+ across services.
The second addition is that users can posts videos onto their Channel’s Feed by posting a Channel Bulletin. This can be done from the “Post to Feed” box under the feed tab on your own channel. You can also a comment under the video. Lastly, the YouTube team implemented new annotations to add on your own videos, as seen below.
. It is hard to imagine why GOOG is down when news this exciting hits
Google began rolling out the red link redesign today to the Google Finance websites. It has not hit ours, but reader @tuanye is feeling it. The new design has made it most of the way across Google’s network.
Google just announced on its Official Google TV Blogthe “big announcement” for tomorrow. The Google TV crew announced an all-new YouTube app for the Google TV platform. The app features a smoother experience and bug fixes. The big feature here, however, seems to be a new feature called “Discover” that lets users view YouTube channels by different categories (as seen above).
The YouTube app will also gain the new channels that the desktop version of YouTube has seen. From there, you can navigate through users’ videos, favorites, and subscriptions.
When viewing a video, you can use the up and down arrows on your Google TV’s remote to navigate to the information screen. On the information screen, you can interact with a video by giving it a thumb’s up, adding it to your favorites or playlist, and leaving a comment.
The update should roll out to every Google TV user in the next few days from the Android Market. Oh, and I have to say that I am disappointed. Google overhyped this announcement.
Americans were busy consuming record amounts of chicken wings and dip during yesterday’s big game, but they were also mobile web browsing more than ever before.
According to an official Google blog post, United States viewers used their tablets and smartphones to Google the Giants and Patriots, halftime acts and the best Super Bowl advertisements.
“In fact, around 41 percent of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that were made during the game came from mobile devices, up from 25 percent for the same time the day prior,” wrote software engineer Jeffrey Oldham.
The Super Bowl XLVI streamed live for the first time this year, and a soaring spike in related searches came with the flagship circumstance. Predominate searches initially came from desktop devices, but mobile devices leaped forward as the four-hour game launched into full swing.
Read below for more details on Google and the Super Bowl.
YouTube really is becoming the de facto No. 1 destination for premium entertainment and what better proof than Madonna, who is a 53-year-old American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur choosing to debut her latest music video titled “Give Me All Your Luvin'” on YouTube. The song features Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. and it was released today to radio and as a digital download, while marking Madonna’s new three-album deal with Interscope Records. The music video that was filmed in December 2011 and directed by MegaForce can be seen above and on Madonna’s YouTube channel. You can pre-order the song through iTunes for $1.99 and check out Madonna’s Google+ profile for latest news. Go past the fold for a nice teaser on Madonna’s halftime show performance during Sunday’s big game.
YouTube boss Salar Kamangar sat down yesterday with AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski at the “D: Dive Into Media” conference to talk content, the future of video entertainment and the big picture. He stressed the apps cable companies are building for Google TV let them control the entire experience, from the interface to delivery methods to monetizing mechanism.
As for YouTube, a global video delivery platform used by over 800 million people, it has the eyeballs and the audience. What it lacks is the minutes, as compared to traditional broadcast. The executive confirmed plans to “channelize” YouTube with more interactive and niche content than available on any other platform.
The website is already moving from individual kitten clips to groups of videos (channels), he said. Moreover, in the near future, YouTube wants to become a platform to enable “game-fying” of video content with six dimensions of entertainment…
In case you miss any of the upcoming Super Bowl commercials, the new YouTube Ad Blitz channel launched by NBC Sports will bring you the ads right after the have aired and allow you to vote on your favorites. Available through the YouTube channel and NBCSports.com, the website is currently populated with pre-game content including party recipes, tailgating tales, playoff coverage, and big game predictions.
As the premier online gallery of Super Bowl commercials, YouTube Ad Blitz puts all the commercials in your hands, letting you view and vote on the top ads of the Super Bowl, whether you’re on a computer, mobile phone or tablet. This year, NBC Sports is the official partner for YouTube Ad Blitz, adding online promotion to its Super Bowl coverage.
Voting will continue until Feb. 13 at midnight and NBC Sports and YouTube will be having a live Google+ Hangout following the game with “an NBC celebrity.” You can also check out all of the 2011 Super Bowl Commercials on the Ad Blitz channel here. Expand Expanding Close
Each day, Google’s YouTube video sharing service clocks in more than 4 billion views, a blog post over at the official YouTube blog revealed Monday. The figure represents a 25 percent increase in the past eight months as the number of people who visit YouTube soared to 800 million a month. People are now uploading about 60 hours worth of video to the service every minute, a 25 percent increase over the 48 hours of video uploads a minute in May 2011. The video above is a sample of a new interactive collection of “what happens in a YouTube second” available at onehourpersecond.com.
Yet, only 3 billion YouTube videos a week are monetized with various adverts that appear when users click on clips. Google acquired then-young startup YouTube in 2006 for an astounding $1.65 billion. The Mountain View, Calif.-headquartered Internet giant committed considerable resources to making professional content available through the video sharing service to better pursue its broader entertainment strategy centered around Google TV, a software-based project that drives set-top boxes and networked HD TVs from participating partners.
Facebook held at least two meetings with Vevo —the most recent one occurring within the last couple of weeks— to discuss moving the music video service from YouTube to the social network’s platform.
However, sources told CNETthat the talks are “very preliminary,” and they mentioned there is one year remaining on Vevo’s contract with Google’s YouTube.
Vevo launched in 2009 and offers music videos from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music. YouTube helped launch the startup, and subsequently Vevo’s videos appear on the partner’s service, with Google and Vevo sharing advertising revenue.
Vevo features the most extensive catalog of premium music content on the Internet, and it is available in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom through its website, mobile apps, or by way of connected televisions. The service currently powers music videos on artist profiles across Facebook, and its content is syndicates to numerous online websites, including AOL, BET, CBS Interactive Music Group, Fuse.tv and Univision. Moreover, through YouTube, Vevo is accessible in over 200 countries.
Facebook is allegedly interested in an arrangement similar to the one Vevo has in place with YouTube now, which would allow the social network to stream Vevo’s music videos with the two companies sharing profits from advertising revenue…
Yesterday Reuters announced it became YouTube’s largest news partner with a redesigned Reuters TV channel, and now YouTube is continuing its push of original content with a brand new lineup of action sports channels.
The new channels include action sports networks Alli Sports and Network A, Red Bull: The Red Bull Channel with 13 original episodic programs, and RIDE —Tony Hawk’s 24-hour channel “devoted to the skateboarding lifestyle” that will roll out 21 new shows throughout 2012.
The four channels have each released preview videos showing off what you can expect in terms of content. The preview video for Tony Hawk’s RIDE channel is above, and the other three are available below. YouTube also announced today that it has made its CES 2012 keynote address available online where the company talked about some of the new original content headed to the website in the future. To accompany the keynote video, YouTube released the teaser video below featuring Stan Lee, Rainn Wilson, Felicia Day, and others bringing original content to YouTube in the coming months.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FeRg4U7H_aY#!] Expand Expanding Close
The programming will include 10 news, analysis, and commentary channels in a unique style that is “suited for Internet programming and does not mimic traditional TV.” Reuters Global Head of Programming Dan Colarusso said the following regarding the announcement:
“This deal with YouTube gives Reuters a way to showcase our collection of talented journalists and compelling video from around the world. It will offer unique insights and images that other media companies simply can’t match.”
The new content will be available through the redesigned Reuters TV YouTube channel, but it will also be made available on Reuters.com. A description of all of the new programming from the press release is listed below: Expand Expanding Close
YouTube's latest interface that displays video channels upfront versus individual uploads.
The New Yorker’s John Seabrook recently interviewed YouTube’s Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl about the video-sharing service’s future and extensively detailed how YouTube is targeting a $300 billion chunk of the television industry through increased viewership, enhanced content, connected devices, and niche audiences.
Niches, as The New Yorker illustrated, are the future of television. The iconic industry started with just three networks decades ago, and it now features hundreds of cable channels each serving a niche—news, sports, food, weather, music, and more.
“People went from broad to narrow,” said Kyncl to The New Yorker. “And we think they will continue to go that way—spend more and more time in the niches—because now the distribution landscape allows for more narrowness.”
The downside to niches, as Kyncl explained, is cost. Apparently, it is expensive to program niche channels when factoring in various technical costs and the practicality of filling a 24/7 loop. However, with the advent of the Internet, niches are in high-demand, costs are lower than ever, and accessibility is at an all-time high…
Marvell could not quite wait for Consumer Electronics Show 2012 to spill the beans this on its huge GoogleTV win. The ARM-based processor company will have its Armada 1500 chipset at the heart of upcoming GoogleTV 2.0 solutions.
Most of the processor details are below, but the big news is that Google is going with low cost/low heat ARM processors for its next-generation set top boxes rather than Intel, who dropped out of the set top box market. With Marvell, Google should be able to compete on price with Roku, AppleTV and the other players in the market, and more importantly, it should be able to persuade TV manufacturers to include the low cost chips into hardware designs.
Marvell boasts that the Armada 1500 does 1080P 3D, as well as Flash – even though Adobe’s long-term plans outside of the desktop market are murky at best.
It does not appear that Google will build its own devices (although, the image above makes for interesting conversation), but it will continue to OEM out Google software. In a statement, Mario Queiroz, VP, Product Management Google TV said: “The Google and Marvell teams have been working closely together to bring our combined software and chipset technologies to market to grow the Google TV ecosystem of manufacturers and devices. Marvell-powered Google TV solutions will enable powerful products to be brought to market at attractive prices.”
Eric Schmidt recently said Google hopes to have GoogleTV embedded in the majority of SmartTVs by the summer of 2012, so this is a very aggressive rollout plan. We expect to hear much more at CES, where most consumer electronics companies release product plans for the upcoming year.
Another interesting tidbit: GoogleTV appears to be fully underneath its YouTube wing with media contacts listed for YouTube press people. The full press release is available below. Expand Expanding Close
YouTube launched a neat video discovery experiment this afternoon called YouTube Slam. Slam is a little game that allows you to vote between videos in a wide-range of topics, including Comedy, Cute, Music, Bizarre and Dance. The video with the most Slams earns a spot on the leaderboard each week.
YouTube Slam also has a game aspect to it: users will earn more points as they predict crowd favorites. This is a cool time waster that you should check out.
We told you yesterday about a Google search easter egg for the Christmas, and today we discovered another fun way Google has decided to celebrate the holidays. When visiting YouTube, there is currently a snowflake icon next to the resizing and resolution options on the video player. Click it and your video will snow! Your mouse will even interact with the snowflakes as they fall. It will also snow in the YouTube search results when searching for “let it snow”.
Google today said its YouTube site hit a trillion playbacks in 2011 – that’s a 1,000,000,000,000 view counts for you, or about 140 views for every person on the earth. In a post over at the official YouTube blog, the company invited folks to “see what the world watched on YouTube in 2011 with YouTube Rewind”, available at www.youtube.com/rewind.
It’s an interactive timeline of this year’s most popular videos and events. As you can imagine, kitten videos, dog clips and videos of cute babies (iPad toddlers, anyone?) are again amongst the most-viewed clips not put out by big music companies. And what’s the biggest YouTube video of the year?
In the “most watched videos from major music labels globally” category, Pitbull’s On The Floor was by the most popular music video, although their Give Me Everything (featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer) and Rain Over Me (featuring Marc Anthony) were pretty popular as well. In fact, those three music videos accrued over four hundred million views.
The majority of YouTube clips that have managed to clock insane view counts throughout the year come from YouTube’s VEVO channel, dedicated to music videos (VEVO is a joint venture among Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Abu Dhabi Media.
Go past the break for a handy list of the most popular YouTube videos of 2011 across several categories.
