Obviously, Google must think they can get more out of Hulu than the other companies – they wouldn’t want to buy yet another video hosting site and then struggle to monetise it, would they?

It has been reported by the Financial Times that Amazon, Yahoo! and Dish Network have offered between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to Hulu in exchange for ownership of the free video site, its subscription service and the rights to exclusive content for at least two years.

The details of what Google is willing to offer Hulu are not yet available. It is also not known whether or not Google has already made an offer to Hulu.

It is quite possible that Google is looking for access to more content and video scene search technology from Hulu, and the deal would then have to be for a longer period of time. It’s equally possible that Google just doesn’t want anyone else to compete with YouTube’s newly formed movie and TV show streaming business.

An executive of Hulu, involved with the deal-making process has said, “Normally we would have thrown people out if they’d said that.” In spite of such strong statements, Hulu is still talking to Google, so it is quite obvious that the offer being made by Google is probably too good to let go.

While the money involved seems to be big, there is still the possibility that Google and YouTube could eventually swallow Hulu, and that may deter Hulu from agreeing to a deal with Google.

It is also quite possible that Hulu’s parent companies, News Corp and Disney, may decide not to sell the company to anybody at all.

YouTube’s parent company, Google, has been fighting a court case with several music publishers and TV / Movie companies regarding the use of pirated and copyrighted content on YouTube since 2007. Viacom had also filed a class action suit at the same time.

In 2007, the courts ruled in favour of Google, stating that YouTube was protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The litigants had filed an appeal against the verdict at the time.

The parties concerned have now arrived at an understanding whereby Google will pay royalties to the music company concerned for the use of their content on YouTube.

Financial details of the agreement have not been revealed.

A post on the YouTube blog says, “We already have deals in place with a number of music publishers in the U.S. and around the world, and today’s deal offers more choice for rights holders in how they manage use of their songs.”

The blog further states that “When these publishers allow YouTube to run ads alongside user-generated videos that incorporate their compositions, the publishers and the songwriters they represent can make money.”

While the deal has been signed only with publishers, it is also expected to benefit songwriters, recording artists and record labels. This will be possible thanks to Google’s Content ID technology, which allows recognition of songs and other music.

How exactly Google will monetise the content sufficiently to pay for every instance of copyright infringement is not clear. However, the relatively recent success of YouTube’s monetisation efforts obviously will play a big part in this.

As the name suggests, the service gets activated when any user decides to watch a video on YouTube for the first time on any given day. In other words, this is a new kind of pre-roll ad.

In the past, ads in the header would start playing as soon as the YouTube homepage was opened. According to Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manger at YouTube, the ads on the homepage were highly successful and were “Starting to sell out.” Hence they felt the need to try a new form of pre-roll advertising.

First Watch ads are an extensionof the ads that are visible on the top of the YouTube homepage. These ad units will be visible to users who avoided watching the ad on the homepage and instead directly reached an inner page on YouTube by clicking on a link or when they visit a channel directly.

YouTube has been trialling this new facility. They have already rolled out such First Watch ads to about 15 million users and have received click-through rates around 1%, which is pretty good.

An advertiser interested in this service would need to buy a spot on the first video view by users on a given day.

First Watch ads will be applicable only to professional content partners such as The Onion, Tommy Hilfiger, Macy’s Inc and other similar brands. It will not be applicable to regular user-generated videos.

It is not yet known what YouTube will charge advertisers for this new service. However, Baljeet Singh said that it was “comparable” to what they charged for videos on YouTube.com “but less expensive”.

For quite some time now, YouTube has been one of the most popular sites on the Internet and provides its users with a variety of content ranging from personally made videos to sporting events, live concerts, breaking news and a lot more.

They have now expanded this service by tying up with some major Hollywood studios to roll out about 3,000 titles for rental in due course of time. These movies will be accompanied by reviews from popular movie rating site Rotten Tomatoes and behind-the-scenes information.

New releases for rent on YouTube Movies

Some of the major studios that have agreed to tie-up with YouTube for this service include Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros, Universal pictures and Lionsgate.

Older movies such as ‘Good Fellas’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ will be available for a lower fee of $2.99. New releases such as ‘Inception’ and ‘The King’s Speech’ will be charged at $3.99. Movies that were previously offered for free will remain free to view on the new service as well.

This service is expected directly compete with sites such as Netflix and Redbox. However, these sites are currently priced a lot cheaper than YouTube, and so YouTube might eventually have to rethink their pricing strategy, which currently seems closer to old-fashioned rental services such as Blockbuster.

Expanded movie rental services from YouTube will help to further consolidate the video-sharing site’s position in the market, while at the same time narrowing the gap between online video and television.

This service has only been started in the U.S. as of now, and it will serve their 105 million customers. Once Google expands this service and realigns prices in other regions such as Europe and Asia, they could make it a real success as online rental services are not very popular there and theirs would be the only popular service to offer immediate legitimate streaming movies.

Happy Feet movie rental page with reviews, previews and related videos

They had tries this feature last year during the Indian Premier League cricket matches, and they will now go ahead with this service on a regular basis.

An announcement on the site says, “Today, we’ll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.”

For these live broadcasts, users can turn to http://www.youtube.com/live.

They will start with a live relay of ‘The DigiTour’ which will be running for 6 weeks across various cities in America.

YouTube partners, in the cities where the concerts will be held, will be able to make the most of this opportunity by reaching out to a large audience during this event as also during all future live events.

• YouTube Trends Dashboard

Topics of interest can range from news and events to pop culture, people, new ideas and much more. For instance, during the last week, some of the videos in trending topics ranged from footage of the protests in Syria and a tornado in Pennsylvania to a videos about the supposed worst singer in the world and cartoons about the Middle East leaders.

The Trends blog lets people get to know what is happening around the world in real time. The feature highlights the daily trending topics twice a day – at 4.00 a.m. ET and at 4.00 p.m. ET. The four most viewed videos during this time frame are highlighted.

YouTube Trends Dashboard allows users to find out what are the hottest topics of the day across different demographic groups worldwide. The most popular videos of the day are shown according to location, age group and gender of the user along with information about the most shared, trending videos and trending topics.

In the screenshot above, the YouTube Trends Dashboard is being used to compare the most viewed videos in the United Kingdom for Males versus Females aged 25 – 34 years versus all users aged 55 – 64 years. Videos that are unique to the older demographic are highlighted with the red number.

This feature can be of great help to advertisers and agencies as it can tell them what sort of topics a particular group of people would be interested in. They can then select appropriate ad content designed specifically for their target audience.

As expected, Google continues to be the number one site, with a very wide margin. However, they have undergone a slight setback, as the number of unique viewers has gone down from 144.1 million in January to 141.1 million in February. The number of minutes spent online per session has also gone down.

On the other hand, Microsoft has had a very good month as they have risen from ranking seventh in January to ranking second in February. They have also had 48.8 million unique viewers in February which represents an absolute increase of 10.7 million visitors more than they had January.

Yahoo! has retained the third place as before and Facebook is now fourth in the list, in place of Viacom. VEVO, which was second in January, now occupies the fifth place, and Viacom is sixth, in place of Facebook. AOL has now taken Microsoft’s previous position at number seven. Turner Digital has retained the eighth spot in both months. Hulu, which was tenth in January, is now at number nine, and NBC has entered the list at number ten.

The study also shows that 170 million users watched online videos in February in the U.S. at an average of 13.6 hours per viewer and more than 5 billion viewing sessions.

It remains to be seen if the list will remain more or less steady in March or will change drastically again.

Enterprising young job seekers have tried various means to attract the attention of potential employers. Some advertised their portfolio pages and personal websites for relevant keywords and even for particular brand and key executive names, so that their job application would show up alongside organic results on Google.

Recently, an innovative PR executive took things one step further, potentially changing the age-old system forever.

Graeme Anthony was on the lookout for a new jobwhen he changed his residence from Manchester to London. He created a video, using his skills and talents and then uploaded the video on YouTube. The video not only contained an introduction to himself, but also contained sections such as ‘Skills’, ‘Portfolio’ and ‘Contact’. Viewers could decide which section to view first.

Apart from being live and interactive, rather than a dull representation on paper, the video is also interspersed with a healthy doze of humour, which could rarely have come across well on a CV document.

The video, which was uploaded last September, has certainly got a lot of attention. It received 2,000 views within the first hour of being uploaded. Anthony’s Twitter account was also mentioned a number of times with comments regarding the video.

More importantly, the video also drew the attention of potential employers, some of whom even commented on their corporate blogs, calling it “the best job application ever.”

On his part, Graeme says, “It brings me to life in a completely new way. It shows off my personality in a way a paper CV can’t. It’s got the wow factor.”

Recently, Frank PR, an agency based in London, saw the video and after interviewing him, gave him the job.

TrueView ads will allow viewers to not only choose whether or not they want to watch an ad, but also when they want to watch it.

The best part of this format, for advertisers is that they will be charged only when the viewer chooses to actually see the ad, and not when the ad impression is served. This cost-per-video-view ad model is good for advertisers as they will reach their target audience and only pay when their ad is watched.

Users will also benefit from the new format as it allows them to skip through ads that don’t interest them.

Just Like TV, But Better

Traditional television advertising works in the same way – users view ads before and during the content they’re interested in. However, unlike traditional TV ads, which must be endured by all viewers or can be walked (or channel surfed) away from,  TrueView ads will be skippable and will be priced per actual view only.

With the TrueView Video Ads – In Stream, which play as a pre roll or post roll ad along with a video, the viewer can select or skip a video ad after watching it for 5 seconds, and the advertiser is charged only if the ad has been watched fully or for 30 seconds whichever is shorter.

YouTube has already been experimenting with this ad format in their Promoted Videos advertising service too. They have found that users choose to see those ads that are relevant and interesting to them.

TrueView ad playing on YouTube

Advertisers will be able to collect data about the type of audience that shows interest in their ads. This will help them not only target future ad campaigns better, but also to align products to their target audience.

Google has also tested this system over a large audience and the results indicate a view-through rate between 20-70%. This means that between 20-70% of users have chosen to view the ad during the trial stages, which is an adequate response. This ad format was also tried during the recent U.S. mid term elections and the campaigns were fairly successful.

Hulu also offers viewers a similar choice – to watch or skip an ad. Hulu.com offers it in an InSlate format where users can watch one ad out of several or take a regular commercial break.

At present this ad format is available only in the U.S. and Canada and for limited testing in the U.K.

The study, which received responses from over 16,000 participants, found that 75% of users access m.youtube.com primarily through mobile and 70% of them report that they access YouTube Mobile at least once a day. 58% of users spend at least 20 minutes per session on YouTube Mobile and 38% of users feel that YouTube Mobile is fast replacing desktop YouTube usage.

Another report, which was published by Nielsen, shows that YouTube Mobile has now turned into the number one mobile video viewing site in the U.S. with over 7.1 MM monthly unique users.

The growing usage of the mobile to access YouTube is, of course, a good thing for YouTube Mobile, but it is also beneficial to advertisers as they can now reach a much larger audience if they advertise on m.youtbe.com.

As an additional incentive to attract advertisers, YouTube Mobile has now made it possible for advertisers to purchase a daily roadblock running across all available ad impressions for a 24-hour period. The ads run on the search, browse and home page of the mobile website. Campaigns for a variety of products, ranging from entertainment and retail to auto and consumer packaged goods have been successful on YouTube Mobile. Advertisers often run the roadblock to coincide with a product launch or a sales event.

Among the reasons for the growing use of the mobile to access YouTube, could be the fact that the newer range of handsets and Wi-Fi services now available provide a better user experience for video viewing, with better network speeds. Also, the cost of viewing or downloading videos on the mobile has come down considerably compared to earlier, thanks to the availability of better data plans.

The race to 1 billion viewers has finally come to an end, and Lady Gaga has emerged the winner. She hit the 1 billion mark on Sunday 24th October, while Justin Bieber had reached 962,726,797 views, according to reports from Famecount.

To announce this victory, Lady Gaga sent out a tweet saying, “We reached 1 billion views on YouTube little monsters! If we stick together we can do anything. I dub u kings and queens of YouTube! Unite!”

Though the race was quite closely run, sources had predicted that Lady Gaga was likely to reach the landmark first around the 20th of October, while Justin would get there around the 1st of November.

In spite of this so called victory by Lady Gaga, fans of Justin Bieber still consider him to be the “King” of YouTube as his song, ‘Baby’ is the most viewed video of all time on YouTube, with over 366 million views.

Lady Gaga had set up her YouTube account in May 2009, which means that to reach the 1 billion mark on the 24th of October 2010, over 21 people watched one of her videos on YouTube every second.

She is also the most followed person on Twitter, with about 7 million followers, while Justin Bieber and Britney Spears both have just over 6 million followers. Lady Gaga was also the first living person to have 10 million fans on Facebook.

A new site, called Demo Slam, was officially announced yesterday. The site hosts a competition of sorts, where two tech demos are pitted against each other, and Google will decide which one is better, based on a combination of user votes and video views.

www.demoslam.com

It is hoped that after seeing the initial tech demos seeded by Google, users will be inspired to develop their own tech demos on any subject and these demos may be more interesting to the average user when placed in such a setting.

In order to encourage users to see these demos, Google will conduct a competition each week, on a given subject.

Google’s first Demo Slam – Rushmore by Slam Force One v Chubby bunny by The Paul Brothers

Users can create a tech demo, upload the video on YouTube and submit their entries to the Demo Slam website, where selected demos will have the chance to compete against others and potentially earn more acclaim than they would have without Google’s help. Google wants these uploaded tech demos to be seen by as many people as possible so that they become aware of all the latest technology being made available to them by Google.

Submitting tech demos to Google Demo Slam

Users will be allowed to vote for their favourite videos during the weekly demo slam competition and a Demo Slam Champ will be selected every week.

While the format is cool and could potentially help push a few tech ideas further than they would have gone on their own steam, this doesn’t seem to be one for the masses. Have the Googlers at Mountain View run out of ideas or is this just the way for a few geeks to kill boredom?

Live programming on YouTube will be available only to the four selected media partners, and not to individual users. These partners are:

• Rocketboom – a news and entertainment channel
• Young Hollywood – a celebrity and lifestyle programming channel
• Howcast – an instructional video service
• BarelyPolitical – Next New Networks’ political satire channel

Live streaming on BarelyPolitical’s YouTube channel

While YouTube has experimented with streaming live video in the past, such as on the occasion of U.S. President Obama’s first State of the Union address and the Indian Premier League cricket matches these were exceptional instances. This time, YouTube will be testing a new technology that will allow their partners to stream live videos continuously over an extended period of time.

The new service will eventually allow users to chat and interact with broadcasters and other users directly, even as they watch the video. They will only require a webcam or external USB / Firewire camera to do so.

Live streaming and live comments tested on YouTube

While this development from Google may be seen as a move to check Facebook, which has been eating into YouTube’s video market share, it will also lead to competition with other live streaming sites like Justin.tv, Ustream and Livestream.

YouTube has not yet set a date by which live streaming will be available to the general public. However, it is believed that the live streaming facility will be limited to professionally content producers only. The service is not likely to be extended to all individual users.

It is believed that users will be charged at the rate of about $5 per movie which they stream.

Google used to offer a video on demand service through Google Video, but that has been discontinued since 2007, and users have been expecting a similar service to be restarted. Google has been considering this move since April 2009, when they announced that they would start a payment mechanism for their video sharing site YouTube. The talks with the studios have however warmed up in recent weeks. YouTube has already run a test of this service in January this year with the Sundance Film Festival

Once the service actually starts, Google will be in direct competition with both Apple and Netflix, as it has been reported that Apple is already working on a new digital video service which may be available on the next generation of the Apple TV.

In the meanwhile Netflix has already made a five year deal with companies like Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate for about $1 billion.

Walt Disney, News Corp and NBC Universal also have an online video service called Hulu which is considering an Initial Public Offering of $2 billion.

While the sources for this information have not been revealed by the Financial Times, it is believed to have come from people who would know about such developments. A YouTube representative says, “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Franklin is a graduate from the Duke and Columbia Universities in the fields of biology and psychology. She now works as a consultant.

When she was notified about the videos and derogatory comments posted by three persons or a person using three different aliases, she decided to face matters head on.

Her attorney, David Fish says, “People hide behind these shields and think they can just post anything. Hopefully, we can put a stop to this.”

The videos were posted last year by users Joebloom08, JimmyJean008 and Greyspector09. They have used clips of a small movie she acted in without authorisation and also used words like “whore” to describe her.

By suing Google, Franklin wants to pressurise the company to disclose details such as the name and address of the person who has posted these videos, so that this sort of thing does not happen again.

In fact, her lawyer says that she has a “pretty good idea” about who the person is, but she obviously needs some proof in order to implicate him in court.

The same tactic has been used in the past by model Liskula Cohen. There has been no comment from Google on the matter. However, one of the offending accounts has been closed and all videos have been deleted from the other two.

Cyber-bully JimmyJean008′s YouTube profile

In order to simplify their users lives, YouTube recently introduced a new feature known as YouTube Leanback. As the name obviously suggests, this feature allows users to lean back and enjoy videos with a minimal amount of maneuvering.

YouTube Leanback

To use this facility, users will initially have to feed in certain details, like settings and preferences. They also have to feed 8in the required content, from the subscriptions. They can also access videos which their friends are sharing on Facebook if their YouTube and Facebook accounts are connected.

Once this is done, videos of the user’s interest will start playing as soon as the user opens the site. It is also possible to watch things like news and other entertainment programmes.

To select the required video, the user has to use the scroll keys on the keyboard, thus obliterating the need for the mouse. Each time the user navigates to the button he requires, he has also to click the ‘Enter’ key. The space bar of the keyboard functions as the ‘Pause’ and ‘Play’ key.

Unfortunately, the YouTube Leanback feature does not provide any keys with which to control the volume of the video. For that, one needs to use the controls on the system or the speakers.

Other than that one missing feature, watching videos with the YouTube Leanback feature has become similar to watching TV as one can easily use a wireless keyboard to navigate with. YouTube refers to this as the ’10 foot experience’.

Watching a stream of videos on YouTube Leanback

The most surprising thing about YouTube Leanback is that it eliminates the need for users to search, which goes against all of Google’s business principles!

“I Gotta Feeling” was released by the band in the beginning of June last year, was at the top of the charts for 2 weeks and then continued to remain in the top 40 for a total of 33 weeks.

The Black Eyed Peas also hold the record for the maximum number of downloads by a single group – a total of 3.3 million, in the U.K.

Martin Talbot, Managing Director of The Official UK Charts Company, says that this is a very significant milestone. While the industry started recognising the importance of downloads as far back as 2005, by counting them as part of the singles charts, this is the first time that a song has actually been legally downloaded so many times.

Initially, downloads were counted only after a CD was made physically available in shops. One year later, the rules were changed, and downloads started getting counted even without a CD release.

Now, 98% of all singles’ sales are through downloads. However, according to record company executives, the easy availability of downloads is only adding to the problem of online piracy, which results in the loss of millions of pounds of revenue to the record companies every year.

While this might be mixed news to the record company, it definitely marks a continued change in the way the U.K. public consumes media. Digital definitely seems to be the way forward. The record companies need to catch up with the rest of the business world and start building a more digital media friendly business model.

YouTube Video Editor

When logged in users start the online video editor, they see a collection of their recent videos in a panel on the left. The user can then select a video and add it to the timeline to edit it.

Editing videos on YouTube does not allow users to do anything fancy. The service simply enables combining different videos that have already been uploaded to create a new, longer mashup video, trimming the beginning, middle or end of any video to make it shorter or changing the video’s soundtrack.

Original video soundtrack can be replaced with any audio sample in Google’s Audio Swap library. An advantage of this feature could be that it might prevent users from inadvertantly violating copyright law.

Other minor advantages include giving users the ability to create new videos without bothering about file formats and eliminating the need to install any special software for basic video editing functions.

Windows Movie Maker, a programme that ships for free with most Windows systems, already includes all of these features and a lot more. The problem with Windows Movie Maker is simply that most users don’t know about its existence or its capabilities.

The best thing about YouTube’s video editor is just the fact that it allows editing within the cloud, on the same site, rather than requiring users to modify content offline.

Creating a mash-up on YouTube Video Editor

Myxer, which was started in 2005, now boasts a user base of 30 million unique visitors who download entertainment content from it regularly.

A ‘More Malice’ content channel has been created on Myxer to promote the album. It will provide behind the scenes content on mobile videos to promote the album. The Myxer URL is:

http://www.myxer.com/MALICE

More Malice is the sequel to Snoop’s previous album, ‘Malice in Wonderland’. The record is accompanied by a mini-movie based on the previous album and it features Snoop Dogg playing the central role of Malice.

While the presence on Myxer is central to the album’s release, it will not be limited to the site. Ring tones and wallpapers of the album will be available to interested users. Embeddable widgets will also be placed on various music sites and on Snoop Dogg’s social network profiles.

CEO of Myxer, Myk Willis says, “It is becoming clearer by the day, that artists’ fans want to use their mobile phone as the connection vehicle to their favorite artists. We recently launched MobileStage as a free, customisable mobile web site for artists, and the response has been great.”

Artists seem to increasingly recognise the value of connecting with their fans directly. Radiohead launched a very successful album solely online back in 2007. In the past couple of years most artists have built Facebook Pages and Twitter profiles, which they or their PR teams use to interact with fans, keeping their loyal customers engaged.

“These days its all about the artist interacting with the fans directly”, said Snoop Dogg. “I know what my fans want and now with Myxer I can give them what they want and need by delivering the best content straight into their hands, giving them exclusive content, and what they can expect to see on my upcoming More Malice album.”

Left to right: Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and the incriminating video

Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and George De Los Reyes were accused of defamation and violation of privacy. A fourth employee, Arvind Desikan, the product manager, has been acquitted.

The judge, Oscar Magi, has absolved them of defamation, but has convicted the three for violation of privacy. Each of them has received a suspended six month sentence.

Needless to say, executives at Google are enraged by this sentence, which they consider to be arbitrary and frivolous. David Drummond, the Chief Legal Officer says, “I intend to vigourously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent.”

Google further clarifies that Google and its employees had nothing to do with the harassment of the teenager, the filming or uploading of the video. If the consent of the teenager concerned was to be taken, it was the responsibility of those who uploaded the video to do so.

Google withdrew the video as soon as it was brought to their notice. They also cooperated with the authorities to identify the people who made and uploaded the video. Their responsibility ended there.

As far as censorship is concerned, it is not possible for Google to screen every video that is uploaded on their site, before it is available for public viewing, simply because of the sheer volumes involved.

If this sentence is allowed to run unquestioned, then Google claims that most sites will be liable for some violations of law. Under such circumstances, many sites may be forced to shut down, and the losers will be the general public, which derives many benefits from the services provided by the internet.

With the help of this new feature, users can search for keywords in the Closed Captions that are available with videos. In essence, this means that Hulu viewers can now search for particular scenes in a movie or television show that comes with closed captions.

Captions Search results include a preview of the section of the video containing the keyword, which can be seen by hovering over the segment featuring the search term. One can also see that clip in full size by clicking on the search result’s text.

Hulu Captions Search is currently avalaible in Hulu Labs or through the “Captions” tab on any video that has been provided with closed captions.

Another interesting feature of Captions Search is the heat map. This feature provides a graphical representation of the viewer interest generated during various stages of the show. A large range of viewer behaviours have been assessed to generate this graph, and it appears at the top of the video. This heat map can also be used to navigate directly to a particular captioned section of the show.

The features are still in the beta phase, but are likely to go live pretty soon.

Preview of Captions Search on Hulu

Captions will be automatically generated through the voice recognition algorithm that is used on Google Voice. The technology is known as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology and can be pretty accurate for some cases.

In many cases, though, the automatic captions result in some rather funny output, even for videos by Google’s own employees. This could lead to some very confused users if they relied solely on automated captions!

Funny Automated Captions On YouTube

In order to use automated captions, a user has must click on the upward arrow button on the bottom-right corner of the video control bar and click on ‘Transcribe Audio’ from the captions (CC) menu.

It is also be possible to translate the captions into several languages.

While this will greatly improve YouTube’s accessibility and benefit people who have difficulties hearing, the translation facility will also help people who do not understand the original language used in the video.

Another feature that is being simultaneously introduced is auto-timing for subtitles. If all the words used in the video are provided in a text file, Google will automatically associate the timing of each caption alongside the video timeline.

In other words, the text of the video will be transcribed. This transcript can obviously be indexed and crawled, thus helping users with search engine optimisation of video content.

The new captioning features will therefore eventually allow users to search for a video based on keywords used in the video script.

The automatic caption feature is already available on most educational and Google-owned channels. Automatic timing is now available on all newly uploaded videos on YouTube.

Believe it or not, this is already happening!

Video ad loading in a magazine

The first video ads in the print media were published last month in an American magazine, Entertainment Weekly.

A full-page cardboard insert was placed within the magazine containing a small screen, which advertised the diet drink Pepsi Max, and also had trailers of shows on the U.S. television network, CBS. As if that is not sufficient, the insert also contained built-in speakers for the user to listen to the ads.

This amazing feat has been achieved by inserting a small chip in the cardboard page within the magazine. The chip gets activated automatically when the concerned page is opened. It works in a manner similar to a singing greeting card.

The screen is about the size of a mobile phone’s display screen, contains rechargeable batteries and can carry up to 40 minutes of content.

While the invention is quite interesting to say the least, some users do not like it as it makes the magazine quite bulky and the cardboard insert makes it impossible to fold the magazine. It also makes it quite difficult to flick through the pages of the magazine.

Another drawback is that once the page is opened, it takes several seconds for the video to load and start, which could result in users losing interest.

Copies of the magazine have been sent out to several subscribers in New York and Los Angeles.

Americhip, the company that manufactures these screens, has estimated that each screen would cost about $20. The novelty of this medium, though, could easily justify the additional advertiser expense.

Oonce this form of advertising gains greater acceptance, it could drive the manufacturing costs down, but could also result in user apathy or even frustration at technology turning a quiet few minutes spent reading a magazine into a noisy, flashy flurry of images.

Talks are still reported to be in extremely early stages, so there is no date set as yet for starting the service. In fact, it may never even materialize.

Apple’s iTunes Store, which has such a service in place, charges users $3.95 per movie. It is expected that YouTube would be looking at a similar figure.

If the deal does come through, it will be a first for YouTube, in that it will be the first time that they will charge their viewers to access content.

In spite of being one of the most popular websites, YouTube has never been financially successful. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has admitted that the site has not lived up to its revenue expectations. Last April, he had said that YouTube would try out various ways of monetisation, including micropayments and subscription models.

YouTube even started allowing ad sales on videos from big media companies, on a revenue sharing basis with the producers, in an attempt to capitalise on the TV ad budgets that already are allocated for these companies.

If talks with some of Hollywood’s studios do succeed, YouTube will start earning some revenue through this new channel.

Discussions were started with Warner Bros. The two companies had reached an agreement in the past to allow clips from Warner Bros. TV shows to feature on YouTube, but so far they have not allowed airing of full episodes on the site.

YouTube is also in talks with Sony, Lion’s Gate and MGM. Though Walt Disney and Fox, who are very particular about their copyrights, have not yet come to the discussion table.

Paramount Movies has raised objections to YouTube’s proposals. This was to be expected as Paramount’s parent company, Viacom, is involved in a law suit against Google. The suit which is on its way to trial, for $1 billion in damages, is based on Viacom’s allegation that Google allowed the viewing of pirated TV shows and other material on YouTube. If YouTube hopes to deal with them in the near future, Google will have to come to an amicable settlement with Viacom first.

While the studios have not been too concerned about pirated TV shows, movies are a different matter altogether.

However, the studios could also be interested in forging a deal with YouTube as DVD sales have dropped quite significantly in recent months and such a deal could be one way of making up for the losses thus incurred.

It so happened that Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz from Minnesota, who were due to be united in holy matrimony, wanted to have an unusual wedding party.

They decided that the bride, the groom and all of their bridesmaids and best men should dance to the song ‘Forever’ by Chris Brown in the church. This unusual entrance was video taped and put up on YouTube, where it has become wildly popular.

So far, the “Forver wedding video” has been viewed by more than 12 million viewers, in just over a week, making it the most viewed and most discussed video on YouTube, globally.

Rather than pull the video, or sue Google for copyright infringement, Chris Brown’s record company allowed the music to be used and InVideo Ads were placed to make it possible for users to buy the song from Amazon or iTunes.

A lot of users have responded positively to this offer, earning YouTube, Amazon and Apple a good amount of money.

The record company, Sony, and Chris Brown have also made a pretty penny, not to mention the badly needed positive publicity for Chris Brown that they have earned by not suing the couple for copyright infringement (a first for the music industry?).

Searches for ‘chris brown forever’ over the past 90 days

While all of these beneficiaries have the young couple to thank for the unexpected bounty, the couple has not made a penny out of their own video. They were invited to appear on the Today Show in New York, along with all their guests. They are also using all this publicity to drive donations to the Sheila Wellstone Institute for violence prevention.

Hopefully this incident will be an eye-opener for video sites and music owners and show them that they can make money by other means than prosecuting consumers for sharing and downloading music.

The Forever Wedding Video

These pre-roll ads are run around TV shows and clips on their site.

To begin with they have tied up with their existing partners Channel 4, BBC Worldwide, National Geographic, ITN and Discovery Networks as reported in ‘The Guardian’.

The broadcasters who accept this scheme will be eligible for a revenue sharing partnership with YouTube. In the past these partners were earning revenue only from the display ads and in-video format.

Some advertisers such as Nissan, Renault, Warner Brothers, Match.com and Activision have already tied up with YouTube for this service, and Channel 4 was the first among them to run the pre-roll ads to promote the comedy ‘The Hangover’. The pre-roll ads will be run for 15 to 30 seconds, and will be run on a CPM basis.

According to Suveer Kothari, Head of YouTube U.K. YouTube has been trying to maintain a balance between the demands of their users who want free but entertaining and professional content on the web, against the demands of premium content owners, who obviously want to monetize their content on the one hand, and the demands of their advertisers who want more premium content to showcase their TV creative against on the other hand.

He believes this service will help them to attain that balance.

YouTube RealTime shows up as a bar on the bottom of all pages on the site for users who are logged in and participating in the beta test. Not only can participating users see which of their friends are online, but they can also see which videos those friends are watching, and what they think about the videos, based on the comments posted by those friends.

Screenshot of RalTime toolbar showing friends’ video views

The first button on the toolbar indicates that RealTime sharing is activated. The service can be turned off so that users share only videos they wish to. Adjacent to this is a button that is enabled when the user watches a video. Clicking on the button shows a list of other users viewing the same video.

An ‘Online Friends’ button shows a list of friends currently logged into YouTube. The last button, a little bell with a number beside it

During the closed testing period each user can invite up to 25 online friends to try RealTime and share their viewing experiences. While this limits the number of users who can trial the service, it is gradually expanding, as each invitee is given 25 invites to distribute further. Google had used a similar trial invitation system when Gmail was first launched.

A lot of YouTube users go to the site without any specific video in mind. They could be particularly interested in finding out what their friends are viewing and then sharing these videos with other friends. The added video views could generate more ad revenue for YouTube and its advertisers.

This is not the only change coming to YouTube. The video sharing site recently unveiled two new sections featuring full-length movies and TV shows and a limited number of users are also trialling a new channel layout.

Sample new channel layout on YouTube

According to YouTube, the Chinese Government has not contacted them or given any reason for the ban. YouTube, and parent company, Google, are trying to have the service restored.

Without either denying or admitting to the blockage of the site, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “Chinese Government has taken up management of the network according to the laws.”

Blocking of Foreign websites in China is nothing new. The government often blocks any content which they feel is inappropriate or objectionable.

Last year, they had blocked YouTube, for showing videos of the anti-government Tibetan demonstrations in an attempt to prevent the public from knowing about the protests.

The current block, coincides with the release of a video by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, which shows the ill-treatment of the Tibetan protestors by the Chinese authorities during the demonstrations which occurred last year.

Another site, Blip.tv which also posted the said video has also been blocked.

By blocking foreign sites the Chinese government, hopes to be able to lure the Chinese public away from them and towards local websites such as Tudou.com because it is much easier to control the content shown on these sites.

China, is however not the only country to ban YouTube. It has been banned off and on in various countries, such as Thailand, Turkey, Pakistan etc. whenever the governments there disapprove of any content.

Director of video partnerships at YouTube, Patrick Walker, told the BBC that the two sides were still in talks but the terms of the agreement were priced at a rate that was not sustainable.

At present, UK users who try to view music videos on YouTube just see an error message saying “This video is not available in your country.”

Google claims the PRS asked YouTube to pay a far higher amount than before, and executives at YouTube think this rate is not feasible. Walker says “YouTube cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played”.

The online video giant also blames the PRS for lack of transparency as they refuse to specify which songs would be included in the said license.

Steve Porter, head of PRS, on the other hand, says he is shocked and outraged by YouTube’s decision in the middle of discussions. He says that YouTube’s decision punishes British consumers and song writers. PRS says YouTube wants to pay significantly less than at present to music writers in spite of growth in their viewership.

While both sides are hurling allegations at each other, the Music Publishers Association has urged YouTube to reconsider their decision.

Other sites like Pandora.com and MySpace U.K. have also run into trouble getting licenses in the U.K. recently. YouTube, however, calims to have very strong relationships with 3 out of 4 major record labels and several independent ones. They say they will continue to seek partnerships that will benefit music publishers, music labels and artists.

The music industry remains one of the few major vertical that has managed to continue to operate as it did before the dot.com era, and continues to show much resistance to change. The advent of mp3.com and the ongoing drop in CD sales don’t seem to deter them or push them to change their business model.

Users may start uploading videos illegally if they are not allowed access to them legally. If that happens all parties would be the losers.

The current generation of youth are growing up on digital music, and seem to be accustomed to paying nothing for digital services and products such as digital music. Most of them don’t even think twice about the implication that music piracy is akin to theft.

If record companies continue to dig their heels in the sand and not give up their current business model, they are likely to fall spectacularly in the future, as artists find other ways to reach audiences and listeners find cost-effective means to hear their favourite singers without making record labels richer in the process.

The offensive video is a 3-minute mobile phone video, which had been posted on YouTube in 2006. In this video, a boy with Down’s syndrome was being teased by his classmates in Turin.

People found this video objectionable and complained about it, following which Google responded by deleting it quickly. The prosecutors, however, felt that that was not enough, as the video should never have been allowed to be displayed.

The executives involved are David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, George Reyes, former Chief Financial Officer, Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel for Google and Arvind Desikan, previous head of Google Video Europe.

The trial is being held in Milan and the executives may face up to 3 years in jail if found guilty. If that happens, it will not only mean that henceforth privacy laws will have to be taken very seriously, but it could also force a change in the way YouTube functions in Italy and the rest of Europe.

A thorny issue that will have to be reconsidered, as a result of a ruling against the Google executives in this case, will be whether or not Internet companies should screen content submitted by individuals before it is published.

In the United States, copyright laws so far do not punish online services if they respond quickly to complaints. Europe too has similar laws, but they are unclear about applicability to young people and certain private information.

If Google and its executives are held responsible for this video it will have very wide-ranging implications.

Google has said that their sympathies lie with the victim and his family, and they are happy the culprits have been identified due to their video and punished . However prosecuting Google would be like prosecuting mail services for hate mail. Also, holding Google responsible for content posted on their site is an attack on a free and open Internet and hence they will vigorously defend their employees.

The New york Times reports that the first hearing lasted only about five minutes and none of the defendants were present. The next hearing is scheduled for February 18.

For a long time now, YouTube has been engaged in a tussle of sorts with big media companies. These companies feel that YouTube’s policy of allowing users to upload content produced by the media houses is a violation of copyright laws.

Given the fact that YouTube is the most popular online video site, media owners are better off being on YouTube’s side rather than getting into a legal battle with them. However, some companies like Viacom have sued YouTube in the past.

TechCrunch reports that a new proposal from YouTube will allow these content providers to sell ads on YouTube, alongside their own videos. Content owners will obviously be given a share of the revenue thus earned, which should please them and may even induce them to change loyalties from other sites such as Hulu and TV.com, which they currently patronise.

According to Ars Technica, a few companies such as CBS already have such a deal with the Google subsidiary, but it could now be expanded to include others.

YouTube will gain from this arrangement as they will be able to better monetise their content and earn higher revenues than they have been able to do so far. It will also increase their share of media content received from big media partners, which is only 4% at present.

Last but not the least, users who upload various videos including content from larger media companies on YouTube will no longer have to worry about the videos being removed for fear of copyright violations.

It is expected that this service will be launched by the end of the first quarter of 2009.

While CNN.com relayed the event live through its video player, status updates from Facebook users watching the video were streamed in the sidebar.

The integration between the broadcast on CNN.com and the status updates from Facebook was enabled through Facebook Connect, their equivalent of OpenSocial that was launched last month. Facebook Connect allows users to port their online identity across third-party websites that use the platform.
The relay of President Obama’s inaugural speech by CNN.com along with status updates by Facebook users is a great success for Facebook Connect, which has raced ahead of its rival Google Friend Connect, with this achievement.

According to reports, over 18.8 million individuals viewed the speech and recorded 1.3 million status updates during the speech. Obama’s Facebook fan page now has over 4 million fans and over 5,00,000 wall posts.

CNN broke its previous record of election day coverage, when they had 5.3 million streams. They relayed over 8 million live streams this time. In fact, some users on CNN.com actually had to wait for others to sign out before they could access the site.

One of the first event videos to feature this service, was Barack Obama’s speech when he was sworn in as the 44^th President of the U.S.A. Users who visited the Change.Gov channel on YouTube were allowed to play as well as download the proceedings of the day, from a “click to download” link on the bottom left hand corner of the video.

Obama at the Lincoln Memorial

At present, the service only allows downloads from YouTube but not from videos embedded on other sites. This could change in the future though.

By officially allowing downloads from the site, YouTube will be able to further fortify their position in the video-sharing market. This facility will, of course, be free of charge.

In the last few weeks, the subsidiary of Google has gained in importance as Google’s own online video portal Google Video has announced that they will stop accepting new uploads.

Google is also trying to further augment their income through the video-sharing site, and in order to achieve this they have just launched a series of revamped home page ads and will also expand the library of videos available to download. Last month YouTube had also launched a new High Definition section on their site.

The decision to allow downloads of their videos will give a lot of portability to YouTube, or in other words, users will be able to access these videos on all types of screens including computers, televisions and portable media players, even in the absence of an Internet connection.

Google has forged into a new deal with online video advertising company, SpotMixer, that allows advertisers to use SpotMixer’s video creation technology to create television commercials for their products free of cost, and then air them on TV as well as online.

Ads can be made either in the form of images, audio and / or video content selected from a vast database provided by Google, or from the advertisers’ own uploaded content. There is also an adjustable soundtrack so that advertisers can record the ad in a voice of their choice if they so desire.

The service can be accessed from the “Submit Ad” page when creating a Google TV ads campaign. Google has provided the short video clip shown below to teach advertisers how to use this service.

Creating a new TV ad with the tool is quite a simple procedure really. After logging into the AdWords account, users have to select an appropriate categories for the industry concerned or the type of product to be advertised and then select from relevant images, audio or video content using a drag and drop interface. Advertisers can customise the ad to their requirement by clicking the link to “Add more images and video”. They can also dynamically change the templates to give the ad a more personal look. Completed ads need to be downloaded and then added to the TV Ads Campaign.

This is a great idea for a cheap, do-it-yourself system to advertise products and service to a wide audience. It should help start-ups with limited budgets advertise on television alongside big brands without needing to spend a lot on ad production. The service was launched in beta back in September 2008, for a few clients and they are already reporting positive feedback.

During the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas this month, all the major television manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and LG introduced modified TV models with Web built in access. Different sets contain different facilities such as Yahoo! Widgets, MySpace or other social networking capabilities, built in Netflix and so on.

Samsung is likely to be the first company to introduce the Connected TV by this summer.

Manufacturers are hopeful that having the components of the Web integrated into the television sets will encourage users to adopt the “Connected TV” technology.

Yahoo! Widgets, for one, will not only give users access to Yahoo! content but will also allow developers to build new widgets that consumers can add. Several new widgets are likely to be introduced in the near future.

Another interesting feature to be added soon will be a Twitter widget, which will allow users to send messages to each other through the TV itself.

The MySpace widget is also generating a lot of interest as it will enable social networking between friends, while watching a TV show. Users in different locations will be able to watch the same TV program and interact with each other via comments and pictures, as though they were sitting in the same room.

Yahoo! Connected TV widgets

ReadWriteWeb reports that most of the widgets will be funded by advertising.

The Connected TV has an Ethernet port at the back, and users can directly plug the DSL connection into the TV to access the Internet.

Since the Connected TV will be controlled with just a handy remote control, rather than the set top box and keyboard, and will have many new features to it, it is more likely that the concept will appeal to users this time around.

Screenshot from Samsung Connected TV demo

While YouTube is an extremely popular video site, and continues to grow by the minute – 13 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute – it can be quite a daunting task for people to find the video they are interested in, as YouTube has quite a mammoth collection.

In order for content owners to build up viewer numbers and fan following as well as to help users find the right video, YouTube now lets content providers promote their videos, thus making it simpler for users to find them.

They have introduced a new advertising program, called YouTube Sponsored Videos. This new service will enable brands and content owners to reach those who are interested in their video content, irrespective of whether they are a big and famous company, or new-comers looking to build a reputation.

YouTube Sponsored Videos

An automated tool allows video creators to decide where they want to place their videos. They can then make bids through an online auction process, similar to the one used by Google Adwords, and also specify a daily budget.

AdWords ad ranking principles will be applied on YouTube too, so that a combination of the ads maximum cost per click bid and the ad Quality Score will determine where the ad gets positioned.

When an interested user searches for videos, the appropriate videos will be shown, along with the regular YouTube search results, under the heading ‘Sponsored Videos’ on a pay per click basis.

This service is still in an experimental stage and further changes will be made as required, based on feedback Google receives from users.

Sponsored Videos on YouTube are available only in the U.S. at present, but will be introduced in other countries at some point in the future.

YouTube is estimated to be the second largest search destination in the USA and the UK. Given the volume of searches this implies, and the success that Google has seen by monetising their main search service, it is but natural that Google would apply the same formula to YouTube. If advertisers and react favourably to this service, it could solve Google’s long-standing dilemma of how to capitalise their acquisition of YouTube.

When they discontinued the mobile video service, a spokesperson for 3 had said, “Mobile advertising remains an important part of our strategy. This change has created a great opportunity for a new supplier and we’ll be looking at options over the coming months.”

They now appear to have fulfilled that promise. 3 has now tied up with Mobix, which will deliver real-time in-video advertising, and 4^th Screen Advertising, which will be their sales partner, to restart their mobile video service before the end of the year.

The 3 million subscribers of 3 will now be able to receive personalised advertising from various brands, with the option of demographic targeting and frequency capping.

3 UK will begin with news, weather updates and movie reviews, and follow it up later with comedy music and cartoons. 3′s earlier entertainment and information services, mobile games, and full length music downloads will of course continue.

Videos will range from being free to costing up to 50 pence each, depending on the length and type.

3 UK’s Head of Portal Advertising, Neil Andrews says, “By allowing people access to video content at a consumer friendly price we can offer brands a potentially massive target audience.”

Mark Slade, Managing Director of 4^th Screen Advertising says, “Pre-roll video advertising is highly targeted, enabling campaigns to be far more effective, whilst reaching the right customer demographic at a time that suits.”

Read the full 3 UK official press release

Not only that, but they are now at the number two position in the market, next only to YouTube. They have beaten their other competitors, Fox (MySpace), MSN and Nickelodeon, who had all been ahead of Yahoo just a month ago, in August 2008.

The number of unique viewers visiting Yahoo has also gone up by 10 million, and now stands at 29.9 million.

YouTube is of course far far ahead of Yahoo, not only in the total number of video streams they run (5.3 billion), but also in the number of unique viewers they have (81.9 million). Also their business has increased in the month of September 2008 by 592 million video streams, which by itself is considerably more than double of Yahoo!’s total video streams in the same month.

In spite of this great difference in numbers between YouTube and Yahoo, it is possible that Yahoo may catch up with YouTube, faster than expected, where monetization is concerned, which is after all the bottom line for any business. The reason for this is that Yahoo can display ads alongside many more of its videos than YouTube. It has been estimated that currently, YouTube monetizes only about 4% of their videos according to The Wall Street Journal.

Another good news for Yahoo, is that while they saw a considerable jump in business in September, their other competitors, Fox, MSN and Nickelodeon actually saw a dip in their business.

Apart from good contextual placement, Yahoo!’s program “Primetime In No Time” is one of the major reasons for their progress. It allows viewers to see a synopsis

Of any of their favorite TV programs which they may have missed. This show alone has generated 100 million streams in September. Also the fan mash-up of the Shakira blockbuster “Hips don’t lie” has generated a lot of interest for a long time now.

Interest in the current economic crisis on Yahoo Finance, and information regarding the U.S. Presidential elections on Yahoo News is also growing and should grow stronger in October.

In order to do this, however, they have requested their users to help out by flagging videos that they feel are inappropriate and violate the Community Guidelines laid down by YouTube.

To enable users to do this, YouTube has a system where users can flag a video and mark it as offensive due to a number of reasons that can be picked from a pull-down menu, which has various categories such as, “Harmful dangerous acts”, “Sexual Content”, “Spam” etc. Users can then mark the category under which a particular video falls, and YouTube will review it and take appropriate action.

Previously, one of the categories was titled “Minors Fighting”, but now, YouTube has changed the name to “Youth Violence” in the hope that this term will have a more serious connotation, and will be more noticeable to users. They feel that the flag, “Minors Fighting” was not being used enough, even though there are plenty of such videos posted online.

Once a user has flagged a video under this category, it will be YouTube’s responsibility to review the video and discontinue it if they feel it is necessary to do so.

The reason YouTube is asking for active audience participation in the censorship process, is because the subject is too vast for them to handle alone. It is estimated that about 13 hours of video are uploaded on this site every minute, thus making it a mammoth task to monitor, and hence they want their clients to act as a “first line of defense” and do their bit to help YouTube in keeping out inappropriate content.

A similar tool was available earlier on iGoogle. The new service, called GAudi, is presently in beta and can be accessed within Google Labs.

http://labs.google.com/gaudi

Google Audio Indexing works in conjunction with YouTube. The tool will catalog all the words that are spoken in a particular audio or video clip. This data will then be entered into a database, which users can then search for the audio or video content they require, in much the same manner as they use search engines for text based material. GAudi will provide a whole list of results, based on the keyword entered.

To start with, GAudi will only index and catalogue politically-based audio and videos.
If a user is not interested in watching the whole video, after having located it through GAudi, it will be possible for to directly reach the particular portion that is of interest, by clicking on the play buttons alongside the particular search result that is of interest.

So far Google has not provided any information regarding their future plans for GAudi. That has not stopped some users from conjuring up innovative methods to use the tool,as can be seen below:

In the past, individual video results occupied the place of an antire search listing, and were  accompanied by a title, a short, one-line snippet pulled from the YouTube page for that video, the duration and average user ratings for the video, as can be seen alongside. This is still the predominant listing format for most universal search results.

However, some searches seem to now yield a single result with two videos placed side-by-side, as seen in the screenshot below. Both the videos are still pulled from YouTube, and both are accompanied by a short title, but are without any description snippet or ratings information and instead just contain information about the duration of the video.

While both videos in the screenshot above do seem equally relevant to the query, that does not seem to be the sole influencing factor for such a layout of the results, as the two videos in the first example shown above-right are also equally relevant in fact, but are still listed one below the other.

It is not clear at present how Google determines whether videos should be presented in this layout or another. It may be something to do with the currenct nature of the query or it may be that both videos score the exact same relevance points according to the Google algorithm and can therefore be clubbed together, even though they are varied in content and come from different useer accounts.

Content owners will now have the prerogative to decide for themselves, what they wish to do with these unauthorized clips. They can either block the videos, or promote them. In fact, if they choose to promote the videos, they will now be able to make some money through it, by inserting an ad in the video clip.

Over the last few months, Google has come to the conclusion that the vast majority (90%) of their partners, have chosen to monetize their videos, instead of blocking them.

It has become quite clear to most of Google’s Video ID partners, including CBS, Universal Music, Lionsgate, Electronic Arts etc. that, with this new technology, they will be able to encourage creativity, while also being more accessible to their fans, and at the same time make good use of a great opportunity for monetization.
Google said, “These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online”.

Most content owners now seem to have realized, that instead of fighting YouTube, which is after all the number one video sharing site, it would be better to join hands with them and promote their videos, while at the same time making some money, which after all has to be the primary reason to fight piracy.

A range of widgets will be made available at the bottom of new TV screens manufactured using this new technology. The widgets will be accessible via a button on the TV remote. The docket that appears on the screen will contain various web applications, from which viewers can select the one that they wish to use, while the TV program continues to run alongside.

Users will now be able to perform various actions, such as accessing their favorite websites, watching movies on demand, and getting information about the weather, stock markets and more, directly on the television set, by simply using the remote controller.

The innovations come from Intel, in association with Yahoo!, in the form of a “Widget Channel”. According to ZDNet, this is an open, widget-based platform for the development of applications on television.

These widgets run along the bottom of the TV screen, just like the ribbon that runs headlines along the bottom on news channels. When a viewer clicks on a particular widget, a side bar appears, with various options to choose from. It is a very simple process really, just like operating the remote, for selecting various channels or settings of the TV.

Combining the television and Internet industries will be made possible by a new chip, the Intel Media Processor C3100, which is a very versatile piece of technology, capable of several functions at the same time.

“We plan to combine the Internet benefits of open user choice, community, and personalization with the performance and scale embodied in the Intel Architecture to transform traditional TV into something bigger, better and more exciting than ever before”, says Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life at Yahoo!

“Intel Media Play” technology powers this service and all the new applications, and will also be capable of running other software, such as Java, XML, HTML and Adobe Flash. Details can be found on the Connected TV site:

connectedtv.yahoo.com/

Browsers, the computer desktop and mobile phones have been the sites where the three technology giants, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have already fought for supremacy. The household television set seems to be the next battleground. Google has already invaded the space via TV ads and now the Google Media Server.

Yahoo!’s latest announcement has definitely stepped up the game. How and whether they can actually deliver a product that captures the minds and hearts of millions of TV viewers worldwide remains to be seen. If they do, though, they could tip the balance of power in their favour once more, as TV remains the only other media format that continues to attract as many, if not more viewers (and potential ad impressions) than the Internet.

Google hopes to gain better insights into how users interact with mobile video advertising. Advertisers will be able to use this as a new medium to promote their brand and expand their audience to target the millions of users that access YouTube on their mobiles regularly.

This move will be beneficial for both content producers as well as users, since content producers will be able to use this facility as a means of generating revenue, which will in turn allow publishers to make more content available for free, thereby bringing down costs for users who wish to access videos on their mobiles.

Product Marketing Manager for YouTube, Christine Tsai, says, “This is our first step, in testing mobile advertising for YouTube – it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn.”

Video ads on YouTube are currently available in two formats – InVideo ads and placement targeted ads. Additionally, advertisers can create branded channels on YouTube and promote videos via click-to-play ads. It is not clear at present which formats will be made available when the mobile video advertising service goes live for all YouTube advertisers.

The use of the Olympic symbol upset the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which registered a complaint under the DMCA law, alleging copyright infringement under intellectual property rights.

What most likely upset the IOC was the transition of the Olympic rings into the handcuffs. While the Olympics have always been a platform to depict equal rights, freedom and sportsmanship, the handcuffs signify just the reverse.
In light of this complaint, YouTube was left with no choice but to remove the offending video from their site.

Supporters of Free Tibet have retaliated by criticising the IOC, stating that this is a case of unjustified censorship, as the video in question is absolutely legal and non-infringing.

The IOC, in reply, has stated that the video was taken down by ‘automated copyright protection software‘, which has been installed to prevent the illegal uploading of Olympic content.

The video, however, has already found its way to other sites, allowing users to continue viewing the clip:

Olympic rings turn into handcuffs. Click image to view the video.

Ensuring that the 2008 Olympic games do not turn into a political fiasco is in the best interests of the IOC and the Chinese government. They have both been working hard to squash any negative publicity around the events, rather unsuccessfully, and often to a ridiculous extent, such as by denying the presence of obviously high levels of pollution near the Olympic venues.

Viewers will be able to find a video that is related to a particular location. YouTube’s product manager Brian Glick, made this announcement during a developer talk session, in San Bruno, California. This feature is already in being trialled in beta and is due for a general launch shortly.

During the developer talk, a demonstration of this feature was presented, using a video connected to the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas as an example.

According to the NewTeeVee blog, users who search for videos on YouTube with a location in the query string will be shown a map icon at the top of the results. Clicking on that map will produce a list of videos connected to that location. It is also possible to narrow the search further, by entering a specific place in that location, such as the name of a garden or a hotel.

About a year ago, YouTube added the geotag option to its videos, which could be specified by creators at the time of uploading, but there was no information about how the geotags were used.The geo-search functional finally makes good use of this feature.
Geo-tagging of YouTube videos is also available on Google Earth, for a few selected videos. Google Maps also shows YouTube videos. The feature will probably be used in the future to allow advertisers to target video ads on YouTube by geography.

This new UPnP driven gadget makes it possible for users to interconnect their computers and the TV by storing movies, videos and images on the computer and then watching them on the big screen at their convenience.

Free and commercial software packages are available, to store such data on a hard drive and then watch it on television later. This will be yet another step by Google to combat the popularity of its rival Microsoft. This is their first product offering that goes up against the extremely popular Windows Media Player.

This device will contain technology to find and then send images and videos from the computer to UPnP compatible hardware. Google Media Server will use technology from Google Desktop, such as desktop gadgets, and Google Desktop Search to locate files.

Google loyalists will surely be enthralled by this new package. The setup only require Google Desktop on the PC and a UPnP enabled device such as a Sony PlayStation 3. More information can be found on the Google Gadgets web page:

Google Media Server

In the process of improving their market share, they have indirectly helped Google Video, because they work together. By itself Google Video accounts for barely 4% share of the market.

YouTube’s positive growth has obviously occurred at the expense of other sites. Their nearest rival, MySpace, which commanded a healthy 16% of the market last year, has fallen to just about 9% this May, while even Google Video has fallen from 7.8% to 3.73% in the space of one year. Yahoo! Video, which was always a small player, holding only 2.77% of the market share last year, has fallen to just 1.92% this year.

In fact Veoh, which has the smallest market share in the top 5 category, is the only one other than YouTube, to have shown a positive move from 0.86% to 1.13% which is almost 32% better than their performance last year. This must be at least part of the reason why television network ABC have recently decided to enter into a distribution deal with them.

Further information from Hitwise shows that the total number of people visiting video sites has reduced by 9% compared to last year, and presently accounts for only 1.14% of all visits to the Internet. At the same time, those who do visit the video sites, seem to be spending more time there, as there has been an increase of 6% in the total number of hours that are being spent, watching online videos. 82% of YouTube clients, and 64% of MySpace clients, have been going back to the same site repeatedly.

Whether YouTube’s huge lead in the video market will stifle creativity and innovativeness remains to be seen.

YouTube UK decided to RickRoll all its users on April Fool’s day. All the videos featured on YouTube, YouTube UK and YouTube Australia were actually linked to the now extremely popular video by Rick Astley.

Find Out Which Of Your Friends Got RickRolled

While this may seem funny to some, it is bound to annoy most users, and there are already suggestions to outlaw such practices. ABC News reports that this practical joke is certainly boosting Rick Astley’s otherwise non-existant musical career.

The mega RickRoll is actually just one of Google’s pranks this year. The company has always shown its fun side by creating prank sites, announcements and products each year on April Fool’s day. Last year they “invented” a product called TiSP, which provided free in-home wireless broadband via the toilet commode! This year they launched “project” Virgle in association with the Virgin Group to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars.

The joke doesn’t end there, though. Google Australia also announced the “launch” of gDay with MATE, a new service that allows users to search content on the Internet before it is created.

Do you know of any other Google pranks that we had not heard of yesterday?

Independent video creators and media companies can now get statistics about the performance of their video such as the regions in which that particular video is most viewed, how often it was viewed each day since its publication and its relative popularity in the geographic region compared to other videos.

The comparative study of the popularity of a video as compared to other videos in a given time frame will allow content creators to find out where and when their video is most likely to be played and can also provide further details like the time taken for the video to rise in popularity and how long it stayed at the top.

According to the Official YouTube Blog, new features, including a specific breakdown on how a particular video was discovered by viewers, will be added soon.

Until now, the ‘About this video’ button provided very elementary statistics such as the viewer numbers for each video.  Through Insight, advertisers, publishers and ordinary end users will be able to find out a lot more about the response of the public to their videos and thus work to improve viewership and popularity.

A better understanding of what viewers want will of course be used by publishers to attract more users to their videos and YouTube branded pages, thereby resulting in increased income for Google.

Advertisers stand to gain as well. Studying viewer statistics will help YouTube advertisers to fine tune their content and the time of display and thus reach their target audience more effectively.
The Official Google Blog provides instructions on viewing Insight stats – “you can find currently available metrics by clicking the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.”