See What’s Out There

The tech blog, Read Write Web has a post today called How To Use Social Media for Social Change. That’s a really ambitious title, given that the topic is huge and that thousands of folks like us at See3 spend their full time working on the question.

The post has some interesting examples and focused to some extent on Twitter. If you don’t know Twitter, it is a newish social network (based on short cell-phone text messages) that is using up a lot of the oxygen in the social media conversation these days. Word is that Twitter just raised another $15 million in investment. Twitter is really a mobile-centric application and I believe that mobile activism, fundraising and engagement will be coming on very strong over the next 18 months. Stay tuned.

One of the more interesting case studies in the Read Write Web story is about Nerd Fighter:

Use YouTube to Promote Charities

Last December, we wrote about how two brothers used YouTube to promote various charities. The brothers started a project called “Nerdfighters Power Project for Awesome,” which entailed a series of videos, each featuring a certain charity. Their videos briefly became YouTube’s most discussed videos, filling each one of the slots on the YouTube’s Most Discussed Videos page. They didn’t use any tricks to do so, either. Instead, they reached out to the YouTube community to generate interest, messaging many high-profile YouTubers and generating a mailing list of around 4,000 interested people who were later alerted when it was time to act.

Here’s a Nerd Fighter video for you to view.

Learn more about the project they talk about here.

Learn more about the Nerd Fighters here.

There is a new comScore report about online video.

Some highlights:

” U.S. Internet users viewed more than 10 billion online videos during the month, representing a 3-percent gain versus January (despite February being two days shorter) and a 66-percent gain versus February 2007.”

“In February, Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 3.6 billion videos viewed (35.4 percent share of all videos), gaining 1.1 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 96 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites.”

“Nearly 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes per person viewing online video in February.”

And, if you are still not sure you MUST have a video strategy consider:

Other notable findings from February 2008 include:

* 72.8 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
* 80.4 million viewers watched 3.42 billion videos on YouTube.com (42.6 videos per viewer).
* 50.2 million viewers watched 539 million videos on MySpace.com (10.7 videos per viewer).
* The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes.
* The average online video viewer consumed 75 videos.

Link [comScore Press Release]

Hat Tip [Jeremy Liew]

MoveOn has to be running what could be called the most successful video contest ever — if the measurement is participation.

Their Obama in 30 Seconds contest invited people to make a 30-second spot, positive only, to help elect Barack Obama. They got over 1,000 entries, which is great. But they are, as of this writing, rapidly approaching 4 million votes to the contest. Now, there are many YouTube videos with millions or views, but in this contest each person has to vote for each video in three categories, so this is a higher level of engagement.

The whole thing is set-up beautifully. They are using Amazon S3 to host the video in their own player. They made the embed code available as well as a permalink. They require votes (out of 5 stars) in three categories, Positive Message, Originality, Overall Impact. They serve up the videos in a random order to make sure every video will get lots of votes.

Now, if success is electing Obama we don’t know how effective it is yet. But it shows the video contest is here to stay and making high quality media is easier than ever.

The quality of the videos varies greatly. Here’s a nice one I saw, but then because of the random serving I couldn’t find it again on the MoveOn site, but found it on YouTube:

[Link to video]

Platform is all the rage. Facebook is a platform — meaning, you can develop your own applications on top of their functionality. YouTube is now a platform. What this means is that you can do more embedding YouTube into your site, allowing people to upload video to your YouTube channel from your site and having people leave comments on your site that will end up in your YouTube comments. What this does not do it give you a white label service like Brightcove. You will still have the YouTube watermark and still be part of the YouTube community. So if you are committed to YouTube as an organization you could create landing pages that encourage your constituents to comment on your site, making the video more valuable back within the YouTube community (because comments are an indication to search of relevance).

Here’s the details from TechCrunch:

In case there was still any doubt that Google wants to use YouTube to host all the video on the Web, it’s announcement earlier today to broaden its APIs makes it clear that is its goal. Once again, instead of making it easier to search videos elsewhere, Google is making it easier to host videos on YouTube. Except that the new APis allow people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other Websites. The key here is that the videos themselves are hosted on Youtube’s servers. This brings Google back full circle to the initial strategy for Google Video, which originally required videos to be uploaded directly to Google in order to become indexed. YouTube is gradually replacing Google Video—that is where most people upload videos anyway—but getting as much video from the rest of the Web onto its servers allows it to do many more things with it than if it simply indexed the videos elsewhere. It can search them better and throw up ads against them.

Specifically, the new APIs allow Web developers to:

* Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
* Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
* Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
* Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
* Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

YouTube is not just white-labeling its video-hosting infrastructure for other sites, devices, and desktop applications. It is offering video-hosting for free. This could prove highly disruptive to other video-hosting platforms such as Brightcove, Maven Networks (now part of Yahoo), and Move Networks. Partners already using the APIs include Animoto, Casio, Electronic Arts, Helio, KickApps, Slide, and TiVo. Yes, you can now watch YouTube on TiVo.

Of course, it is not exactly free. The videos will also be available on YouTube, where Google will make money from any associated ads. It is not clear how the ad revenue will be split, or even if it will be. There is nothing in the API that allows for a Website to insert their own ads. So that is a big question mark. (More on that after I speak with a YouTube exec later in today).

Update: YouTube product manager Jim Patterson confirms that there is no revenue-sharing built into the API, although he also points out that the API is open to YouTube Partners, who do share in the advertising dollars. He says:

“We are not introducing any fundamentally new way to monetize. Any video that is uploaded through our API is treated exactly as on YouTube.com. In general if a video is uploaded to YouTube, in some cases we serve ads into that on YouTube.com. When people embed those we reserve rights to serve ads in the future.

It is not a white-label service. We do offer a hosting service, but it is not a direct alternative to the companies that you mention. There are some big differences. It is a YouTube-branded experience. It is free. The price you pay for using it is you must participate in the YouTube community.”

In other words, YouTube feels that for the most part it is enough to direct traffic to third-party sites and let them tap into YouTube’s huge audience.

Among video folks all of the YouTube content and user-generated content has made the professionals wonder… Do production values matter anymore? Sure they do, but so does an engaging story. I was thinking about this when I saw this video, Pancake Man. Using stop motion technique more common with animation, it is a nice way to get people to pay attention to something pretty mundane. So, don’t stress about production quality as much as think about story and how you will get the views to engage with your story. Be creative!

Continuing the move to user generated content and political involvement, a new site launched where people can upload videos saying farewell to President Bush. Farewell Mr. President is a basic video sharing site designed for a little catharsis in the count down to having a new president.

You can see a little complication video they did here.

“We want to make a viral video,” says the client.

“But it also has to have all the facts right, and be on message for our organization and not hurt our brand.”

No problem.

The Onion has a nice piece that puts this in perspective:

YouTube Debate Becomes Website’s First Ignored Video

SAN BRUNO, CA—In an effort to connect with younger voters and tap into the immense popularity of the video-sharing website, Democrat and Republican candidates participated in the first-ever presidential debates shown on YouTube to at least 11 viewers.

An estimated 50 percent of the video’s viewers clicked on the link by accident.

The video debates—which received one comment, two stars, and was favorited by no one—featured candidates answering a variety of viewer-generated questions ranging from health care to the Iraq war, and racked up 4,881,990 fewer views than a 56-second video of a sleepy cat posted the same day.

“Don’t tase me, bro!” an unnamed University of Florida student said in a video that captured the attention of college-age men and women across the country. “Oww! Oww! Oww!”

Despite being highlighted on YouTube’s main page for the three weeks preceding and following each debate, the two videos remain among the site’s least watched, receiving five fewer views than an identical debate video that was sped up and set to the popular novelty song “Yakety Sax.” Nevertheless, 2008 Democratic candidate John Edwards reportedly called the debates a “success for modern elections” in an e-mail to CollegeHumor.com, urging the popular comedy outlet to please post the video somewhere, anywhere on its website.

Although Republican frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani touted his ability to bring in literally hundreds of new viewers to November’s GOP debate, the Federal Election Commission ruled that his campaign misled voters and broke federal law when it tagged the video as “Lindsay Lohan Britney Spears VMAs Boobs The Notebook Kiss Scene Juggling Letterman Spiderman.” The FEC also discounted several accidental views resulting from searches for “Hilary Duff,” “Dennis the Menace,” and “Daily Show Republican Debate.”

While official YouTube estimates put the debates’ total number of hits at just under a dozen, some candidates claimed the statistics had been miscalculated and should be rounded up to 13 to include the time Democratic candidate Joe Biden was unable to view the video because his dial-up Internet connection was too slow.

Leaders from both parties said they were already looking forward to holding similar debates in 2008, and that the next round will feature expanded interactive features for YouTube members, more candid discussions between candidates, and a surprise ending involving Mentos and Diet Coke.

I feel that we are on the verge of a lot of changes on the web. The Web 2.0 phenomena of portable content and user generated content is just the transition to something deeper. I don’t have a complete articulation of what that is yet, but two things got my attention recently that feel different. One is an ad format where characters in a video — in this case a Mac ad - seem to control a banner in another part of the page. That’s clever (though not terrible complex technically) and I feel it is a harbinger of more serious playing with web space to come.

The other item is about Facebook’s new ads. The interesting and even alarming thing is how Facebook is set to use your personal data (if you are on it) to deliver to you contextual ads that are generated from your activity off site. So, for example, I go to Blockbuster’s site and Facebook knows this and next time I am on Facebook I am getting Blockbuster promotions. You can read more about Facebook’s system here.

Here’s the new Mac ad format:

DoGooderTV has become the platform for nonprofits to host video contests. Hosting video contests on DoGooderTV gives you all of the functionality of uploading, managing users and videos, sign-ups, registration and voting. We even provide you with a contest rules template.

There are two live contests right now on the DoGooderTV platform. You will notice in the second one that it doesn’t look like it’s on DoGooderTV, another way we can provide the platform.

Click here to see the Fresh Focus Sex Ed Video Contest

Click here to see the Love Is Respect Video Contest

Many many nonprofits have videos on YouTube. Along with everyone else, nonprofits see the possibilities of using YouTube as both free video hosting, and as a social network, capable of reaching supporters and potential supporters alike.

Now YouTube, which is owned by Google, has formalized their relationship with nonprofits by creating a YouTube nonprofit program, in the spirit of programs Google has recently launched for nonprofits. (Here’s the best Google program for nonprofits. Here’s the second best Google program for nonprofits. You should be using both.)

Here’s what YouTube is saying:

Does your organization have a compelling story to tell? Do you want to connect with your supporters, volunteers, and donors but don’t have the funds to launch expensive outreach campaigns?

YouTube can help. Video is a powerful way to show your organization’s impact and needs, and with a designated “Nonprofit” channel on YouTube, you can deliver your message to the world’s largest online video community.

Your Nonprofit channel includes:

* Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
* Rotation of your videos in the “Promoted Videos” areas throughout the site
* The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button

If you’re a nonprofit organization in the U.S. with 501(c)(3) tax status, apply today for the YouTube Nonprofit Program.

This is a no-brainer. Every organization should apply, just as every organization needs to be creating a lot more video. We will see how much YouTube will rotate nonprofit videos in their feature lists and what the criteria will be for them to do so. We will also see whether it has an appreciable impact. My guess is that those who are already developing their social media marketing and video programs will benefit the most from this, because nothing will replace quality engaging content or good marketing programs - not all of which are that expensive.

A nice added bonus here is that the first 300 nonprofits that apply get (got?) a PureDigital Flip Video recorder. I have been using one for a couple months now and have been meaning to write more about it. It’s a nice gift ($120 or $79 retail depending on the capacity).

So, way to go YouTube. Google is still trying not to be evil and lets hope they keep it up.