Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship

Quick thoughts and tips about building visibility, buzz, reputation and profits - plus stuff that doesn't fit my blog

Step into the spotlight and claim your 15 minutes of fame on YouTube

via flickr.com

Great news today if you have ever been caught out with online video you wanted to upload to YouTube and were restricted from doing so as it just went over the 10 minutes maximum recording time.

Today YouTube have announced that they have increased their upload length of online videos to 15 minutes for non-partner channels.

As part of this extended service they are also encouraging us to submit video's to represent your legacy with their “15 minutes of fame” programme. So what would you communicate to the world if you have 15 minutes on centre stage?

You need to tag your video with “yt15minutes,” and upload it by 4 August 2010 and YouTube will be selecting a handful to feature them on the YouTube home page.

If like me you have previously uploaded a video that exceeded 10 minutes and it is less than 15 minutes in length you will need to delete that video before you upload it again.

So despite some sources telling us we should keep our online video's short, clearly YouTube know that the 10 minutes was a limiting factor to online video producers. But of course we need to have engaging content if we want to ensure that people sick with us to the end of our online video production.

Photo credit Robert S Donovan on Flickr

Seattle Swedish Hospital Celebrates it's 100th birthday with an Abba Flash Mob

via youtube.com

Here is a great example of an alternative way to celebrate your centenary - with a flash mob.

I noticed an article at Ragan.com about the Swedish Medical Centre in Seattle celebrating the 100th anniversary of the non-profit healthcare service (funded by Swedish immigrants some 100 years ago).

On the Seattle hospital’s anniversary, employees were invited to gather for a group birthday photo and then some of the employees started to dance to Abba's 'Dancing Queen'. At the timeof writing this article the video on YouTube has had 18,851 views.

You will also find the hospital online:

On a microsite celebrating the 100th anniversary of the hospital - http://www.swedish100.org/our-first-100-years

On Twitter - http://twitter.com/swedish

On Facebook for the hospital - http://www.facebook.com/swedishmedicalcenter

On Facebook for with a lovely page celebrating the babies born at the hospital - http://www.facebook.com/swedishbabies

Social Networks/Blogs now account for one in every four and a half minutes online reports Nielsen Wire

 

WORLD’S* MOST POPULAR BRANDS ONLINE / April 2010
Brand

% of World’s Internet Population visiting brand

Time per person (hh:mm:ss)
Google

82%

1:21:51
MSN/WindowsLive/Bing

62%

2:41:49
Facebook

54%

6:00:00
Yahoo!

53%

1:50:16
Microsoft

48%

0:45:31
YouTube

47%

0:57:33
Wikipedia

35%

0:13:26
AOL Media Network

27%

2:01:02
eBay

26%

1:34:08
Apple

26%

1:00:28
Source: The Nielsen Company

*Global refers to AU, BR, CH, DE, ES, FR, IT, UK & USA only

 

Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)

Social Networking / Blog Sites
Country

% Reach of Active Users

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)
Brazil

86%

5:03:37
Italy

78%

6:28:41
Spain

77%

5:11:44
Japan

75%

2:50:50
United States

74%

6:35:02
United Kingdom

74%

5:52:38
France

73%

4:10:27
Australia

72%

7:19:13
Germany

63%

4:13:05
Switzerland

59%

3:43:58

Source: The Nielsen Company

 

Facebook Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)
 
Country

% Reach of Active Users

Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)
Italy

66%

7:00:21
Australia

63%

7:45:28
United States

62%

6:43:22
United Kingdom

62%

6:19:59
Spain

57%

4:04:53
France

57%

4:33:05
Switzerland

45%

4:18:47
Germany

27%

3:42:50
Brazil

26%

1:46:50
Japan

3%

0:31:38

Source: The Nielsen Company
via blog.nielsen.com

Three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites.

In other words this means that 22 percent of all time online (or one in every four and half minutes) is spent on blogs or social networks.

NielsenWire report that for the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, with the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year.

The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.

NielsenWire go on to report that Facebook’s reach is the greatest in Italy, capturing two-thirds of the active unique audience in April 2010, making the site relatively more popular in Italy than in the three major English-speaking markets.

Australia, the U.S. and the UK follow Italy with over 60% of active online consumers visiting the site.

Japanese people have the least interest in Facebook, with reach and time spent markedly lower than in any of the other countries measured. Ameba, which offers a micro-blogging platform akin to Twitter, is the most popular social networking and blogging site in Japan, visited by 38% of Japanese people online while Facebook is the 40th most popular.

YouTube live streams the Indian Premier League

Where an how do you watch your favourite sports? What if you could watch it on Youtube - well that's what recently happened for the Indian Premier League with a live webast of the cricket tournament.

YouTube carried the league’s 60 matches live around the world, except in the United States - a first for YouTube with around 50 million viewers tuning into YouTube’s Indian Premier League channel with approximately 40% of the viewers being from outside India reports the New York Times.

Google also signed on seven advertisers in India, including Coca-Cola and Hewlett-Packard, two in Britain and one in the United States, where YouTube showed matches 15 minutes after they finished.

The only major international event YouTube carried live before the Indian Premier League was a U2 concert from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in 2009, but it did not have corporate sponsors or pay the band a fee.

The New York Times reports that media buyers and sports broadcasting rights experts estimate that YouTube paid less than $10 million for the rights to live-stream the tournament for two years,with the seven advertisers in India probably paing less than US$1 million each to advertise for a year. Contrast this to the 10-year television rights for the Indian Premier League which was sold for US$1.2 billion.

FIFA has sold stand-alone Internet rights in a handful of countries for this year’s world cup tournament, but often with considerable delays so they do not conflict with television broadcasts.

This recent of live streaming by YouTube means it could carry live concerts and games from around the globe changing the experience for many people, media channels and sponsors.

What live event would you like to see streamed on YouTube?

YouTube launches it's own short URL

I've written a number of times about link shortening tools on my main blog and over at Facebook.

This weekend I had a problem with one of the shortening tools that I use who were moving servers and none of my short urls worked - in fact I could not access the system at all.

It is was another great reminder that it's not wise to leave important services that you need and rely on to a free third part resource - but we all seem to use short URL services don't we?

Short URL's are increasingly popular (Facebook and Google recently launching their own) as we share links in twitter and in status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype just to name a few places that I see short URL's referenced.

Just before Christmas, YouTube launched their own short URL service - youtu.be - only for YouTube links. I think this will be used increasingly as it will mean that people recognise the link and will have more confidence in it as it will mean that clicking on the link you will be being directed to YouTube.

To see this feature in action, use AutoShare to link up your YouTube account to social networks. Autoshare enables you to share your activity on YouTube with your community on Facebook, Twitter or Google Reader. Then, whenever you favorite a video on YouTube, for example, that action will get syndicated out to your network, who will see the shortened edition of the video's URL.

I personally don't use Autoshare, but if you are like me there is still a way to benefit from the YouTube short URL.

Use youtu.be manually -

  • and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/"

 

This means that you can identify to your followers and fans that it's a YouTube link you are sharing with them.

What's your favourite short URL service? Can you impagine using Youtu.be?

Oh and in case you are interested here are some of the other innovations that took place on YouTube in 2009.

YouTube: What we watched and searched for in 2009

Most Watched YouTube videos (Global):
1. Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent (120+ million views)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views)
5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views)

Most Watched music videos on YouTube (Global)*:
1. Pitbull "I Know You Want Me" (82+ million views)
2. Miley Cyrus "The Climb" (64+ million views)
3. Miley Cyrus "Party in the U.S.A." (54+ million views)
4. The Lonely Island "I'm On a Boat" (48+ million views)
5. Keri Hilson "Knock You Down" (35+ million views)

Then, to determine the fastest rising search terms for each month, we examined the billions of queries that people searched for on YouTube (through December 15):

Fastest Rising YouTube search terms by month (Global):
January: inauguration
February: christian bale
March: the climb
April: susan boyle
May: pacquiao vs hatton
June: michael jackson thriller
July: michael jackson
August: usain bolt
September: kanye west
October: paranormal activity
November: bad romance
December: tiger woods
via youtube-global.blogspot.com

Earlier this week, YouTube announced the list of what we watched and searched for. They looked at YouTube counts aggregated where there were multiple versions of the same video.

What inspiration does this give you in terms of your online video marketing campaign in 2010?

It's interesting that the second most popular music video was The Climb by Miley Cirus - the song that XFactor winner Joe McElderry is hoping will be the UK's Christmas Number 1. I wonder if Simon Cowell's research team checked YouTube stats before he suggested that was the song the XFactor winner would sing?

Film footage of Anne Frank is posted on YouTube

via guardian.co.uk

 

History is captured on YouTube all the time but a little piece of social history that I think is quite amazing is the archive footage of Anne Frank seen leaning over her balcony in 1941 watching the wedding of her next door neighbour (see 9 seconds through the video).

Anne Frank is filmed seen leaning over her balcony in 1941 and is the only existing film images of Anne Frank have been loaded on to YouTube by Amsterdam museum the Anne Frank House. The footage, from 1941, is the only time Anne has been captured on film.

The scene was filmed on 22 July 1941, just under a year before the Frank family went into hiding above the family business. The family were discovered in August 1944 and Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp in March 1945.

Annemarie Bekker, from the Anne Frank House, is reported in the Guardian as saying YouTube is a way to introduce the life of Anne Frank to people who may never have heard of her diaries and commented "The museum has had the footage for some time, but thought YouTube would be a good platform to show the film and the other films about her life. It's another way to bring the life of Anne Frank to the attention of younger people, and all people worldwide."

A brilliant example of how new technology intersects with history.