Tag Archive for youtube

YouTube Stops Counting Views of PSY’s Gangnam Style

Posted on November 25, 2012 by

One of the interesting new reoccurring comments is about the counter stopping on 808,219,585 views, so it seems much of the prediction that the YouTube video will be the first to crack 1,000,000,000 views might be slower at this point.  It’s not unclear if there is a YouTube limitation on the number of views that Google can track beyond 808,219,585 views, but it’s stopped at this magical number for several hours. It’s impressive that PSY has passed Justin Bieber’s Baby in 4 months compared to 2 years, along with Guinness Book of Records noting it down as the first YouTube clip to receive more than 2,000,000 likes.

Updated: This counter bug appears to have been fixed and the count of views is growing again.

But if you count the top 125 “Gangnam Style” video clips (sorted by views) the total views of PSY’s Gangnam Style is more than double that figure at 1,721,724,823 views.  This includes the original, live performances, tv appearances, parodies, flashmobs, dance moves instructions, lyris showing, and also numerous versions of promotional videos for Just Dance 4. On average the top 125 videos of Gangnam Style have received around 13,773,799 views which is still fairly impressive. Some of the many variations of PSY Gangnam style videos included in the count are listed below.

CRYSTAL PALACE CHEERLEADERS DO GANGNAM STYLE

PSY – “MIKO STYLE” (Gangnam Style) Parody By Miss Korea 2012 Contestants

Jockey Style (Gangnam Style Parody)

GANDALF STYLE – Parody of PSY – GANGNAM STYLE

STAR WARS Style, Gangnam Style music video parody

Gangnam Style parody “Aussie Battler Style” by Fitzy and Wippa

KOFFIA Melbourne Gangnam Style Flash Mob

No comments Posted in youtube

Refresh trends to end 2011

Posted on December 18, 2011 by

In what looks to be a trend that appears to be ramping by business up as traffic patterns typically decline as the year ends. A product relaunch can be at times risky if users love your existing design/functionality or if you take away or hide popular features within a new interface.

Twitter Relaunch #letsfly
Twitter relaunched its platform with a new version of twitter “Fly” which is designed for a more common experience across Twitter.com and mobile devices. Their relaunch was focused on bringing everything under 4 new tabs but not everyone has responded positively to the radical change to the interface. Their new interface seems to bring them closer to a Facebook style interface but even with an improved search function the new interface has been found confusing by a number of their users.

YouTube interface Refresh
In what was an expected move YouTube finally flicked the switch and rolled out its interface across all its users bringing the interface closer to the other Google properties. The rollout was unusual for Google as it was not progressively rolled out but was done in a single update which was fairly risky for the company considering the size of the audience that could be impacted. The new interface brings the platform up to scratch with a new look and feel but also seems to make it easier for Channels and Google to maximise both their advertising revenue but also the branding and visitor experience as YouTube chases higher quality content.

Path upgrades to 2.0
One of the big upsets to the idea that a refresh could hurt your growth or revenues was Path, who after upgrading their platform saw a reported 30 fold increase in user sign ups. Their personal journal style platform offered new and improved lenses; greater privacy and less noise for their users which was a successful and welcomed refresh ending 2011.

WordPress goes Sonny
While it only appeared to be a minor update going from WordPress 3.2 to WordPress 3.3, the actual admin interface refresh too a large step forward. The new more responsive admin design offers better functionality for adoption to smaller screens such as tablets. The new liquid layouts and scaling media seemed focused on the growing audience of Mobile users that WordPress needs to cater for if it’s platform is to continue to grow. The media support gets a welcome boost as does the co-editing functionality and is certainly worth the update even with the increased number of sometimes annoying notification tips.

Google Toolbar relaunched
Google just recently rolled out a consistent black Google toolbar across a number of its platforms which made navigation more consistent for users across Google properties.

Google Black Toolbar

Google Black Toolbar

Google Toolbar relaunched (again)
Just as most users had started to see and accept the new Google black bar at the top of Google pages they introduced another Google bar within a few months. The new interface has now moved the navigation to under the Google icon and centralised the search panel across Google properties. The new Google menu is a bit more confusing way to navigate Google products and the quick links are surely going to be missed by most users and will change how you navigate within Google properties.

Gmail refreshes
Gmail has been one of the slowest adopters of new Google features over the past few years but there has been a number of recent improvements including the overhaul started in July. While the navigation had a big upgrade the search functionality is still below expectations. The biggest issue for users is to get used to the new streamlined conversation view which strips out much of what was previously shown meaning searching an email thread can be more time-consuming. The biggest benefit for the mobile users is the elastic density which allows easy changing of display to suit any device automatically.

Blogger refreshed
While it happened a few months ago Google’s blog platform got an update as part of the overall Google product refresh. The biggest elements to get updated was around streamlining the blogging experience but also improving the audience analytics and insights information for admins. Recently there has been the addition of the ability to publish your Blogger posts straight to your Google+ circles. There is certainly a fair bit more work needed across the Blogger network to match WordPress or Tumblr but it’s a good start to finish off 2011.

Color 2.0 tries again
Following on from what was a slightly disastrous launch, Color decided it was time to start again following on from the success of Instagram. The new app updates focus around a “visit” which also now allows for sharing of 30 second movie clips but also offers a visual timeline similar to the new Twitter/Facebook streams. The question is it all too little and too late with the new website being far too forceful to remind users to login to interact, and their mobile app does not work on a majority of Android devices.

Facebook Timeline rollout
Based on the growing amount of media its users are sharing online Facebook has finally rolled out its timeline feature for all accounts. This is not yet enabled on all accounts but is available if you want to upgrade your profile globally. Finally Facebook is learning its a global platform and not limiting features to it’s US users. Learning from its privacy failures in the past it now offers a 7-day review period before anything that appears in your timeline is made public. It will be interesting to see how many users fill in the blank spots in their timeline as more accounts enable Timeline. There has already been so many complaints about Facebook interface refreshes it will be interesting how warmly this overshare functionality might be accepted.

Watch the Facebook Timeline (download video)

Ending 2011…
So it seems that a number of platforms have taken the time to allocate resources to updating their interfaces, how many will rollback functionality after user riots during 2012? Mostly it seems the interface updates revolve around making them more usable on mobile devices so will desktop users benefit from this continuous update process or will it led to more resentment and drop off?

2 comments Posted in review

Facebook expands link blocking

Posted on October 9, 2011 by

While Facebook has been progressively censoring links from sites that might contain illegal material such as Torrents they have been progressively expanding this security technology to also track onpage content. This expansion may not be a bad step forward a majority of the time as it reduces the number of spam and malware spread via it’s platform my issue is that it’s reading the page for any suspect or reported links and not allowing you to share the link on your page. This is a massive move forward by Facebook in it’s process of cleaning up the web and potentially censoring any content that it feels is illegal or unsuitable for it’s 700,000,000 members.  The potential risk for user-generated content providers and open discussion platforms is one of a concern and what is the potential impact for publishers?

Facebook Blocked Link

These new notifications appear to be part of the expanded Web of Trust platform that moved beyond re-active into pro-active screening of everything shared.  This new Web of Trust platform thereby offers Facebook real-time monitoring of what is being shared across it’s platform, since the beginning of last week. The question is what is next for social censorship? Can you no longer share content if the context of the discussion does not fit within Facebook’s vague guidelines or impacts on their commercial agreements?

So what is being blocked?

The link that I was trying to share was a YouTube clip, which in it’s description actually contained a Bit.ly link that pointed to a free web hosting account that before being suspended could have possibly have been sharing torrents of the song for download or loaded with advertising and affiliate links. The broad messaging from the Facebook notification was that the link was being blocked for being spammy or unsafe but this is very vague and there is no easy process for appealing your content if you have been added to their blacklist….

You can see the link is not a central part of the content and would not be clicked or noticed by most users watching the YouTube clip but because it’s featured on the page you are not allowed to share this YouTube clip via Facebook.  The other issue is that you might need to manually check your content can be submitted to Facebook and how unreasonable it is to block content based on any links that might be listed as part of the content. The implications on how your content will be censored based on the content around it seems to be a bit broad and obviously very based for YouTube as most popular clips feature similar links.

Blocked YouTube Clip

So what is the implications?

The issue is that Facebook is reading and tracking the content on your pages and potentially the any spam comments that might be automatically approved.  This is one of the strongest reasons why you should be moderating your comments and removing any spam or unknown links otherwise you might find that your content may no longer be able to be shared on Facebook. There is also another reason that you might not want to approve pingbacks on your content as it could jeopardise the ability for users to share your content via Facebook.

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3 comments Posted in facebook

Twitter Movie Trailer

Posted on August 13, 2010 by

Following on from the serious nature of the upcoming movie The Social Network which focuses on the background to how Facebook was started comes a light hearted view on how people interact on social media and how strange talking about it actually sounds. I expect the trailer will go viral soon, as the clip was highlighted by Kristine Schachinger about 4 hours ago on Facebook, with only a few hundred having seen the clip so far compared to over 546,000 seeing The Social Network trailer it has a lot of potential growth past the original 140 characters….

The Twitter movie trailer highlights the common practice of adding Tw- to the start of words or products to make them seem more relevant to the social media audience but The Twitter Movie manages to pull this joke off with some class and will likely only offend only a handful of the social media experts out there. It pokes fun at the rise of the celebrity twits so it will be interesting to see if they see the humour in it….

The Twitter Movie Trailer is well according to the initial reactions and creators is rated simply awesome, so watch the movie trailer below and see if you agree its awesome!

The clip creators IndyMogul decided that if Hollywood can make an overly dramatic film about the early years of Facebook and how it got to 500,000,000 users, why can’t they make an even more overly dramatic movie about Twitter? Well at least they have started with a award winning trailer and wait for the upcoming “The Twit Network” film, it will be simply awesome!

No comments Posted in Social Media

YouTube Video Ads

Posted on August 2, 2009 by

youtube logo

On of the biggest issues around video has been its been a typically one way medium, while people can comment back by text or video can it be used for viewer feedback.  Recently YouTube has shown the potential to offer multiple response options for advertisers interactive videos using the overlays linked to other videos. While it is not clear if this is a beta test or just a very smart and inventive person who is pushing the boundaries of the YouTube platform.

The video player is built in Adobe Flash so technically anything you can do in a standard flash application can be overlaid on user videos, and this is becoming increasingly common with popular videos.  The multiple choice survey test shown below is running on Machinima.com’s YouTube channel where, they are broadcasting game previews from Comic Con 2009. They are very clear with different choices with individual colours and even a text box at the top of the screen to explain what they want you the viewer to do. 

youtube-rate the game

The “rate this game” option is shown towards the end of the game preview.  When one of the options are selected a new YouTube video loads, with a clear title as to which option you selected, but could the video instructions be a bit more clear for the next steps as you can see in the screenshot below. 

The reason I feel that the steps are not clear is that around 15-20% of people used the 5 star rating system to provide feedback and not the text comment box below the video. Although the text is explaining the call to action is very large, since this is a visual element, a short video showing the desired action would make sense but only because its YouTube.

If you were running this on different medium/platform such as your website screenshots or flash animation could deliver the same visual explanation as not all users maybe used to using the comment field.

youtube-rate-ironman2

So how do you measure the results, the video requests for comments to be made in the text comment field below, but this also requires the user to have an account and login.  Based on the chart below based on the YouTube comments reaction more people are unsure if they want the game so they must analyze the comments for more understanding.

An easier way to measure survey results is to track which of the three videos options get the most views, the benefit is that the viewer doesn’t have to login to track their response.  From the chart below we can see that around 62% of views of the 3 options were that people want the game which may not be the perfect campaign result but to scale for large campaigns with thousands of comments its more efficient.

Comments can still be useful as they can provide feedback such as the “game lighting is too dark” or the “there appears to be glitches in background images” but the number of comments were a fraction of video viewings.  There is also the issue which is visible of users responding and interacting amongst themselves off the topic and even starting abusive attacks against other users commenting.

There are a few issues, one is that YouTube makes all videos public, so once one option such as “hate it” is selected it is easy to see related videos such as “not sure” and “want it”. If campaigns like this are to be more transparent, it should not be possible that users can select one option and then click to view other options skewing your results.

The obvious issue for analysis based on the chart below is that the number of comments were fairly consistent between each option so do not provide as much feedback compared to the video viewings, the lower the number the higher influence of duplicate posts, and multiple posters, spam…

youtube-responses

So how can web analytics help this test deliver better results for business?

Using methods such as A/B testing, they can test a different second trailer for the same game, using the same question but with 3 new video response pages.  This way they can test which particular scenes or clips generate the most positive reaction to the game.  This information can be further analysed as why but can be used to make a simple decision as to which would be best in an advertising campaign.

Further tests could be would you buy this game based on this preview, using the same call to action tracking and comparison of data to measure if a second trailer generated higher “want” results but also higher “buy me now” results.

Click to see the video Iron Man 2 Comin Con “Rate This Game”

One comment Posted in web marketing

Nike fails PR lessons

Posted on July 28, 2009 by

nike-logoIt seems that the Nike team has been working to ensure what could have been a small PR issue turns into a frontpage disaster story. Earlier in July, Nike confiscated videotapes recorded showing NBA allstar LeBron James, being dunked by amateur player Jordan Crawford.

The event took place at the LeBron James Skills Academy in Akron, OH where 2 accredited journalists filmed Jordan Crawford scoring an easy basket while LeBron James was playing defence.

The low quality camcorder footage which does not clearly identify players did not make for any interesting news until Nike demanded the tapes on the grounds that it violated media guidelines which does not allow filming of the skills academy games.

What happened at this point was that internet phenomenon of the Streisand effect took over causing the information to be so widely publicised that it becomes an YouTube sensation. As with the 2003 request by Barbara Streisand to remove aerial photographs of her beach house made a fuss of what is a small issue, but highlighting the issue as one worthy of news coverage.

What turns this into a very bad public relations exercises for Nike is that they appeared to be more concerned with trying to sell LeBron James as the next very brand-able star.  This money earner for Nike needs to always look good, so the possible humiliation or at least humbling of LeBron James may not sit well with their future revenue plans.lebron-ball

To ensure that this matter did not get shown by the broadcast partner CBS, Nike demanded all tapes of the event, creating instant interest in what happened.  Even if this had been the most boring event ever filmed the fact that the heavy handed approach showed that maybe people were missing out on something great and the interest started.

With such interest it is only a matter of time before a video made its way to YouTube, but it did take up to 2 weeks for the crew at TMZ to get it their hands on it, you can watch it here.

Also recently the Nike guys have bowed to the millions of viewers who have already seen the video and given back the tapes, but not before they ensured they got as much bad press over the issue as possible. Judging by previous viral video events this matter will continue to hurt Nike’s image of being a supporter of up and coming talent if they dare challenge their existing cash cows…

You can hear Jordan Crawford’s interview response about the video here, it is just a short 30 second interview.

2 comments Posted in Public Relations

YouTube animated Ads

Posted on July 27, 2009 by

YouTubes move towards increasing its profitability around youtube-bad adsincreased ad placements might have take a step too far.  While YouTube recently diffused some YouTube myths admit to trying to get the highest monetised number of views not cover a certain % of videos.

Can the placement of animated ads across video really be the best option for web usability? It is likely that these animated ads get the best CTR rates what is best for the advertiser may not be best for the audience.

The interesting point is that the ad being shown in the picture is not relevant to the Alice in Wonderland HD trailer.  The Google Adsense system is not completely faulty as the Lasoo “toy” ad is quite suitable given the likely target audience that will be attracted to this Disney movie.

Most could assume that the typical audience for Disney movies dont seem to be a good match for high end $999 Nikon Digital SLR cameras, and the display ad is not based on previous search behaviour.

No comments Posted in web marketing

Top YouTube Myths

Posted on July 24, 2009 by

youtube logoGoogle’s YouTube seeks to counter the coverage is that it is just a source of viral videos, attention seekers and animal videos in a recent blog post.  YouTube is continuing to stress its recent agreements with content partners such as Sony, Diney & Universal music has raised its profile but what are the most common myths.

Myth 1: YouTube is limited to short-form user-generated content.
YouTube directors & media partners have uploaded hundreds of full-length feature films and TV Shows.

Myth 2: YouTube videos are grainy and of poor quality.
YouTube HD is now standard for hundreds of thousands of HD videos added each month.

Myth 3: Traffic, growth, and uploads are bad for YouTube’s bottom line.
Google builds scaleable infrastructure so it depends on growth and welcomes the challenge.

Myth 4: Advertisers are afraid of YouTube.
20th Century Fox took over YouTube’s masterhead ads across YouTube homepages in 11 countries to push its recent X-Men movie, this Youtube campaign in the UK generated 15% uplift in brand awareness for X-Men.

Myth 5: YouTube is only monetizing 3-5% of the site.
Who made up this statistic?? YouTube’s business model is focused on total number of monetised views, not % of site.

YouTube media partners Mythbusters claim that it looks like these myths are busted for now, but YouTube will likely be requested to revisit these myths in the future.

2 comments Posted in google

Universal Music Gets Online iTunes Sponsored YouTube

Posted on June 25, 2009 by

Ok so with all this hype recently around the new iPhone 3G S, is this going to be the final piece in the global aspirations for Apple to control the world? While this may sound like a crazy concept for a company to have global aspirations when they dont control a majority of the world’s largest distribution platforms.  They do not control the following 5 sources of possible distribution:

  • Computers (PC’s)
  • Software (Microsoft)
  • Internet (Google)
  • Social Media (Facebook)
  • Online Store (Amazon)

So the question is how does a company who obviously has a very sticky product iTunes and an amazingly successful range of iPods, iPhones & iTouch devices grow its market further? Ok so they have the mobile apps market sewn up with over 1 Billion Apps downloaded directly from iTunes Store, well over 6 billion songs, and 200 million TV shows sold.  But how do they expand this market outside their iTunes audience and reach the hidden audience who may not have a mobile device such as an iPhone or iPod?

One smart move to play catch in the social media would be to launch an official iTunes Facebook fan page, which Apple recently did with currently over 1.5 million fans.  The have moved quickly to offer something back not just random posts about how good the company is as other Fan pages seem to do…

  • Exclusive offers just for iTunes Fans
  • The ability to search for music and share with your Facebook friends
  • iTunes Top Music Charts
  • iTunes tutorials to help out new users

So ok that’s social media covered but who would be a good choice for an online music partner that would not be likely to directly compete with their business model? Amazon launched the first punch against iTunes with DRM-Free music so is not an ideal partner, why not pick the world’s #3 website and the worlds largest video website. While Youtube made headlines for failure to control online music piracy when Viacom filed a $1billion lawsuit against the website, this piracy issue would indicate the potential size of the market for official music sales.

youtube-itunes

While I must admit this discovery was made on a recent trip to Youtube, because I had the song stuck in my head and its a great song. I did a quick search for “Love Song” and the official Universal Music Group link was listed.  While this shows that Youtube seems to be getting better at controlling copyright content what made it interesting was the advertisement to download a song shown just below the links to share the song on Facebook, Myspace & Twitter.  So I can easily share the official Universal track quickly and easily on my Facebook page, show my fan support on Myspace or Tweet it out to friends legally?

It does appear that based just on these simple “Share” options among the internet’s 3 leading social network platforms that there goes one of the biggest reasons behind piracy it is easier to share when its free.  So Universal has just killed the incentive to download a poor quality version if you wanted to share it online.

youtube-itunes-zoomThe other interesting point about this video is that the advertisement is not trying to sell keyword related Google ads such as “Flowers for a Lover” or “Story Bridge Climbs” but infact the ability to buy the song from iTunes.  This very targeted ad and has the benefit that someone listening to the song would be also interested possibly buying a copy.  The advertisement is a double benefit for Universal as they share revenue from the video play with Google and they also get a royalty from iTunes each time it is sold.

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One comment Posted in web marketing

Youtube Dominos Gross-out

Posted on April 15, 2009 by

This update is related to recent blog posts as it deals with viral video and how they sometimes cannot be beneficial to a companies image.

In the last 24 hours a new viral video has started its rounds, it shows 2 Domino’s staff involved in a Gross-out. The interesting thing is that the company was made away of the video when the AdAge article went to press, so based on the response to #amazonfail how would they react?

Dominos decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online, it was felt that the company could deal with tens of thousands of impressions and a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to their video and cause more embarrassment.

YouTube views

7am – 20,000
9am – 51,000
2pm – 151,000
11pm – 690,000

So is this still the correct response, when will companies acknowledge that once a video/story goes viral nothing can stop it quick enough.

*Update* after 3 months people since this story was first covered, this blog post still attracts a decent number of visitors looking into find out about this issue.  What makes this important for understanding is that just because the viral campaign has stopped this ongoing article traffic shows that the potential fallout may have only just begun.

4 comments Posted in Public Relations

Reply to Post about Ponytail men

Posted on January 23, 2009 by

The post from Tim Longhurst, he talks about his experience with Pony-Tail people and his views of viral campaigns. He is offered a paid gig to speak with the agency about the Coke Zero campaign but turns it down on principal. This is my reply to his article article originally posted on his blog.

I thought maybe the chance to speak with their Coke Zero team could have allowed you the chance to explain the rationale behind being client centric not central to world…

Im agreed with @Dan that the Girl found Jacket was a PR stunt but they sure got value for the client now everyone is wondering about those jackets and next time they are shopping for a men’s jacket they will just ask the salesperson what is that brand that was featured with that girl from the youtube video and there you have it a successful campaign. Its not something where you had to remember the brand just make the campaign memorable enough. I think the PR done around this campaign was the best element, in under 2 weeks it has had 170,000+ views on youtube. Not to mention im sure there will be spoof clips that will soon appear, man in the prada dress, man in the gucci handbag…

Think about since VB launched VB Gold, who sponsors the Beach Cricket. Now don’t google it think about it… ok so the colour scheme is similar… keep thinking.. well its XXXX Gold, but when you are at the shops and you see vb gold you may just grab that because of the colour assocation. This is a successful for VB but bad for Gold. If you went and asked about the ad about the beer and the island with the dog, they would know that you are talking about XXXX Gold.

No comments Posted in Social Media