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copyfight
Embedding a YouTube Video May Cost You a Bundle in ASCAP Bills
Fresh off a court victory against Google's YouTube, ASCAP tells us it is setting its sights on users of the video-sharing site. Welcome to the exciting world of copyright licensing, blogger; you may already owe gobs of money! More » -
youtube
Newspaper Argues the Internet is Even Killing the Internet
The Independent has a massive piece today on YouTube and how, despite having close to 350 million users worldwide per month, it's set to lose almost half a billion dollars this year. And it's all your fault, naturally. More » -
media wars
YouTube's Changing of the Guard
YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has quietly left his baby behind, moving to a different Google division. Fellow co-founder Chad Hurley might leave too, PaidContent writes. Now comes a more Hollywood future for the video-sharing site. More » -
the blues
Theme Music for the Death of the Media
This nine-minute heartbreaker titled "Mad Ave Blues," sung to the tune of "American Pie," is sure to bring tears to the eyes of every agency creative type, media buyer, and trade reporter who love-hates advertising. Brilliant, and painfully nerdy. More » -
people's parties
Meeting the Internet In Person
Last night intrepid Gawker operative Stephen Kosloff went on a mission to the inaugural Internet Week party hosted by YouTube, the Webbys, and the New York Observer. Sounds networky! Anyway, these are his stories. More » -
failure
Yahoo Video: The $6 Billion Black Hole Implodes
A source at Google tells us YouTube has seen a rush of résumés from engineers at Yahoo's rival video site, after a wave of layoffs last week that devastated the team. Is Yahoo Video done? More » -
valleywag
The Global Village Is Too Poor for YouTube
Just a few years ago, venture capitalists pushed Internet startups to conquer every last corner of the world. Now they're asking why they don't just pull the plug on the Third World. More » -
the internet
YouTube's Sad Studio Deal Just Highlights Hulu's Superiority
In the war between video sites, Hulu might have the Daily Show, 30 Rock and 24, but YouTube just signed big studio deals to bring you... Harper's Island and The Addams Family. Oh, Google. More » -
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from the archives
Bill O'Reilly and Co. Investigate the Nintendo Craze
In 1988, a young Bill O'Reilly and his Inside Edition team tried to answer the question: "What the hey is this 'Mario Brothers' craze sweeping the nation?" They failed, of course. Entertainingly! More » -
the internet
Viral Videos Just as Deadly as Viral Illnesses
People who inadvertently starred in Youtube videos that got huge are the child TV stars of the internet, their lives defined by some awkward, emasculating moment. So it goes for the "Numa Numa" guy. More » -
music videos
What If We Don't Want Our YouTube TV?
The record labels like to think they built MTV — and have been punishing every new idea for promoting music since. That self-defeating dynamic could destroy a nascent YouTube partnership between Google and Universal Music. More » -
barack obama
How Many Web Gurus Did It Take to Elect Obama?
The Internet won the election for Obama, right? President Change's team of online experts are trying to cash in on their expertise. Here are the contenders for the title of "Obama's Web guru." More » -
remixes
Awful Product With Awful Ad Makes Awful Music
Earlier we showed you the horrifying, adult Mouseketeer-like "commercial" for Microsoft Songsmith (do not click that) that could drive the gentlest among us to murder. But at least it's inspiring a YouTube artistic explosion. More » -
Oscar Grant
The Shot That Sparked the YouTube Riots
A transit cop shooting a New Year's Eve rowdy, face down, in Oakland, Calif. turned into a national story thanks to YouTube, long before local newspapers and TV stations caught up to it. More » -
viral
Parry Gripp, the Weird Al Yankovic of YouTube
Could Parry Gripp be the best thing that ever happened to YouTube? The man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer's theme song is turning Internet-video disaster into visual punk rock. -
fake trends
Making money on YouTube? Not so fast
There's gold in them thar YouTubes! People are making literally thousands of dollars a month! What a fluttery Times trend piece doesn't say: Most of YouTube is a creative desert with zero moneymaking potential. -
hackers
YouTube users in virus panic
Hasn't YouTube always seemed too good to be true — all those video clips, for free? We must be getting away with something. That's why rumors about a new YouTube virus have spread so far, so fast. -
web 2.0
The bubble that wasn't
Jason Calacanis, the mop-haired founder of Mahalo, an overfunded Web directory, is musing on Twitter about "tickers and rallies past" — a Proustian substitution of stock markets for madeleines. But what, exactly, does he have to be nostalgic for? -
commentards
GM's scare tactics fail to win over YouTube users
General Motors has posted its call for an auto-industry bailout directly to the Net, with predictably disastrous results. GM marketers have clearly fallen for the myth of Internet PR — that taking a company's message directly to the people through social media will give it a much friendlier reception than if it is filtered through the mainstream media. The reality? More » -
great moments in pr
Hulu wants me to tell you they're catching up with YouTube
You've never heard of media analyst company Screen Digest. Keep that in mind when you stumble upon a few dozen news reports today that claim "Hulu ... a smaller upstart backed by News Corporation and NBC Universal ... is forecast to draw level with Google’s YouTube in US advertising revenues next year." Any reporter who reads that sentence in the Financial Times instantly wonders, "forecast by who?" By the Financial Times? By Hulu executives? No, by Screen Digest. Take that as you will. -
don't be evil
Eric Schmidt and the YouTube election
Is YouTube making Google a political player? The video-sharing site, with its stratospheric bandwidth bills and questionable new ad formats, may never pay Larry and Sergey back in cash for the $1.65 billion they shelled out to buy it in 2006. But it doesn't have to. YouTube, having conquered online video, is taking over political broadcasting. The conventional unwisdom in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., is that this election made YouTube. Pah! It's true that campaign videos spread faster than ever thanks to YouTube. But they made up a tiny fraction of clips and traffic on the site. Politicians owe YouTube a debt that Google is just starting to collect on — and hosting President Obama's 21st century fireside chats is just a down payment. More » -
barack obama
President Change dumps radio for YouTube
This week's Democratic Party weekly address by our audaciously hopeful President-elect will not be on boring old NPR. Barack Obama's going to upload to YouTube, reports the Washington Post. The WaPo says the Obama administration will also make "online Q&As and video interviews" part of its communications strategy. Think this is payback for Google CEO Eric Schmidt's late-to-the-game Obama endorsement? More » -
online advertising
Google selling YouTube ads, for real, finally
Just read Alleywag's summary. Then read the New York Times' official version. I tested Google's canned example: Search YouTube for "financial crisis." Get an ad for a super-violent movie. Those Google people are smart! -
loser-generated content
YouTube ads must be big in Japan
YouTube has never been this exciting. And I don't mean the puppy videos. The video-sharing site is frenetically experimenting with every imaginable form of advertising, from prerolls to rollovers to overlays. There's even that staple of late-night television — headache pills! For this, we can thank Ben Ling, the product manager who recently returned to Google from Facebook to figure out how to make money on YouTube. But surely the most absurd ads we're seeing right now are the adaptations of Google's familiar text ads displayed on Web search results. A blog post featuring two cat-with-head-trapped-in-bag videos — a staple of YouTube users' contributions to the world of cinema — has ads "by Google" slapped on top of them. In Japanese. -
downtime
YouTube robots attempt to communicate with puny humans
This morning's temporary YouTube overload didn't bring civilization to its knees. But I love the error message, "please include the following information in your error report" followed by a page of spew. My knowledge of software engineering is years out of whack now, but I have to ask: If you can deliver this data to the user's browser window, why do they then need to cut and paste it into an error report? -
online advertising
Viacom turns MySpace bootlegs into an advertunity
A year ago, Viacom sued YouTube for one billion dollars, claiming YouTube was not blocking uploads of copyrighted Viacom material from Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and others. Today, MySpace will join YouTube in running ads targeted to Viacom-owned clips, instead of deleting them. Auditude, a Palo Alto startup, provides the software that identifies Viacom-owned content. Remember when musicians believed all advertising was evil? Now, I'm looking forward to seeing a Big & Rich ad targeted against another Big & Rich ad, overlaid by another Big & Rich ad for a Big & Rich ad I haven't seen yet. Collect them all! -
ijustine
Pretty Girls Becoming Popular Online: What Does It Mean?
Justine Ezarik is a pretty blond girl who calls herself "iJustine" and gets hundreds of thousands of hits on her YouTube videos of her doing completely irrelevant bullshit like shopping or telling boring stories to the camera, because of the fact that young men will generally watch pretty blond girls do anything, which then makes said girl popular, which then attracts young female viewers, who will watch popular girls do anything. Mindless lemmings drawn to reflections of our own vapid selves, we all are. For a more thoughtful exploration of this issue, let's see what former Gawker ed. Emily Gould has to say: More » -
caption contest
"Has one made any money from this?"
Queen visits YouTube! No, we're not talking about Ben Ling's new assignment at Google. Her Royal Highness visited Google's London offices, where she was met by YouTube founder Chad Hurley for this staged photo opportunity. Does she broadcast herself on the video site? Well, no, the Queen has people to do that for her, on her own Royal Channel. Can you suggest a better caption for the photo? Suggest it in the headlines. The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Does this turtelneck make me look thin?" by ThatKid. (Photo by Adrian Dennis/AP) -
great moments in pr
YouTube founder Chad Hurley a parody of himself
The dirty secret of YouTube's Chad Hurley: Despite selling an online-video startup whose slogan is "Broadcast Yourself" to Google for $1.65 billion, he's still desperately uncomfortable in front of a camera. Google PR's media training has only turned the millionaire's awkward mannerisms into a hilariously stiff folksiness: "Having the opportunity to sit down with some press, communicate to them the deals we've been working on, meet with partners." Is he consciously imitating our tongue-tied president? Or rather, Will Ferrell's Saturday Night Live version of Dubya? No: I think he's just doing a bad impression of Chad Hurley. -
online video
Why YouTube's desperate revenue hunt is on the money
CEO Eric Schmidt botched Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube. Under his misguided traffic-first strategy, the online-video site has seen off would-be rivals, but failed to grow a business. When he decided, rather late, to make revenue a priority, he wasted time looking for a magical new ad format. (The one result of this effort, YouTube's InVideo ads, which are overlaid over a video as it plays, seems to be a complete failure.) Now, YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley admits there is no "silver bullet." YouTube has abandoned one of its shibboleths — that viewers are turned off by "preroll" ads which play before a clip — and is experimenting with a number of moneymaking schemes. More » -
copyfight
YouTube tells McCain where to put DMCA
YouTube has told the McCain campaign they will not reconsider the site's standard ten-day ban on clips that draw DMCA complaints from copyright holders. D.C. insider Declan McCullagh has a copy of YouTube's reply to Monday's letter from a McCain lawyer. Recently, both Fox and CBS got YouTube to yank McCain campaign videos that remixed TV news clips. Question for Daily Kos: Why is Fox News clubbing a Republican presidential candidate? For everyone else, here's the 100-word version: More » -
politics
Fox News makes McCain a fair-use believer
"Overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of noninfringing campaign videos from YouTube." That's the gist of a complaint from the McCain-Palin campaign's general counsel to YouTube management. The letter says YouTube's 10-day review policy hurts America, because "10 days can be a lifetime in a political campaign." It's never been proven that anyone at McCain/Palin headquarters used the DMCA to take down Sarah's swimsuit video. But no doubt being DMCA'd by Fox News for using a news clip in a campaign video has given John McCain a more personal view of how copyright laws can backfire. -
online video
Who cares about business models? "MacGyver" is on YouTube!
Look, you're going to be reading a lot on AdAge and NewTeeVee and Silicon Alley Insider about YouTube's deal with CBS to run full-length TV shows, and what this means for online-video advertising models and what this means for the Google-owned site's rivalry with Hulu, the joint venture between NBC and News Corp. Blah blah blah. Let me abbreviate it for you: More » -
online video
YouTube goes live after all
On November 22nd, YouTube will host a two-hour event in San Francisco, "a celebration of the site's vast user communities." Looks like we can expect performances from Akon, Soulja Boy, will.i.am and a bunch of online video-powered Weblebrities. And it will be broadcast live over the Internet. So, it turns out that Steve Chen was right after all — YouTube will have introduced live streaming video by the end of the year. More » -
online video
YouTube adds ad format Google derided
So-called "postroll" ads — commercial clips which play automatically at the end of a video — are coming to YouTube, NewTeeVee reports. It's an embarrassment for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who had insisted users hate postroll ads and predicted YouTube would find a new, more effective ad format. The postrolls, while they may make ads on YouTube more desirable, don't solve YouTube's real problem: The vast majority of its videos aren't suitable for carrying ads, because of their content or uncertain copyright status. As a result, YouTube has a far smaller share of online-video revenue than it does of online-video traffic. -
self-promotion
Googling "I Google Myself"
Funny because it's true: Web-video comedienne Kara Luiz's "I Google Myself" aptly charts the YouTube's generation self-obsession. The best part: A blog post about the video is already the No. 2 Google result for Luiz's name. -
great moments in pr
YouTube PR's own financial crises
YouTube announced a new channel called "Your Money" yesterday, describing it as place to "learn more about borrowing, investing, and saving, along with Financial News and Analysis." YouTube said the channel would feature content from Bloomberg, Reuters, Wall Street Journal. But now YouTube Your Money is gone. So is the blog post announcing its arrival. A Twitter message from YouTube PR, a Google search result and a logo screen-captured by Epicenter remain and are copied below. I have two theories on why this happened. More » -
youtube
Commercials your new punishment for not clicking on ads
YouTube will now run a post-roll commercial after you watch a clip if you don't click on the overlay advertisement that pops-up on partner videos. It's the kind of exciting, innovative thinking from re-hire Ben Ling, who was brought back into the Google mothership to figure out how to turn YouTube's revenue deficit frown upside down. It's also the kind of thinking that YouTube once attempted to scientifically prove users didn't like, but not the kind of thinking that Eric Schmidt has been telling anyone who will listen. The news also comes on the heels of YouTube's release of "hot spot" tracking — so you can better craft your narrative to make sure people stick around long enough for the commercial to play. (Image via NewTeeVee) -
online video
HBO's original YouTube programming an epic failure
Site YouTube Reviewed began banging the drum early and loudly that the original content project for YouTube from HBO Labs, Hooking Up, is terrible. They've since chronicled everyone from YouTube's content partnership wrangler George Stromoplous to one of the YouTube fameballs who appears in the show, Cory "Mr. Safety" Williams, distancing themselves from endorsing the show. And now it seems that someone at HBO is trying to juice the subscriber stats to make the show look more popular than it is. More » -
distractions
Wii ad's HTML tricks more fun than the new Facebook
Stupid yet clever enough for Monday-afternoon viewing is this Nintendo Wii ad on YouTube that shakes apart the whole page during gameplay. Drill into it and you'll find it's not a standard YouTube video page, but an oversized Flash animation. Well done! But if the Wall Street Journal's Ahead of the Tape page does this tomorrow, I'm unsubscribing.
































