If you’ve ever yearned to mash up your cat video with some C-SPAN footage but couldn’t figure out how, today’s your lucky day.
Because starting now, YouTube is giving users a choice over how they want to license their content. There’s still the standard YouTube license, which is fairly restrictive, and now there’s a new option: Creative Commons (with attribution). In short, you can now give other people permission to use your footage however they’d like, provided to include a link back to the source.
Licenses are tricky business (there are six different Creative Common licenses) but YouTube is hoping to reduce confusion by limiting users to one option, which requires attribution and does allow for content to be used for commercial purposes. → Read More
Online video is growing up, and so are the young video stars who first found an audience on YouTube like Fred (Lucas Cruikshank) and iJustine. Both are part of the Collective Digital Studio, a talent management company of sorts for Web video stars. Today, the Collective is announcing an exclusive distribution deal with Blip.tv on behalf of its video artists, who can opt into the deal. Other Collective video producers signing up with Blip.tv include The Annoying Orange and Freddie W.
The addition of the Collective’s videos to Blip.tv’s arsenal is significant. Blip.tv is currently serving about 300 million video views a month. The Web shows that the Collective is bringing to the table attract about 200 million views a month. There is some slight overlap, but Blip.tv CEO Michael Hudack expects the deal will help Blip cross the 500 million views per month line by the end of the year. → Read More
YouTube is now showing approximately 3 billion videos a day. A growing proportion of those are shown with ads—more than 2 billion a week—and YouTube as a business is expected to pass $1 billion in revenue next year.
But when it comes to making money, some videos do better than others. For YouTube, it is all about scale, and networks of loosely aligned online video producers scale better than individual shows and viral-video phenoms. In fact, there is a brand new department inside YouTube called Networks. The purpose of the department is encourage the formation of these outside networks which then use YouTube as their distribution channel. → Read More
YouTube is celebrating its sixth birthday this month, and the Google subsidiary is doing it partly by sharing some big numbers that underscore its overwhelming dominance in the online video streaming space.
YouTube says global daily views have gone up 50 percent in the past 12 months, which means they currently handle a whopping 3 billion views per day. Also worth noting: YouTube says it has exceeded over 48 hours of video uploaded to the site (which represents a 100 percent increase year over year). → Read More
A couple of days ago, we got a tip pointing us to a YouTube page with a bit of interesting information. On Google’s official account there was a placeholder page for a “Google Press Conference”. We we reached out to Google about this, they said they were checking into it, and the page immediately was taken down (but not before we snagged a screenshot, naturally). Weird.
Well, weird until the news broke on Bloomberg today that Google is planning to unveil a mobile payment service on Thursday. The announcement is expected to involve the NFC chips built into the Nexus S. → Read More
It was when they pulled out the machetes that I started to worry.
I’d seen men with machetes in Africa before, but they were rusty, practical tools used for clearing away brush by the side of the highway. These were long, shiny and housed in decorative sheaths, pulled out ostensibly so the men could sit down more comfortably, but done with a clear, understated flair. They were more like sultan swords than jungle tools.
The kicking in my six-month pregnant belly had gone eerily silent since we entered the vigilante court at Alaba. → Read More
Google confirmed the existence of its YouTube Movies service earlier today and has just released more details on which studios and movies will provide the 3,000 titles in its repertoire. YouTube has partnered up with Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros and others to offer full length feature films on YouTube.com/movies. → Read More
YouTube chief Salar Kamangar has just written a post on the YouTube blog titled “Welcome to the future of video. Please stay a while” , in which he hints at some major announcements that will be coming later today. The gist of the post: users are now racking up 2 billion views on YouTube per day, but they’re spending just 15 minutes a day on YouTube — compared to five hours a day watching TV (seriously, you folks watch a lot of TV).
YouTube’s been on a mission to grab more of that TV-watching time for itself, with initiatives like YouTube Next, which helps train some of the site’s elite users on how to create compelling content. But historically you’ve always had to look elsewhere — like iTunes and Netflix —for big-name movies and premium content. Now it looks like that’s finally starting to change: YouTube is adding around 3,000 new movie titles to its rental section, including ‘blockbuster films’. From Kamangar’s post: → Read More
AVOS, the new company formed by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, has acquired Tap11, a real-time business intelligence platform. The company’s platform integrates social publishing and analytics into a single dashboard to allow marketers to monitor, engage, and measure the impact of their campaigns. According to the press release, Tap11 works with over 500 major brands, media companies, and agencies. The company had raised funding from US Venture Partners, Alloy Ventures and Palomar Ventures. The acquisition closely follows AVOS’ recent acquisition of social bookmarking service Delicious. → Read More
The story of tech is largely about adoption, and adoption often comes into focus in the wake of cultural events. Last Friday’s wedding of Prince William to Katharine Middleton was the epitome of an event, bringing together YouTube watchers, Facebookers, Flickrers, Twitterers and even Colorers in a mass collective online experience of the festivities.
Taking place at 11 am London time (4 am SF time) the wedding itself was live streamed 72 million times, to people watching in 188 countries. With the addition of rebroadcasts that day, the streams reached 101 million by the end of April 29th. → Read More
A few weeks ago, a video entered wide circulation in the tech press for two reasons: 1) it featured lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Apple employees talking about their difficulties growing up. And 2) it was very, very well made. But the truth is that the It Gets Better Project has been around since last September, when columnist and author Dan Savage kicked things off with his own YouTube video with his partner to talk about their experiences. The Apple video simply reinvigorated the project in our circles, helping to keep the message going.
And now Google is doing their part to continue the message as well. Yesterday the Chrome team uploaded a new, great It Gets Better video. Watch it above. → Read More
For any of you caught up in the frenzy over the royal wedding between England’s Prince William and Kate Middleton, we’ve collected a comprehensive list of where to watch the festivities online, where to find photos, dedicated mobile apps, Twitter accounts following the Royal Wedding and more.
As opposed to the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, this Royal Wedding is particularly unique because of the web didn’t exist back then. And neither did social media. This will be one of the most publicized and watched weddings in history and thh whole world is invited to view and comment both on TV and the web. → Read More
The recent proliferation of early stage financing for photo-sharing startups like Path ($11.2 million), Picplz ($5 million), Instagram ($7.5M) and Color ($41 million) is leading some to speculate that we are in a crazy picture sharing bubble.
But are photo sharing investments just another sign of irrational exuberance? Curious about how photo sharing exits stacked up, we looked into some of the most notable ones over the past 15 years and put them into the above infographic. → Read More
As yesterday’s reports of YouTube’s expanded Hollywood partnerships are still making waves, we’re hearing that Twentieth Century Fox will also be making a deal with YouTube to license its movies for YouTube Movies.
Fox will be joining Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal in the initiative, as well as independent studios Lionsgate and Kino Lorber. While there’s still no word on Paramount and Disney, the service now has enough critical mass to launch.
Fox notably blocked Google TV back in November, so this deal would be a change of tune for the studio in its dealings with Google. Having as many major studios on board for this initiative is crucial, as it means the difference between having inventory that people want to watch and being stuck with Ronald Reagan: An American Journey. → Read More
YouTube loves to push its livestreaming capabilities. It’s done U2 concerts and government debates , but now it will stream what may turn out to be its biggest live event ever: The British Royal Wedding. Well, it would be the biggest event ever if it wasn’t starting at 5 AM ET on Friday, April 29.
But you know how crazy people get for royal weddings, and plenty of people will be watching from all over the world. The U2 concert topped out at 10 million streams. The last British royal wedding was decades ago. The people are hungry for their pomp and circumstance, even those who aren’t British subjects. (I don’t understand it, I only report it). → Read More
Last January, I praised Google for a small, but important move: streaming their quarterly earnings webcasts via YouTube. For those of us that cover these calls, it’s at least a thousand times better than the alternatives that everyone else uses — namely Windows Media Player or RealPlayer streaming (both of which, quite frankly, suck). Over the past year, Google’s earnings have been comparatively a joy to cover thanks to this move. Not anymore.
Today, for no apparent reason, Google has gone back to relying on arch-nemesis Microsoft to provide the technology to stream their calls. I’ve emailed Google on the matter, but they’ll probably ignore it. They’re likely more concerned about their stock tanking right now due to mixed earnings results. → Read More
Google’s online video giant YouTube this morning announced that it is getting into the live streaming business, a move that has long been rumored but hasn’t become a reality up until today.
In a blog post, the company says it is currently registering 2 billion views on a daily basis, and that they’re looking to complement their offering with live videos. → Read More
Head to YouTube after 4AM local time and you’ll notice that it looks a little old fashioned — and not in a 1999 blinking construction sign sort of way.
YouTube is reverting back to what it would have looked like had it been around in 1911, complete with grainy, sepia video footage, no audio tracks (save for piano accompaniment), and title cards in place of the site’s normal comments. Yes, it’s time for April Fools, and the world’s largest video portal is ringing it in once with some video player trickery — a tradition it started in 2008 after RickRolling all of its users.
YouTube has accompanied the gag with a blog post from President Taft, and it’s also put together some 1911-ified memes, featuring the ancestors of Annoying Orange and a certain musically-inclined feline. Even some of the ads are old fashioned. → Read More
By now you’re undoubtedly familiar with the incredible amount of footage that’s uploaded to YouTube — the current count is 35 hours of video uploaded every minute. And with video cameras integrated into smartphones, tablets, and computers these days (not to mention dedicated video cameras) it’s easier than ever to record that content. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of people who simply don’t have access to recording equipment. Today, YouTube is looking to do something about that.
The site has just launched a new portal at YouTube.com/create where you can design your own video clips using GoAnimate, Stupeflix, or Xtranormal, each of which lets you ‘build’ custom videos featuring virtual avatars, custom speech, and more. → Read More
As the battle for Silicon Valley engineering talent intensifies, it seems as if hot tech companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter have launched some sort of ridiculous competition as to who could can score the biggest Hollywood talent for an onsite appearance, in order to wow current and future employees.
Between Ashton Kutcher and Chamillionaire at Y Combinator launches and conferences, Silicon Valley isn’t lacking in star sightings. But if we’re keeping a tally, the most recent celebrity visits making waves were Snoop Dog at Twitter and Katy Perry at Facebook, both of which seemed like a stretch when considering either company’s goals. → Read More
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