VentureBeat reports that Vevo generated 35 million unique visitors and a staggering 13 billion video views in December.
The easiest way to understand VEVO is that it is to music videos what Hulu is to TV shows: a corporate (in this case record labels) founded, ad-supported way to aggregate and serve up videos on the Web. Instead of having to wade through all the user-made junk on YouTube to find the real, high-grade and high-quality music videos, VEVO's channel features only label or artist-produced videos, with great sound and video quality (though not HD yet).
Vevo really does appear to dominate the music videos on YouTube. Most of the official professional music videos on YouTube now seem to be from Vevo. They also have embedding turned on which helps them dramatically increase views. A lot of music publisher stupidly turn off embedding.
YouTube announced this week that they are now serving one billion video views each day. They mention basic principles they implemented that have since become fundamental tenets in the world of online video.
Speed matters: Videos should load and play back quickly.
Clip culture is here to stay: Short clips are voraciously consumed and perfect for watching a wide variety of content.
Open platforms open up possibility: Content creation isn't our business; it's yours. We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an Internet connection could share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases make a living from doing so.
They missed one: embedding. Embedding has been extremely important in helping YouTube grow quickly and the embed code has been adapted by many other video websites as a tool to get content widely distributed.
We have microblogging, so why not microvideoblogging. That's the idea behind Robo.to, a website that lets you publish micro videos - or visual status updates - that are no longer than 4 seconds in length. The videos can be distributed on Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites.
Bits reports that the idea is also meant to serve as a digital calling card for users.
The idea behind the platform is simple: In addition to the microvideos, which can be uploaded from a webcam or a mobile phone camera and pushed out via Facebook and Twitter with a few short lines of text, Robo.to is meant to be a digital calling card online or a hub that houses information about an individual's identity on the Web. That's what helps separate the service from other microvideo services like 12seconds.
Bits says Robo.to already has 100,000 plus users, thanks in part to Justin Timberlake regularly posting the tiny videos on his Twitter account, @jtimberlake.
A puppy cam that shows Shiba Inu puppies sleeping - and sometimes playing - has generated over 18 million views reports NBC. Some places are calling it the most watched video of all time but that's incorrect. There are plenty of music videos on YouTube that already have three to five times the views of the Shiba Inu puppy cam. Still 18 million is significant and all it took was a live video feed of six baby Shiba Inu puppies. Maybe it is that people are looking for something to cheer them at a time when the economy is not doing well. Or they are simply bored at work. The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam can be found here on Ustream.tv. There are lot of other puppy cams on the Internet and there are sure to be more now because of the success of the Shiba Inu cam.
There is some truth to this humerous fake news report from the Onion that says YouTube is running a contest for a "good" video. They say that "YouTube is offering a cash prize to the first user to upload a video with a shred of originality or artistic merit."
Following the launch of her steamy new video, Britney Spears has come out with a revamped britneyspears.com website. The website includes a blog about Britney Spears updated by Team Britney and guest bloggers.
The new site also includes video blog posts from Britney Spears. Here's the first one where she explains what her new website will offer. Britney says, "I'm taking you where no paparazzi lense ever could. I'll be updating the site all the time with new videos, photos, and lots of other cool stuff." (via Pleasant Morning Buzz)
Usually it is YouTube that tells you when a video is no longer available. This time the Associated Press posted a video to its YouTube channel that states that the video is no longer available. The video also includes a soundtrack with the speaker saying, "This video clip is currrently unavailable."
The video contains the following description:
Entertainment ExtraThis Video Is No Longer Available.This Video Is No Longer Available.The Associated PressThis video is no longer available.This video contains ONLY natural sound. No script is ava...
The video also contained the following keywords:
emergency clip video available
Clearly the AP posted the video in error but it is amusing to read some of the comments and watch people give the video 5-stars. Other bloggers including DJPalmer.com are also posting the AP's odd video.
Google announced that they are providing a little more data about YouTube videos for the people that uploaded them.
Today we're taking our first step towards answering these questions with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks. For now, you can find currently available metrics by clicking under the "About this Video" button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.
That's useful information but Google Operating System notes that data about where videos have been embedded is not included.
The analytics data is really basic and doesn't include a lot of interesting information like the sites that embed your videos, the most important sources of traffic, how many people view the full video or play it again etc.
Where online these videos are being watched is likely of great interest to YouTubers. YouTubers would probably find this information as valuable as where in the world people are watching them. There is a little bit of data underneath the videos about where people clicked from and you could post the video's URL into Technorati but this probably wouldn't turn up all the embeds. Pulse2.0 found this video about YouTube Insight.
Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee says that YouTube has promised to eventually include this valuable referrer information.
In a packet of emailed information, YouTube pointed out that its partners (which include established users and media companies) can utilize the Insight stats to increase their revenue. But to truly offer useful analytics YouTube needs to show the relations between videos, track search engine keywords, and measure the portion of a video a viewer watches before clicking away, among other things. YouTube did say it will soon add in referrer logs to show how viewers discovered a video.
On an unrelated note Google/YouTube also posted the message about YouTube Insight on the YouTube blog. Based on the comments some people are very angry that YouTube took away the "sort by most viewed" feature from the YouTube search. That was a useful feature - why did they take it away?
Video Mysteriously Takes YouTube's #1 All-Time Most Viewed Slot
Reel Pop, ReadWriteWeb and others are blogging about a home-made music video called "Cansei de Ser Sexy Music is My Hot Hot Sex" that has bumped Judson Laipply's popular Evolution of Dance video off the #1 spot on YouTube's all-time most viewed videos list. A post on Waxy.org analyzed the video's stats and found an unusually high views-to-ratings figure of 21,487 as well as a low number of comments. The video also has only has two honors. One would expect a video that suddenly takes YouTube's all-time most viewed crown to have more than two honors.
Most of the comments on the video indicate disbelief that this video could garner so many views so quickly. It is hard to believe this video legitimately made its way to the top of YouTube. Here are some of the comments.
ikill4u784 says, "OMG! it cant sneak up as most views in less than a week. i've never even seen this with 25m views b4!"
Chargrad says "What... The... Hell... even with hot hot sex in the title how can this have got so many views?!?"
mattjsrules says, "This only had 4 million views 2 weeks ago wtf? someone must of refreshed it 80 million times or someone hacked."
It will probably get many views now that it is #1 on YouTube. Cansei de Ser Sexy is also known as CSS. They are a Brazilian band. They received a fortuitous popularity boost when their "Music Is My Hot Hot Sex" song (the same song as in the suddenly popular video) was featured in an iPhone commercial. Here's the video that is now listed as #1 on YouTube'a list of the all-time most popular videos.
News.com reports that the Revver.com video sharing website is trying to sell itself for $300,000 to $500,000 (plus the company's estimated $1 million debt). This is a small value compared to some of the very large venture capital investments social media startups have received. News.com notes that the sale price is also a small percentage of the $12.7 million Revver once raised in venture funding. News.com also says a deal from LiveUniverse to acquire Revver never materialized.
In response to questions from CNET News.com, Angela Gyetvan, Revver's vice president of marketing, said: "I'm not at liberty to discuss any of this with you. I can't comment."
Mark Elfenbein, LiveUniverse's chief operating officer also declined to comment.
Revver gained some notoriety in 2006 when video-sharing became a worldwide craze. YouTube dominated the sector but Revver tried carving out a niche by catering to videographers.
The company, backed by such investors as Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, and William Randolph Hearst III, offered to share advertising revenue with makers of the most popular clips. The thinking at the company was that if Revver could win over the best creators, audiences would follow.
Ad revenues cannot sustain an infinite amount of social networking and video sharing websites so at some point there was bound to be huge consolidation in these types of businesses. 2008 may be the year that many of the social media websites people were so excited about in 2006 and 2007 get purchased or go out of business. However, it did seem like Revver was one of the more popular video sharing sites at least early on. If Revver really is carrying a lot of debt it is likely the reason why they are not getting bigger acquisition offers.
Hammer Time: MC Hammer to Launch Video Sharing Website
Here's a new web launch that didn't make anyone's list of 2008 predictions. The BBC is reporting that MC Hammer plans to launch a video website that will challenge YouTube. The site will be called DanceJam and will let people share dance videos.
Famous in the early 1990s for his hit song "U Can't Touch This" and very baggy trousers, Hammer is launching a website that hopes to rival YouTube.
Due to debut later this month, DanceJam will allow users to share and watch their own dance videos.
If the website is a hit, it could help Hammer's finances - he went bankrupt in 1996 with debts of almost $14m (£7m).
The BBC article says the website will launch later this month. It will be advertising based. MC Hammer reportedly told the AP that he is well informed on Internet technology. Hammer said, ""There is no high-tech lingo or business strategy that you can talk that is above my head. I breathe this stuff." There is truth behind his bold statement. MC Hammer has been actively blogging at mchammer.blogspot.com since he launched his blog in February, 2006. He has blogged about the power of blogging to connect with others. YouTube is likely too large and powerful for even the Hammer to overcome but he may be able to get something going with a niche video sharing website.
Singer Alanis Morissette has started vlogging on her YouTube channel. She answers questions in a video interview while she's taking a walk. Some of the younger stars who established YouTube sites early on now have tens of thousands of subscribers. Ashley Tisdale of High School Musical fame has over 60,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. Alanis just has a couple hundred so far so she has a ways to go to catch the YouTube early birds.
In Alanis' first video blog she talks about her upcoming tour and her next album. She also says she is working on a book. Watch out for that tree Alanis.
YouTube.com is considering some changes and they have a preview of a redesigned website you can view. The navigation changes seem useful but the site is a little on the bright side. Download Squad is warning its readers to have their sunglasses ready before viewing the redesign. YouTube's blog post about the preview says there will be a number over large changes over the next three months.
In a constant effort to improve the user experience and incorporate your feedback we'll be making a number of large changes to the site over the next few months. In addition to making improvements upon existing features, we'll be rolling out some brand new items that are still in the works. We can tell you there is a lot to look forward to, but in the meantime we offer you this sneak preview of the new YouTube video browsing page (our "Videos" tab) and invite you to share your feedback with us.
-- Categories will now be found under the "Videos" tab.
-- Dropdown menus make for a smoother transition when clicking through popular pages, ie. "Most Viewed," "Top Favorites," "Recently Featured," etc.
-- Tabs and video browsing pages have a new overall look and feel.
YouTube has also merged the videos and category links but you can still make all the same popularity searches as before. It would be helpful if they would include a few more categories since there are so many videos on YouTube now.
Until there are more categories you can always run a search for tags using this search string and changing KEYWORD to the tag you want to use:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=KEYWORD&search=tag
Use Halloween as the keyword and you get videos tagged Halloween.
They seem very eager for feedback at YouTube and they are requesting feedback on the right hand side of the preview page.
The New York Timesreports on Google's clever plans to turn its very popular YouTube video sharing service into a video syndication service.
The Internet search giant is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators. A Web site or blog specializing in hiking, for instance, might choose to embed hiking videos from YouTube.
The service, which represents the first major combination of a Google product with YouTube, will give video creators wide distribution beyond YouTube via Google's network, known as AdSense. Since the videos will be surrounded by ads, the service is another way for Google to cash in on the huge number of video clips stored on YouTube.
Several other networks distribute videos and ads on the Web, but none reach as many Web sites as AdSense.
Google said it would share revenue from the ads with the creators of the videos and with the Web sites that embed them, though it declined to specify what percentage of the revenue will be kept by each party.
If the television networks aren't going to turn website into syndication channels Google will it seems. For now these are generally just very short video clips but in the future full television shows could be syndicated in a similar manner.
Google has an introductory post about the new video units here. There is also a faq. The faq says the ads in the video units will be both pay-per-click and CPM based. It says reporting will be different for these ads than other AdSense ads. Website owners can select video content by selecting specific categories or by choosing a specific provider.
This will be a big deal for video publishers. Google says AdSense publishers can select specific providers so video publishers will be trying to get AdSense users to syndicate their videos. NewTeeVee has a short list of who some of the early video content providers are.
Read/WriteWeb says Google is expected to expand the number of video providers -- currently only a few YouTube user channels are being syndicated.
Ads have been run along side a very select few user channels on the YouTube site for a handful of months but these reports indicate that the program will be made much wider and be taken off of the site all around the web.
Here is an explanatory video from Google about their video units.
VentureBeat 
YouTube 
Following the launch of her 
News.com 
Here's a new web launch that didn't make anyone's list of 
YouTube.com is considering some changes and they have a 