The popularity of certain virals has always been a mystery to me. How does a video of an inane lone dancer waving his arms about oblivious to the surrounding crowd, followed by said crowd freaking out and going nuts to the sound of a catchy beat, suddenly become one of the most popular phenomena of recent online history?
I’m talking of course about the Harlem Shake.
On the off chance that you haven’t come across this delight of internet memeness feast your eyes on the below. (more…)
In San Jose the last few days SMX West took place. Gemma Birch is there and reports back on some of the sessions for State of Search.
The first session of day 3 of SMX West was all about how to get your videos shared and viewed on YouTube. The speakers were Jake Larsen of ZAGG, Steve Young from SmartShoot and Jonah Stein of ItstheROI and each had some key takeaways. (more…)
After a brief testing period, YouTube have finally rolled out their new ‘One Channel’ design update which they promise will provide a more consistent look across all platforms and which should also help channel owners to attract more subscribers. ‘One Channel‘ is the latest YouTube makeover but one which definitely helps regarding the branding and promotion of an individual channel and that’s got to be good for those creating really good quality video assets.
YouTube has enlisted the help of the top content creators on the site to explain what the new design means for them and how they believe it will help all those who upload original videos: (more…)
YouTube has a new fun Easter Egg inspired by the poplar internet meme The Harlem Shake. As you might know the Harlem Shake is very popular at the moment with thousands of videos on YouTube with even videos from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Intel. The Easter Egg on YouTube works pretty much the same with instead of dancing people dancing elements on the site.
“The Harlem Shake is an Internet meme in the form of a video of various groups of people performing a comedy sketch accompanied by a short excerpt from the song “Harlem Shake”. As a meme, the video was replicated by many people, using the same concept, and this rapidly led to it becoming viral in early February 2013, with thousands of “Harlem Shake” videos being made and uploaded to YouTube every day at the height of its popularity.”
You try this yourself by typing ‘Do The Harlem Shake’ in the search field on YouTube (it doesn’t work on Google) or click here. At first the YouTube logo starts dancing alone with the song Harlem Shake by musician Baauer in the background. After 15 seconds ‘the cut’ takes place, the beat kicks in and all elements including images, titles, descriptions and buttons are dancing. You can stop the Easter Egg at anytime with the pause button next to the searchfield on the left.
Recently I made a plea here that often companies forget to style their own channel on YouTube because they forget that users actually (can) visit these. But if you are planning to redesign your channel you might want to hold off for now. This is because YouTube announced that there is a redesign coming for the channels that’s more integrated with the new interface introduced last December.
When the new interface was introduced YouTube also introduced the Guide, a new feature at the top left of the website which is always there on every page. The Guide consist of subscriptions and parts like ‘Watch later’, ‘Watch History’, and ‘Playlists’. As of this moment the Guide is not integrated with the channels, after opening a channel the Guide at the left is gone. When someone clicks on a channel from the guide he will see the channel in a plain feed view and not the branded version. The upcoming redesign will fix this so users see the designed version. (more…)
Quick editorial note: Today (the publishing date of this post) happens to be Ned’s birthday as well, so be sure to congratulate him in your comment 
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The different types of media that is being consumed on the Internet has changed largely over the last few years. Increases in broadband penetration and improvements in mobile, 3G (or 4G for many of us now) speeds have lead to a rapidly increasing change in how we consume media online. It is now not irregular to see widespread use of higher quality image formats, more advanced usage of HTML5 and other interactive technologies, not to mention an exponential increase in the usage of video online. These are used to make engaging and interactive experiences to create websites that stand out and offer very different functionalities that we have become used to over the years (the BBC is a great example of this).
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