Video is hot. Many have discovered the benefits of posting videos instead of text, especially because the ‘new generation’ seems to be looking more at YouTube than actually Google. One of the people who has been successful in developing a business around video is Michael Stevens, creator of the popular educational YouTube channel Vsauce.
In his TED talk he asks questions like ‘What color is a mirror?’ and ‘How much does a video weigh?’. With reason:
This week Google have announced that Google Trends now holds YouTube Search Data going back to 2008.
You can limit search results to video only and explore traffic patterns for time and location as with normal trends, so the addition of YouTube search data means you can now look at the trends of videos online.
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.
I love YouTube: I love its user-driven content, its Comment and share facility, the way it allows massive splurges of innovation and creativity and sends messages. What I hate however are the adverts, whoever is with me, high-five the screen. Don’t break it though.
The advertising on YouTube is as annoying as any other online power-hose advertising marketing technique that tries to get as many of the right target audience as humanly possible with no real regard to where that advertising actually goes and who it actually reaches. Its annoyance boils down to one simple factor: Its irrelevance. (more…)
It’s ‘Event Week‘ here on State of Search and there’s going to be a tonne of information from our bloggers about how to get the best of a conference/industry meet up/convention over the next few days. A lot of the posts are going to be of benefit to attendees (I for one cannot wait to hear some brilliant tips and suggestions) but I’d like to take this opportunity to show how those that are organising the event can use video to promote it, before, during and after. (more…)
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…)
For some years now engineers from Google have been hiding Easter eggs in several products, but until this year there were not a lot. We are currently looking at some of them on our Google+ Page (find the overview here). It really kicked off last year with the ‘Let it snow’ Easter egg, which unfortunately isn’t working anymore, and later ‘Do a barrel roll’, this one is still working at the moment. This year Google has hidden many Easter Eggs in the search engine and some other products , below is the collection of all the Easter eggs from Google from this year. If you have any other Easter eggs that I overlooked please let me know in the comments or on Twitter or Google+! (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 
.
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).
The day has come.
I waited almost 35 years to see it made into a movie, but – finally – between today and tomorrow The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey will be released all over the world.
Expectations, suspense.
These two words are typically cinematographic; so much that almost all the entire movie marketing is based over them.
Only the movie marketing?
Not really, if you think about it. Our own Search Marketing industry relies a lot on expectations and suspense in its efforts, and the startup world is almost as good as the movie industry in titillating the expectations of its end users in order to gain brand recognition.
But, before, let’s return to the movie industry.
Almost inevitably in the case of cinema – and of any other product previously announced – rumors precede the fruition of a movie: the public does not enter in a movie theater completely unaware of what he is going to watch, and the vision of the first images comes always in a dialectical relationship, in terms of the creation of expectations, with the information that the viewer has before the start of the film. (more…)
A lot is happening in the world of search and social and as you know State of Search is not a news-reporting site but a site that interprets the news and looks at why something is happening and what that means to you. That doesn’t mean however we are not interested in the news. In this post we will bring the top stories of what happened last week with links to articles around the web. So you will know what you’ve missed. (more…)
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