YouTube Rolls Out Radical Revamp
As of today, the ‘new’ YouTube is available to everyone – check out the YouTube video below for the lowdown on the redesign.
Highlights include:
- An ‘add channels’ button in the top left-hand corner of the page
- Under that you’ll find your top 10 favourite channels, which you can ‘pin’ to the top of the page
- YouTube is also tweaking the colours of its logo and adding a soft gray background to the videos
- Integration with the Google+ social network, plus it’s now easier to post videos to Facebook and Twitter
- Four new channel templates for content creators
Effective Organisation Design Case Study – New Web Video For Local Government Employers
One of our latest projects went live recently – a web video case study for our long term client Local Government Employers – the case study focused on ‘Effective Organisation Design’ and profiles the London Borough of Croydon and their ‘Layers and Spans of Control’ programme.
To support the web video case study, LGE also asked us to produce an audio podcast that features in-depth interviews with key members of the Croydon team, who outline in detail their process and recommendations for others about to embark on a similar programme – you can listen to the 25 minute podcast here.
Posted in: Clients, Video Case Study, Web Video, YouTube
Video – How to Get the New Facebook Timeline Now
So the last couple of weeks have been pretty manic from a Facebook perspective – numerous updates across the platform including the big news about the all new Facebook ‘Timeline’ replacing the current profile layout.
The new timeline is due to be rolled out across accounts from 04th October 2011 – but if you’re super keen and want to upgrade to the new timeline now, you can – it’s pretty straightforward and this great video walks you through how to do it.
I did it a couple of days ago, my initial reaction to the new timeline is really positive, I’m a big fan of chronology as a way of organising things anyway, so this layout really feels comfortable for me – it’ll be interesting to see how it goes down with other Facebook users, maybe it’ll even encourage some people to switch to Google+ which is now open to all.
What do you think about the new Facebook timeline?
Latest Client Video Project – Talking Heads Style Interview With PPMA President Anne Gibson
We published our latest web video last week for long term client The PPMA (Public Sector People Managers’ Association).
The online video (see below – running time 4 minutes 30 seconds) features a ‘talking heads’ style interview with current PPMA President Anne Gibson, who outlines her thoughts on the key issues facing the Association and its members over next 18 months and she also comments on how public sector cuts are affecting capability within organisations and what the future impact will be.
We managed the entire production process of the web video including planning, filming, editing, encoding and uploading of the final film to the PPMA’s new website, YouTube channel, Facebook page and Twitter account.
The aim of the video is threefold, firstly to bring the current president’s agenda to life and introduce her to the wider HR community, secondly to engage PPMA’s online community across both it’s main website and social channels and thirdly to improve their new website’s SEO – video is a great tool for achieving this according to leading global research company Forrester, who in 2010 identified that a website with a video is 53 times more likely to come up on a first page result on Google than the exact same page without video - sobering stuff!
Facebook Adds Skype Video Chat
Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site. The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.
This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up – they already share some instant messaging tools. Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.
The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users. However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site’s success.
Instead, the amount of sharing – of photographs, videos and web links – was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.
At launch, Facebook’s video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google’s system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts. Mark Zuckerberg said that it was likely that other “premium” Skype functions would be added in future.
He also appeared to offer a back-handed compliment to Google+, saying that its creation was a vindication of Facebook’s vision for the social web. Industry analysts welcomed the announcement.
“Advertisers love anything that keeps users on Facebook for longer and that is something Facebook has been brilliant at – keeping people engaged with the platform for increasingly longer periods of time,” Susan Etlinger of the Altimeter Group told BBC News.
“It stands to reason that the longer you are on Facebook, the happier advertisers will be.”
In California, Skype chief executive Tony Bates welcomed the partnership, calling it a “long-term relationship” that could benefit both companies. At one point he had to correct Mr Zuckerberg on the subject of Skype’s ownership, reminding him that the Microsoft deal was not yet complete and still had to be cleared by regulators.
The tie-in was announced a week after Google announced its own social networking service, Google+.
“The two companies built these products separately and independently over a number of months but they will be compared directly,” said Ben Parr, editor-at-large of social media blog Mashable.com.
“They are going to be in more heated competition in the next year or so and you are going to hear a lot about who is going to win the social networking war – how does Google catch up, how does Facebook respond. This story isn’t going away.”
Source: BBC News
Posted in: Facebook, Social Networks, Web Video
Facebook to Start Showing Films
Just picked this up from the BBC…
Warner Bros has announced it will stream some of its movies on Facebook. It’s the first major Hollywood studio to work with the social networking giant in this way. Executives hope it will be a new way for the entertainment company to make money.
The service will only be available to Facebook users in America to start with. But if it proves successful it could roll out to other countries around the world including the UK.
It works by charging people 30 Facebook credits, the equivalent of $3 (around £2), to rent the film. They then have 48 hours in which to watch it.
The first movie being made available is 2008 blockbuster Batman: The Dark Knight. Other films will follow over the next few months although there are no details yet on which ones.
As high speed broadband becomes more widely available growing numbers of people are expected to download more content like movies.
Warner Bros is the first big Hollywood player to make this step but if it’s a success others will no doubt try something similar. It also has implications for other providers of movie streaming services. Netflix claims it is the world’s largest with 20 million users across North America. Meanwhile in February Amazon launched its own version called Prime.
But by offering its service through Facebook Warner Bros has secured instant access to more than 500 million people around the world. That number dwarfs anything that competing subscription services have. It’s a fact that will not be ignored by other major players in the movie business.
Source: BBC News
Old Spice Social Media Campaign Case Study Video
The agency behind the Old Spice social media campaign have released a nice case study video, it includes some really interesting metrics such as:
- More people watched its videos in 24 hours than those who watched Obama’s presidential victory speech.
- Total video views reached 40 million in a week.
- Campaign impressions: 1.4 billion.
- Since the campaign launched, Old Spice Bodywash sales are up 27%; in the last three months up 55%; and in the last month up 107%
Impressive stuff!
Posted in: General
Great Recruitment Video From The Team At Twitter
I spotted this fun recruitment video from the team at Twitter earlier in the week c/o Kat Hannaford over at Gizmodo.com
This type of video works on so many levels:
- It’s fairly quick, easy and relatively inexpensive to produce
- It can boost team morale, since employees featured in the film normally really enjoy making it
- It’s a great way to bring your company culture and website to life
- It makes you look like a really attractive employer to potential candidates
- It can generate serious traffic and applications to your recruitment site if it goes viral
It’s a simple idea, really well executed…a big pat on the back for the recruitment comms team!
..and if you fancy working a Twitter check out their Jobs site!
Posted in: General
YouTube Bids for Screen Dominance
According to this BBC article, The world’s biggest video site wants to dominate every screen where content can be viewed and created.
YouTube is already a leader online and in mobile and has firmly set its sights on the living room.
The company charted its course during the launch of a new product called Leanback, described by some as web video for couch potatoes.
It also unveiled upgrades for its mobile site which has over 100 million playbacks a day.
“You can start to break down the mental picture of ‘these are the videos I watch on my computer, on my tv or on my phone,’” Hunter Walk, director of product management told BBC News.
“Now you just say ‘these are the videos I watch and I watch them wherever I happen to be, or whoever I happen to be with’. We are going to have a world where people increasingly expect their content to be available to them on anything with a screen, whether that be a computer, a phone or a tv. That is the vision,” said Mr Walk.
Source: BBC News
Posted in: General
YouTube Exceeds Two Billion Views Per Day
YouTube has announced that it has reached a new milestone, serving over two billion views per day:
Today, thanks to you, our site has crossed another milestone: YouTube exceeds over two billion views a day. That’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined.
What started as a site for bedroom vloggers and viral videos has evolved into a global platform that supports HD and 3D, broadcasts entire sports seasons live to 200+ countries. We bring feature films from Hollywood studios and independent filmmakers to far-flung audiences. Activists document social unrest seeking to transform societies, and leading civic and political figures stream interviews to the world.
YouTube has been the biggest success story of the new media revolution, but they’re aiming higher, gunning for traditional TV audiences:
Although the average user spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube, that’s tiny compared to the five hours a day people spend watching TV. Clearly, we need to give you more reason to watch more videos! And we want to give you all the tools and support to make YouTube both your career and your community. After all, this is only the beginning of the video revolution. We’re just getting started.
To do that, YouTube is going to need to need to attract long-form content and remove some of the barriers that keep people from sitting back and watching for longer periods of time.
Posted in: General
