One Hundred Million Views

It’s been recently revleaed that YouTube officially surpassed the 100 million viewer mark just in the USA during January, which highlights the massive growth in demand for online video.

ComScore figures suggest that US viewers consume almost 15 billion videos a month across a wide range of media sites, the majority of which comes through YouTube.

Google, who has owned the site since 2006, when it was bought for £883m, ranks as the most popular video provider in the US. Around 6.4 billion of its videos were viewed in January, reflecting 43% of the online video market.

Interestingly, although Google competitively runs Google Video, YouTube.com accounts for 99% of its video traffic. (I’m not certain if this includes the Google Video traffic that’s viewing aggregated YT videos.)

I’m just curious to know what  makes YT so popular. Perhaps it’s for the same brand-name reasons that Google is the most widely used search engine… A case of having a snappy name and being in the right place, at the right time, with the right stategy and understanding of how the online landscape is evolving? (I do realise this is a simplistic way of looking at things, but it’s Friday afternoon and my brain has fallen out of my ears).

… Like Wildfire

Google Australia’s blog highlights how the terrible fires in the country are permeating every walk of life.

Quite simply, they’ve built a Flash Map, which contains the latest up-to-date information about fire locations and their status from the Country Fire Authority.

Although nothing good can be said about this ongoing tragedy, Google’s reaction is an example of how offline can support online in a more humanised sense, away from ad-campaigns and ideas of marketing ROI. Equally, Google’s power online means that it’s making information more accessible to those who need it, as well as taking the strain away from other websites that are close to collapsing under massive volumes of traffic.

With an increase of recent catastophes, wars and events all being mapped through the internet, it genuinely seems to me that the internet really can call itself a global community… It will be interesting to see which direction this takes in the near future.

Google Water

In case anyone missed it, Google have released their new Earth offering, Google Ocean.

Included in the 5.0 version, it allows users to “swim” around the seven seas, without even getting wet or eaten by sharks.

Nice.

MacLovin’

Quite stressed with too many work-projects.

So, instead of a blog of substance, here’s a 1983 video of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs playing a dating game.

And if anyone gets the McLovin’-Superbad reference, you’re great.

Free Internet For All

The long-awaited Digital Britain report is upon us and one of the major points within it is that the Government is planning to give every home in UK broadband internet access by 2012.

The report also proposed the creation of a new body to deal with the problem of people illegally copying and sharing music and films over the internet.

Highlighting that the UK is a world leader in the digital, communications and creative industries, which are now worth some £52bn a year, there seems to be an emphasis that this could reinvigorate the UK economy.

This in itself is quite concerning, as although these industries can certainly help improve a bad situation, I doubt they can turn things around totally by themselves… No pressure there, then.

Yahoo’s Mixed Finances

Right, so Yahoo beat the analyst expectations (GOOD!), but still posted a fourth quarter loss of some £212m (BAD!).

That’s a lot of money to lose, especially considering Google contiues to lead the pack – Last week they also defied analyst predictions, but still made a profits of £266m. Impressive amounts, but rather worringly for them, it’s a drop of 68% year-on-year.

Returning to Yahoo though, it’s even more depressing. Profits fell by 34% compared to the same period last year. Although they’ve got a new CEO at the helm, (Carol Bartz), who I’m sure actually do a great job in turning the company around, I’m not entirely convinced that her $19m YEARLY salary is going to help improve the revenue streams of the business.

Twitter Flies

Last year, according to Hitwise, one of the fastest growing websites was Twitter.

Over 12 months, the site saw a massive increase of traffic, and the latest data ranks the microblogging site as the 291st most visited web site in the UK, up from a ranking of 2,953. UK traffic to the site increased by a whopping 974% over the period.

Hitwise also suggested that Twitter is likely to be even more popular than the figures suggest, if statistics for people accessing their accounts via mobile phones and third-party applications were included.

As most people who are familiar with Twitter will know, it has now become an important part of the internet network, helpfully driving traffic to other sites. According to Hitwise, around 10% of redirecting tweets send users to news and media sites and over 17% end up on entertainment sites, although I’m interested to see how they accurately measured this. Thoughts, anyone?

Un-Social Networking

Last year, Virgin Atlantic found employees slagging off customers on Facebook. Last week it was Tesco’s turn. Now, Waitrose has found their staff making nasty noises in the online world.

The insults aren’t particularly great – with comments calling customers pikeys, ugly, mad and smelly – which could be extremely damaging to the brand and its connotations.

Waitrose response was that it is “completely unacceptable behaviour. It goes against our codes of conduct which make it very clear that partners who post this type of material are in breach of their terms of employment….The nature of the internet makes it difficult to get content removed once posted, however we do have teams that monitor website activity and will be conducting an immediate investigation.”

Personally, I think responding favorably offline in this way is a great way of ensuring something online can be brought under control. Social media is notoriously difficult to reign in if negative views are floating around – and by reassuring customers that they’re taking the matter seriously, as well as giving off signs to staff that it won’t be tolerated, Waitrose seem to be dealing with this quite well.

Smelly Cavemen

Short post: New user-interactive site from Lynx, which supports their new TV campaign.

How loud can you shout at your computer?! Great stuff from the deodorant giants.

UK digital firms combat credit crunch with Texas trade tour

PRESS RELEASE: London, UK,  January 2009

35 of the UK’s leading SMEs from the digital industry head to Austin, Texas on the Digital Mission to South by South West Interactive (SXSWi) from 12-18 March 2009, one of the world’s leading conferences for emerging media. Established in 1994, the conference provides an opportunity for the Digital Mission companies to attend hundreds of conference sessions and networking events.

The Digital Mission is organised by digital networking community, Chinwag, on behalf of UKTI (UK Trade & Investment). Combined with the SXSWi, the Digital Mission provides delegates the opportunity to exhibit at SXSWi. A unique ‘Nuts and Bolts’ masterclass will help British companies understand how to establish and develop their business in the USA, taking guidance from a panel of American and British experts, whilst the “Great British Breakfast” provides a UK-focused networking event for 300 delegates during the conference.

Building on the success of the Digital Mission to New York in September 2008 – also organised by Chinwag for the UKTI – this second trip to Texas will assist firms to develop new business channels, partnerships, investment and provide a detailed knowledge of the US market.

Companies were invited to apply for the Digital Mission. The 35 successful delegates were selected from over 100 entries by an advisory board of industry experts drawn from including Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK Editor, Herb Kim, Codeworks CEO and Sarbjit Bakhshi, Head of Information & Technology Group, UKTI.

More information about each company can be seen on the Digital Mission website:
http://www.chinwag.com/digitalmission/sxsw09-companies

For more information, please visit: http://www.digital-mission.org

Source: Sam Michel’s Chinwag blog