The U.S. government is using social media technologies to reach out to the world, to start a dialogue, to influence foreign policy and to change the perception of the United Stated with the rest of the world.
With that the Department of State has set up Project Dipnote and created a YouTube Channel, a Blog, a Flickr photo album, a Twitter account, an account iTunes for podcast, RSS feeds and just recently launched More»

Labels: Flickr, social media, Twitter, Youtube

Google’s YouTube has been sued by Mediaset SpA, the television company controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Mediaset is seeking  500 million Euros in “immediate damages” or approximately US$800 million. Lost advertising revenue linked to the videos may add to the amount of compensation said Mediaset.
According to the lawsuit Google and YouTube allegedly carried out the “illegal distribution and commercial use of audio and video files” owned by Mediaset. A sample analysis run More»

Labels: google, video, Youtube

Video-sharing Web site YouTube will shield the identities of users when it hands over viewer data to Viacom and others involved in a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit, according to an agreement.In addition, the agreement stipulates that Viacom and the other companies will not circumvent YouTube’s encryption in order to reveal identities.
Privacy and Internet experts said the case underscores the immense amount of information online companies collect - and retain - about users.
Earlier this month, Mountain View search giant Google, which owns YouTube, was ordered by a federal judge to release the information. More»

Labels: viacom, Youtube

The WSJ has an interesting article on the difficulty Google is having monetizing YouTube. Some of the reasons include the enormous difficulty advertisers have understanding YouTube’s ad sales system. Google has identified some 105 problems with the system. Despite all the bragging about Google’s technical competence they lack a fully automated billing system for YouTube, Google staffers had to calculate some bills manually further compounding the constellation of errors. More >>

We have had a challenge … with social networking inventory as a whole and some More»

Labels: google, Online Advertising, video, Youtube

Technology executives and the University of California-San Francisco’s have banded together to create a special YouTube channel, a Facebook group and a widget to raise awareness for a degenerative brain diseases called Creutzfeldt-Jakob, after learning that former Apple & Netscape executive Mike Homer had been diagnosed with it.
This partnership seeks to tap into the internet’s ability to reach a far larger audience to help spread awareness and get people to seek treatment sooner. It represents a new twist in the tradition model of the typical disease campaign. The campaign is being spearheaded More»

Labels: online health, social media, Youtube

It is being reported that the man who held the toughest job at Google, Shashi Seth, head of monetization for YouTube has left the company for greener pastures - after only a year on the job.
“I think part of being a Googler is that you like smaller environments, and I think Google got a little big for me,” says Seth.
This is yet another indication that monetizing video is a lot harder than many thought it would be despite YouTube’s huge viral popularity and lead in the online video sharing market. Irrespective More»

Labels: google, viacom, Youtube

YouTube has come out with a tool to help you answer the question of who’s watching you. YouTube Insight is a free video analytics tool that allows users who upload videos to YouTube to track the viewership on their videos including the geographic breakdown by region, as well as the popularity relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. Uploaders can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of their videos to find out how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as More»

Labels: google, Web Analytics, Youtube

Flickr, Yahoo’s popular and successful photo sharing site, will provide Video sharing by April. Dan Farber reports on his interview with Flickr Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield, who along with his wife Caterina Fake and their staff developed Flickr several years ago as a supportive service to their game development and wound up focusing exclusively on the photo sharing capabilities. Yahoo purchased Flickr from them for a reported sum of about 20 million, which by today’s standards may make Flickr one of the greatest Web 2.0 undervaluations in history.
Video sharing in a socially networked environment is definitely More»

Labels: Flickr, Yahoo, Youtube

Perhaps it should come come as no surprise that one in three of all the videos viewed online are served up by YouTube.
Comscore reports that in January of 2008 a total of about 10 billion online video clips were served. 3.36 billion from Google sites while the second place video provider, Fox Interactive Media, served up 584 million. Yahoo, once in contention for the top video spot, served only 315 million and Microsoft only 199 million.
Unfortunately for Google, YouTube’s video dominance has yet to become a profitable part of Google’s online advertising empire. More»

Labels: Advertising, comscore, video, Youtube

YouTube is opening up even more to the online community with a suite of APIs (application programming interfaces) that will allow websites, mobile devices, and more powerfully integrate YouTube content and capabilities.
Here are more details from Christine at the YouTube developer blog
Here is the YouTube announcement
For some time websites have been able to embed YouTube videos using a standard player, butfrom YouTube’s Press release this morning we learn that they have added added the following new API services for external developers:
*Upload videos and video responses to YouTube* Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, More»

Labels: API, developers, Youtube