Nick Cifuentes

Guess who just had a birthday - YouTube! The video channel that has established itself as the ’standard’ when it comes to watching videos online, announced there 5th birthday, and that the platform has exceeded 2 billion video views per day.

As part of its 5th Anniversary, YouTube is launching the YouTube 5 Year Channel to help celebrate its story and retell the history of YouTube and how it first began. This is all part of a larger campaign just launched, “My YouTube Story” , where users can submit their YouTube story and explain how its community has impacted their lives. Documentary filmmaker, Stephen Higgins, has been assigned the task to help pull all these moments together on the channel.

It’s quite amazing what YouTube has become. In just five years time, it has more than 2 billion video views per day, nearly 1/3 the world’s population. In addition, there is more than 24 hours of video uploaded every minute to the site, every day! Also on the YouTube 5 Year Channel, you can see an interactive timeline of the key moments in YouTube’s growth - starting at the beginning, back in 2005.

What do you think of the new achievement, has YouTube made an impact on your life?

Internet video has changed the way we consume online media, with video watching have evolved in just 5 years with YouTube, we are still going through the juvenile moments, and most marketers are still trying to grasp how to properly use video in their marketing channels.

Justin Foster, Founder and President of the Video Commerce Consortium, and
Co-Founder and VP Market Development at Liveclicker, said “any retailer that is unable to, on a product level, drive conversion rates up at least 25% through the use of video, is not implementing video effectively.”

Recently, eMarketer.com released a study that estimated 66.7% of US Internet users—147.5 million people—are watching video online each month. By 2014, that figure is forecast to rise to 77% of Internet users, or 193.1 million people. In the same period, online video advertising spending will surge from $1.4 billion to $5.2 billion.

Surely there will be quite a bit of experimentation in 2010 with online video, but if you are not currently using video in your marketing programs - there could be a wide loophole you are currently ignoring.

When it comes to online video, Facebook always seemed to be one step behind the usual online video giants…not anymore! According to Nielsen’s latest VideoCensus numbers, Facebook has rose to No. 3 behind online video giants Hulu and YouTube in terms of total streams.

Facebook jumped from No. 10 last month - leap-frogging the likes of MSN, ABC Television, Fox Interactive Media, and Yahoo! The report said Facebook generated more than 217 million streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers - this is up from 110 million streams to 23 million viewers in September.

As fast as Facebook has grown in the past year, the online video viewing aspect was never something brands, nor advertisers really drove too much interest to. However, this could open up a door to change. Facebook actually had more than double the number of unique viewers Hulu had for October - but do remember, Facebook caters to the shorter and more personal videos, as compared to TV show length videos that flood Hulu.

Facebook began their venture into large-scale video streaming when they partnered with CNN to present the President Inauguration in January, then opened up another live streaming event with the NBA All-Star Game in February - both events drew a high level of engagement across Facebook.

More recently, the Foo Fighters in October, held a live concert that was streamed across Facebook, Livestream and the iPhone, and delivered 2 hours and 45 minutes of their greatest hits to more than 150,000 viewers around the world. The video drew 440,000 total live streams, with a max of 20,000 at any one time.

Clearly Facebook is making their platform more friendly from a video streaming perspective, think what could of been from an advertisers’ standpoint if the Foo Fighters’ record label was to try and monetize that almost 3 hour long show…exactly. On top of that, the concert trended on Twitter at #2, (#1 was Halloween) and it was also #1 on Digg.

Music has not been the only source of featured video for Facebook, the early premier of the NBC (and Hulu owner) show Community was debuted through Facebook on the NBC Fan Page.

Overall, the number of total U.S. video watchers dipped to 138.6 million unique viewers from 139.3 million in September. However, the number of total streams rose to 11.2 billion in October vs. 11.02 billion in September. And the number of streams per person was up to 81 in October, compared to 79.1 in September, and the time spent per viewer was up to 212.5 minutes in October, compared to 195.2 in September.

(Also published on http://ovrdrv.com/blog)

Inauguration & Facebook Connect.

As today marked the first day of what many people hope is a shift in direction for the United States, CNN also embraced the day with live video coverage tied into the Facebook Connect platform.

Inauguration Day, the day Sen. Barack Obama became the first African-American President of the United States.  The day the 44^th President of the United States expressed that although we are in a midst of crisis, and the challenges we face are real, they will be met. More importantly, President Obama expressed this thought through not only television and radio, but also through streaming online video on thousands of websites across the Internet. One of those websites who met this challenge and decided to integrate the most widely used social network with this online video component, was CNN.

On CNN.com, video was integrated with the Facebook Connect platform to create a streaming conversation piece that utilized the Facebook message status capabilities along with live streaming video. This combination turned into a very successful technique that allowed users to connect with their friends during the Inauguration, and chat directly with them through the status update & comment capabilities.

This is a great example of allowing social media to connect with important, live events in today’s society. This is the kind of connection that we need to enhance in today’s web 2.0 world. Tired we are of the naysayers who express that social media is for those who have too much time or use it too frivolously. This allowed people to interact on a personal level with each other while watching a highly publicized event. Going one step further, it allowed users from across the world to access the event and make their points through conversation.

With just this example, a simple CNN.com live webcast - we see the powerful message not only in the direct message itself, but through the community we interact with daily. Your friends, friends of friends, everyone involved in the Facebook community, were able to see each other’s comments and create interaction on the platform - using a large, public event and tying it to Facebook.

Quick numbers just in courtesy of the CNN.com broadcast, during the speech, there were over 1 million people who updated their status messages, more than 85,000 updates just a minute before President Obama began to speak to the crowd. Numbers alone…wow! To say that is impressive is an understatement. The crew at Facebook said that this was the largest number of user status updates ever, in such a short period of time.

Web 2.0 - Time for “Change”.

It was not only a powerful speech, but a powerful move in a web 2.0 world. We all know that social media has had a very strong impact on this past year’s election, and something we should recognize is the fact that social media is being embraced by the current administration. Barack Obama utilizes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and many more social networks to help connect with the users on a personal level, and realizes how important these social community networks have become in relation to his message.

Not only will President Obama’s message be relayed through these channels, but it will also help build grass-roots support for his agenda.

In a major move just done this morning, the official WhiteHouse.gov website was switched over from the old interface to the brand new ‘Obama’ look about an hour before his Inauguration. The new website looks very familiar when compared to his campaign websites. The most important aspect to recognize here, beyond the design, is the interactive features he offers on the platform. Tremendous calls-to-action that create a significant gateway to features such as his blog, videos, slideshows and much more!

Conclusion.

In the end, we have to examine the priority when confronting not only politics, but social media as well - to stand alone or stand together? When I see the new administration and analyze how they have reached where they are now - they did this with efforts that can be contributed greatly to social media and its external reach.  And when we look at a president who can connect with us in these channels and not just speak to us, BUT WITH US - no matter what party affiliation you are - you have to respect that!

God Speed.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…