Posts Tagged ‘youtube’
YouTube Pulitzer social media prize
September 25th, 2008
Just wanted to share a great YouTube social media opportunity/competition with you for young and aspiring journalists
A few years ago, perhaps our own Tim Greenhalgh a former Times journalist, or our own Liberate Media director Wendy McAuliffe a former NMA technology editor could have had a shot at this.
The opportunity is a YouTube contest called Project:Report in conjunction with Sony VAIO, Intel and Pulitzer Center, and it’s intended for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might not otherwise be told.
The competition is split over three rounds, with an assignment in each. Winners of each round will receive technology prizes from Sony VAIO & Intel, and the grand prize winner will be granted a $10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Centre to report on a story abroad. A great prize!
The site also offers some tips on how to produce the video, with lots of product placement courtesy of Sony - you gotta get something back for offering the prizes!
Chinwag Live: Search versus Recommendation a no-brainer debate
September 3rd, 2008
Last night’s Chinwag Live: Search v. Recommendation event was not the packed out, sweaty debacle that it usually is. My hunch is the motion of the debate was not as sexy as widgets or social media measurement, and was also pretty much a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day, there’s not much of a case that can be made to suggest recommendation/review sites will win out over super beast Google (the ‘search’ side of the argument quickly became a Google one - pointed out by a heckler who commented “let’s get off Google’s dick!”).
With that in mind, there was little debating going on, but some interesting points were made about recommendation sites from a B2C point of view - interestingly no one brought up the role they can play within a B2B audience. To summarise:
- Only a fraction of a percentage of internet users add ‘+review’ to their search phrase - something that I was very surprised about as I do it all the time! I’d be interested to see more detailed stats on how search linguistics change between searching for specific information, and searching for inspiration or trusted reviews.
- Recommendation sites know very little about their active reviewers at the moment, and it was agreed that this detail is currently difficult to obtain. Panelist Walid Al Saqqaf, co-founder & COO of TrustedPlaces admitted that only 17% of his registered users write reviews, while a “much smaller” percentage of unregistered users are active reviewers.
- YouTube is becoming a popular destination for searching for reviews, particularly for mobile phones and digital cameras, and has the potential to overtake written review sites in the future.
- Twitter is also increasingly being used for micro-reviews.
- It is currently very difficult to measure reviewer intent across recommendation sites, which is limiting their usefulness and relevancy. According to Chinwag panelist Lisa Ditlefsen, Head of Search at Base One, Microsoft is currently looking to limit the number of review sites that rank in natural search rankings.
- People are generally more happy to give out personal information about themselves on social networks such as Facebook and Bebo, than on review websites such as Tripadvisor. The networking opportunity, from a business or personal perspective, is a key aspect that review websites need to tap into.
A good review of the event is also available on The Crowdstorm blog.
New web 2.0 Number 10 website review
August 12th, 2008
Normally I would not go any where near this site, but out of interest and a tip off on Twitter from Drew B which read -
drewb 10 Downing Street has unveiled it’s new ‘Beta’ site. It looks all web 2.0 with Flickr and Twitter right in there http://www.number10.gov.uk/
It got me very excited!
The words Beta, web 2.0, Flickr, Twitter, and 10 Downing Street, don’t go together do they?
They do now!
First impressions of the Number 10 site are very impressive, the site seam very clean and well laid out.
On the right hand side you have nice big coloured boxes showcasing the latest PM’s activities from web 2.0 main stream sites such as Fickr, Youtube and the PM’s Twitter channel, all of which can be Dugg shared on Del.icio.us or Facebook and have their own RSS feeds.
Other nice additions include Number 10 TV based on the Brightcove platform, podcasts and even transcripts of the podcasts. They have also included a webchat feature that allows you to pose questions direct to the people who make the decisions which affect your lives.
It’s nice to see that the powers that be are taking interaction, new innovations, and embracing web 2.0 in a positive fashion.
Here is the new web introduction video.
Google’s Pirates vs Viacom’s Snoops
July 4th, 2008
No, i’m not talking about a sponsorship-crazed football match; I’m referring to the Google v Viacom lawsuit in the U.S., which, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, has stirred up a whole load of privacy and data issues for us all to argue about over the coming weeks and months.
However, for me, the issue is why request this data in the first place? What is Viacom trying to prove? According to the ruling, Viacom apparently needs access to the personal data of more than 100 million people to build a case against Google’s (YouTube) alleged piracy of various Viacom content, originating from the likes of MTV and Nickelodeon.
No matter how outrageous getting access to all that personal data to fight a court case is, do we really think Viacom has done this to conduct a detailed examination of the viewing habits of millions of people around the world, as some have suggested? Personally I doubt Viacom would be that obvious, but in the cold light of day, i’m struggling with the alternatives.
What can they do? Review all that data, win the case and disrupt the movement of content on the web just because they are fighting a losing battle against content sharing in the long term? Or, somehow use that data to gain advantage.
Seems very odd, especially when the data required to prove YouTube’s piracy, or not, is most likely available via other means.
Maybe Viacom is taking some sort of reverse privacy stand and showing us all how much data large web-based content providers hold on us all, and in fact succeeding where the U.S. Government failed in getting Google to hand over its data.
Maybe it’s just getting one over on Google.
Either way, Google is fighting to be allowed to clean the data of personal information. So we shall see.
Bobbie Johnson offers a good write-up of the story in the Guardian.
How do you respond effectively to a negative video leak?
April 11th, 2008
I was thinking about PR use of video this week in a positive mood when the Wal-mart internal video story broke.
At first, it seemed like a trivial side-story to the Us economic meltdown, and one that would die away pretty quickly along with the muffled laughter from the consumer giant’s competitors.
But it seems to have a lot of life in it yet as the company that released selective clips of internal Wal-mart events refuses to back away from offering the entire 30-year catalogue to anyone who wants to pay. Clips are out on YouTube and seeded on many key sites, including the pressure group site Walmart Watch .
How would a PR2.0 agency respond to the story, spreading visually across the web.
I may have missed something but the Wal-Mart site and its blogs make no reference to the story and there has been limited comment from the company on business TV and to press agencies.
But the story is damaging and adding weight to the campaigners’ arguments against the company and its practices.
So, the questions I’m wrestling with are: how do you respond effectively to a negative video leak? Do you release counter-footage, shoot new distractive video that entertains and shows you in a more positive light? Do you have to respond in a visual way at all or go for non-contextual, traditional response.
Do you just ignore it and hope it goes away?
It’d be good to hear what you think.