Friday, 24 February 2012

This week's top news on YouTube: Journalists killed in Homs, soldiers killed in Afghanistan riots, Buenos Aires train crash

Everyday on the CitizenTube channel (and @CitizenTube on Twitter), along with our curation partners @storyful, we look at how the top news stories are covered on YouTube. Each week we post a weekly recap of the top news stories of the week, as seen through the lens of both citizen-reported footage and professional news coverage.
Will Houghteling, YouTube Marketing, recently watched 'Us Placers'.

    Get More Into: Australia’s Laneway Festival

    Since we missed Music Tuesday this week, we wanted to take you back to Australia for another dose of the local music scene. Enjoy!

    From big-time dream-pop to big-haired rock & roll, there are plenty of reasons to love festival season in the Southern hemisphere. Following the pumped up kicks, rockabilly licks, and modern-day lullabies that brought sold out crowds across Australia for Big Day Out, we spent the day hanging at St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Sydney. What began as a packed side-alley show in Melbourne has quickly developed into a national touring event and a favourite summer festival.

    Between sets in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Auckland, and Singapore, here’s what some of Laneway’s biggest names had to say about touring down under, the Laneway vibe, and their favorite inspirational acts on YouTube:
    • The Horrors get into psychadelic pop and out-of-this world sounds of Connan Mockasin
    • Multi-instrumentalist, arranger, producer and vocalist Jonti talks big beats and big sounds of Flying Lotus
    • Hear what outstanding female vocalist have inspired The Drums to come together as a band
    • Recorded in their same hometown, Twin Shadows’ At My Heels brings laughs & tears to electronic pop duo Chairlift
    • M83, known the world over for reverb effects and loud instrumentals, has his first encounter with the electronic music of Jean Michel Jarre


    The Laneway crew’s just completed their tour but you can enjoy your own little taste of this iconic Australian festival right here on YouTube.

    Ernesto Soriano III, YouTube Australia, recently watched “Toro y Moi ‘Still Sound’.”

    Thursday, 23 February 2012

    Four new Indian languages on YouTube: Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu

    YouTube opened its doors in India in May 2008, and since then we’ve been working to make YouTube accessible for the entire Indian population — and its 30 regional languages. Beyond Hindi and English, we’ve added Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, and Tamil over the years, and today we’re welcoming four more to YouTube.

    Now you can navigate the site in Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu, which are spoken by almost 200 million Indians. This also brings the total of available languages on YouTube to 58.

    For Telugu, we have more than 100 films of Tollywood cinema, as well as partners like vegetarian cooking channel Gayatrivantillu who make videos for the web and have a growing global audience. For Kannada, Shemaroo Kannada and Anand Audio bring you music, drama, comedy and more to your homepage guide. Fans of Malayalam cinema should check out channels like Metro Matinee Videos and Hungama Malayalam. When it comes to news, YouTube’s partners like TV 9 provide news in both Kannada and Gujarati, and TheTimesKerala offers clips in Malayalam.

    GujaratiKannada
    MalayalamTelugu

    We hope this helps even more of you enjoy channels on YouTube in your native language, as we work to make the site accessible around the world.

    Aditi Rajwanshi, YouTube India partner manager, recently watched "Chutney for Idli, Dosa, Upma, Vada etc."

    Game on: YouTube Creator Playbook Version 2 now available

    When we first released the YouTube Creator Playbook with tips for succeeding on YouTube, things were a little different. You didn’t have all the new channel features, the homepage didn’t yet have a guide to help you find and follow to channels you like, and you were uploading 48 hours a minute.

    As we work on the site, we want to make sure you’re the first to know every tip and trick to succeed on YouTube, so today we’re launching version two of the YouTube Creator Playbook. In addition to these updates, almost every page includes your feedback (thank you!). Here’s a few of the key things to look for in the new version:

    New channel & homepage section
    With the launch of our new channel pages and updated homepage, we’ve created a new section on how to organize your videos for different audiences, and how to program your channel to help you make the most of the feed on the YouTube homepage.

    Go global
    Your channel reaches a global audience, so we’ve added a new section to help creators create, program, and optimize for audiences around the world.

    Updates to annotations, playlists, publishing and more
    Your feedback and new features helped us update much of the playbook on topics like annotations, playlists & video responses and call to actions.

    Glossary
    If you’re new to YouTube or the Creator Playbook, we’ve included a glossary to help you quickly learn all the site’s features, and the strategies, terms, and topics used in the playbook.



    We hope this update to the YouTube Creator Playbook is a helpful tool if you’re just coming to YouTube for the first time, as well as help YouTube pros quickly learn new features to keep expanding your audience. We’ll be talking more about the new playbook during our Partner Meet-Up Livestream on YouTube.com/youtube at 5pm PT today.

    Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - Area 52 Album Trailer.”

    Wednesday, 22 February 2012

    From snowflakes to surfactants: meet the YouTube Space Lab regional winners

    At the end of January, we invited you to choose your favorite YouTube Space Lab experiment ideas from sixty finalist teams, and today we have our winners! More than 100,000 of you cast your votes that combined with the scores from our panel of judges to decide the regional winners for the final stage of the competition. Find out who won below and you can meet them all on the Space Lab Channel.

    14 - 16 year old regional winning teams
    17 - 18 year old regional winning teams:
    The six regional winning teams will travel to Washington, D.C., where we’ll announce the two global winners (one team from each age group). These two winners will have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed on YouTube as part of a global event celebrating science and space. While in Washington, all the teams will take part in a series of activities to honor their achievements, including the opportunity to experience weightlessness on a ZERO-G flight.

    Space Lab invited budding scientists to submit a YouTube video describing an idea for an experiment that could be carried out aboard the ISS. The channel, which serves as a launch pad for discovering great space and science videos on YouTube, has received more than 50 million views worldwide throughout the course of the competition. This week we’re uploading interviews with the winners in their hometowns, so subscribe to the channel to keep up to date with all the latest from here on Earth!

    Zahaan Bharmal, YouTube Space Lab lead, recently watched the “ESA Education (English)” playlist.

    Tuesday, 21 February 2012

    Christchurch Earthquake — One Year Later: live streaming the memorial service on YouTube

    Cross posted from the Google New Zealand Blog.

    On the one year anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake, the New Zealand Herald is providing full coverage of the city’s memorial services on YouTube, commemorating the lives that were lost and those who are still affected by the tragedy. The live-stream of the memorial services starts today on NZ Herald’s YouTube channel.

    On February 22, 2011, Christchurch was rocked by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake, killing 185 people and devastating much of the historic city centre. The state broadcaster’s raw coverage of the immediate aftermath was one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube on that day, as millions of people around the world stopped to watch the tragedy unfold.

    Christchurch, is New Zealand’s second-largest city, located on the South Island. The idyllic town is known for its friendly people, abundant gardens, and historic stone buildings. And its convenient location makes an easy gateway to mountains, beaches — and Hobbits.

    Quakes have continued in Christchurch over the last year. Despite this hardship, we remain inspired by the great resilience of the city’s residents, who have worked hard toward rebuilding their hometown and keeping alive the memory of the tragedy.

    Richard North, a YouTuber from Christchurch, recently watched "John Key on Christchurch anniversary."

    Friday, 17 February 2012

    And the YouTube Ad Blitz winners are...

    While America’s feelings were divided on the outcome of the game, there’s one aspect of Super Bowl Sunday that crosses team loyalties and brings us together — the commercials. This year’s commercials had something for everyone, from cute dogs to talking babies to Adriana Lima. After a week of intense competition in the YouTube Ad Blitz contest, the votes are in and you voted M&M’S “Just My Shell” commercial as your favorite ad of the Super Bowl!



    Rounding out the top five commercials of the big game are spots from Chrysler Group, Bud Light, Chevy Silverado and Doritos:

    2. Chrysler Group “Halftime in America”
    3. Bud Light “Rescue Dog”
    4. Chevy Silverado “2012”
    5. Doritos “Man's Best Friend”

    Give me the stats!
    In its fifth year running, YouTube Ad Blitz has already surpassed previous years with 133M views from fans worldwide, up 43 percent from last year (as of Sunday, 2/12)...and still counting! In fact, during game time roughly 6 percent of all U.S. YouTube traffic came from people watching Super Bowl commercials on Ad Blitz.

    The days that saw the highest volume of views were Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, making up 82 percent of total views received over the week. And it wasn’t just fans in the states seeking out the commercials — nearly 18 percent of all views came from outside of the U.S. Other interesting stats include:
    • The most popular ads drove the majority of views - 65 percent of video views came from the top ten commercials.
    • Google searches related to [Super Bowl commercials] peaked on Monday, but continued through the rest of the week.
    • More than 32 percent 
of all mobile votes occurred on Tablet devices, our first year running Ad Blitz on a tablet-optimized channel.
    Tune into the YouTube homepage today to check out the top five spots!

    Mike Yapp, director, YouTube Creative Content, recently watched “The Jeremy Lin Show at MSG!”