YouTube

YouTube has expanded its live-streaming capabilities to any channel with more than 1000 subscribers.

As YouTube explains, key features of their live-streaming includes:

The Economist writes: One of the most popular videos this month on YouTube, an online video site, is a commercial by a bottled-water firm, Evian. In it, adults walking by a shop window see their baby lookalikes reflected, and start dancing with their former selves. The grown-up YouTube, however, looks nothing like it did in its infancy. Once a warehouse for pirated clips and amateur footage of cats, YouTube has been trying to transform itself into a sleeker, more sophisticated site that can compete with television for advertisers. It will soon look even more like television. On May 9th it is expected to announce that it will charge users for subscriptions to some “channels”.

Kelly Faircloth of BetaBeat writes: YouTube has just debuted an entertaining feature on its Trends page: a map where you can see which videos are the most popular by city and region. It is a K-hole without parallel.

For example! Did you know that while Alan Jackson’s cover of George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is unsurprisingly popular in the Southeast, Blake Shelton’s latest redneck anthem pops up more often in the Midwest? The True Blood season six trailer, on the other hand, practically outlines the shape of the country–apparently raunchy vampires aren’t as popular in the flyover states.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.

Mat Smith of Engadget writes: In an effort to give some visual pizazz to the often dry world of regional metrics, Google has announced a new trends map for its YouTube viewers. While the top video (True Blood's season six teaser, if you're asking) currently dominates across the (for now, US-only) map, there are some Walking Dead fans that can't get enough bad lip-reading in the North-West. An upgrade from YouTube's Trends Dashboard, the Trends Map can be tweaked for gender and age profiles, with scrollable bars showing the number of regions in which a video has claimed the top spot. While we're still not sure how YouTube is assigning the regions just yet, take a look at what's popular in your locale at the source below.

Adam Clark Estes of The Atlantic Wire writes: The Financial Times reports that the long-rumored paid subscription model is coming to YouTube as early as this week. The strategy will help YouTube compete not only with other online outlets like Netflix and Hulu but also with major networks like CBS. However, it's also a sea change in the site's approach to content, since YouTube has always been a destination for endless amounts of free user-generated content. Don't worry, though. Most of it will still be free — for now anyways.

Adam Clark Estes of The Atlantic Wire writes: The Financial Times reports that the long-rumored paid subscription model is coming to YouTube as early as this week. The strategy will help YouTube compete not only with other online outlets like Netflix and Hulu but also with major networks like CBS. However, it's also a sea change in the site's approach to content, since YouTube has always been a destination for endless amounts of free user-generated content. Don't worry, though. Most of it will still be free — for now anyways.

Dara Kerr on Cnet writes: On the heels of YouTube celebrating 1 billion unique monthly visitors to the site, the companyannounced Wednesday that these people are watching more than 6 billion hours of videos every month.

For a little perspective, that's equal to nearly 684,000 years of viewing -- or -- an hour a month for every human on Earth.

The 6 billion hours is up 50 percent more than last year and is also up substantially from just January, when the YouTube announced users were watching 4 billion hours of videos per month.

Sam Thielman of AdWeek writes: December 1995-January 1999
After seeing Trey Parker and Matt Stone's short Spirit of Christmas, TV exec Brian Graden commissions a second video he distributes to friends on VHS. The video—and Graden—help Parker and Stone land a development deal at Comedy Central that gives rise to South Park. Soon the video starts turning up in unexpected places, notably as an AVI file on the PlayStation game Tiger Woods ’99. From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to bulletin boards and burnable CDs.

January 1997
Macromedia acquires Jonathan Gay’s startup FutureSplash and shortens the name to Flash. It becomes the standard for Web video, though Microsoft and Apple continue to use proprietary formats. Competitor RealNetworks suffers. Adobe buys Macromedia in 2005.

AwesomenessTV, a You Tube channel targeted toward teens, will be releasing its first feature film in select theaters on Friday, a music documentary called Mindless Behavior: All Around the World. Says AwesomenessTV's Brian Robbins' of the venture, "It's an experiment."

Read more here on The New York Times.

To kick off the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which started yesterday, Sundance has once again teamed up with YouTube to bring a selection of its short films to the masses. 12 of the 65 short films that are screening at the festival are available to view now on YouTube's Screening Room channel.

Watch them here.

Fast Company's Co.Exist profiles YouTube for Good, the video site's initiative aimed at getting tools to and exposure for non-profits. Explains Hunter Walk, head of YouTube's Social Good Initiative Team, "It’s really more about YouTube as a whole than a separate program. It’s comprised of some efforts to ensure that nonprofits, educators, and activists are as successful on YouTube as entertainers, comedians, and athletes."

Read more about how it works here.

Publicis CEO Maurice Levy's holiday speech might just be the most entertaining business year-end roundup you'll see this year. The video cleverly uses some of YouTube's most basic functions (pausing/playing, changing the volume, changing the video quality) to humorous results. Lower the volume to see Levy whisper his speech, pause it so catch him polishing a seashell while he waits for you to come back. We won't spoil what happens when you change the video quality or go full-screen.

Click below to experience the interactive video for yourself.

Fans shot the concert film depicting Radiohead's 9/29/11 show at the Roseland Ballroom. but it was the band itself that provided the audio direct from its soundboard. The result is an almost two-hour YouTube video that, despite some shaky video angles, gives more fans a chance to experience one of the band's more intimate shows.

Watch below. (via Tubefilter)

BBC Worldwide has announced the launch of Earth Unplugged a new YouTube channel from BBC Earth, BBC Worldwide's global natural history brand.

The channel will feature a feast of new films created for a digital audience by BBC Earth Productions and is set to become a destination site for wildlife and nature. Earth Unplugged is BBC Worldwide's first original-content channel for YouTube and forms part of the company's plans to build a true consumer facing multi-channel network on the platform.

When Felix Baumgartner skydived from 24 miles above the earth, breaking the sound barrier and records, YouTube broke its own records: by recording the biggest audience to ever tune into an online live-stream. Eight million people watched live as Baumgartner took his historic jump.

In an effort to get people to stay on its site longer, YouTube is now rewarding those videos that keep viewers' attention by ranking videos based on time watched and not just clicks. Higher ranked videos appear further up in search results.

Said YouTube, "These changes better surface the videos that viewers actually watch, over those that they click on and then abandon."

Read more here on CNET.

What's the next step for video giant YouTube now that they're already heavily invested in original content? Curation.

YouTube has just announced that they will add 60 more original content channels on top of the 100 they launched earlier this year and invest $200 million into them. Writes Advertising Age, "Unlike the first 100, the new round is focused more on foreign TV formats and properties, but it also includes some additional channels from current partners such as Vice and Everyday Health.The new round of investment is another vote of confidence in the strategy led by [Robert] Kyncl, who said 25 of the first 100 originals now average 1 million views a week.

All Things D chats with Robert Kyncl, the mastermind behind the site's original channels, about what the future holds for the mega video hub and lessons learned from his great experiment.