YouTube starts paid subscription service

Google's YouTube video service is dipping its toe into pay television by starting on Thursday a subscription service with 30 content creators, including children's programmers Sesame Street and Muppet creator The Jim Henson Co, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

YouTube, the world's largest video website, allows creators to set subscription fees and accept advertisements, at their discretion, for the channels they create.

For $4.99 a month, subscribers can get golf lessons from the PGA Golf Academy. The Laugh Factory charges $2.99 for clips of stand-up comedy routines and Henson charges $2.99 for full length episodes of "Sid The Science Kid" and "Fraggle Rock."

YouTube has spoken repeatedly about its intent to experiment with paid channels, and has made no secret about its intent to be a major player in quality content.

"If feels to me as if history is repeating itself, said Tony Vinciquerra, former chairman of News Corp's Fox Networks Group. "In the early '80s cable providers subsidized channels to enhance offerings to consumers and increase penetration. Fast forward to today, and YouTube is subsidizing the development of new content offerings."

YouTube will feature content from traditional TV and film producers, company executives said, and at the launch featured children's videos from National Geographic and videos from cable channel HDNet.

That could eventually be a threat to cable and TV operators, but no time soon, said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst with BTIG LLC.

"I think everyone who creates video programming should be worried about the growth of new content channels," he said. "Broadcast TV has been hurt by cable. Broadcast is still a very large business despite fragmentation."

Content creators will get most of their revenue from subscriptions, as they already do from advertising on the site, according to company officials.

In March, YouTube said on its blog that it has more than 1 billion unique users a month. The new subscription service will be available in 10 countries at launch.

YouTube has spent more than $100 million to help about 150 media partners create and promote specialized YouTube video channels dedicated to topics ranging from food to sports.

"Consumers have gotten used to getting their content on the web," said Laura Martin, senior analyst with Needham and Co. "The question is whether they will pay for it."

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YouTube boosted by music videos

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter Florence Welch performed at a concert in east London on Tuesday night Visits to video-sharing websites by UK users have gone up by more than a third in the last year.

The biggest driver of traffic to those sites is music videos (33%), followed by TV shows (17%), film (11%), gaming (10%) and news (9%).

The figures, from internet research company Experian Hitwise, show YouTube accounts for nearly 70% of all video website hits.

It's now the third most popular site in the UK after Google and Facebook.

Lady Gaga was the most in demand for artist within music searches.

Florence Welch, from Florence and the Machine, said the site was also a benefit in providing inspiration to songwriters.

She says: "I became really obsessed with watching Otis Reading, Sam and Dave, clips from the '60s and the Lana Del Rey videos recently.

"YouTube is a huge thing for me to find songs, it's an amazing thing and full of the most random songs.

"I think for finding random stuff and seeing new things it's really useful".

'800 million hours'

The research was gathered between September 2010 and September 2011.

During that time 240 million hours every month were spent by British internet users watching videos online.

Illustrating its dominance in this area, Google owned YouTube, clocked up 184 million of those hours.

That number is still dwarfed by the amount of time spent on social networking sites though.

The same research shows 800 million hours were spent each month on sites like Facebook and Twitter by the UK's internet users.

Despite YouTube's dominance of video sharing websites there was also strong growth for other ones too.

BBC iPlayer, the second most popular video site, experienced a 22% rise in traffic last year.

That means the number of visits to the site has doubled in the last three years.

Follow our technology reporter Dan Whitworth on Twitter

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How to start a Google+ Hangout on YouTube

YouTube

The option to start a Google+ Hangout now appears in the bottom of the "Share" menu on YouTube videos.

A Google+ Hangout — a video chat with up to ten participants — can be a great way to watch YouTube videos together with friends who are spread across the world. But what if you don't feel like heading to the Google+ website every time you want to start a chat like that? Can you kick things off directly from a YouTube clip?

Sure!

As TechCrunch reports, YouTube has added an extra button to the "Share" menu which pops up underneath video clips — a "Start a Google+ Hangout" button. All you have to do is give that shiny new button a click and select which of your Circles you want to share the Hangout with.

Just try to avoid tricking your friends into watching too many videos of Rick Astley using this method. I suspect they might get tired of it rather quickly.

Related stories:

Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook. Oh, and she can be found on Google+, too.

View the original article here

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How to start a Google+ Hangout on YouTube

YouTube

The option to start a Google+ Hangout now appears in the bottom of the "Share" menu on YouTube videos.

A Google+ Hangout — a video chat with up to ten participants — can be a great way to watch YouTube videos together with friends who are spread across the world. But what if you don't feel like heading to the Google+ website every time you want to start a chat like that? Can you kick things off directly from a YouTube clip?

Sure!

As TechCrunch reports, YouTube has added an extra button to the "Share" menu which pops up underneath video clips — a "Start a Google+ Hangout" button. All you have to do is give that shiny new button a click and select which of your Circles you want to share the Hangout with.

Just try to avoid tricking your friends into watching too many videos of Rick Astley using this method. I suspect they might get tired of it rather quickly.

Related stories:

Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook. Oh, and she can be found on Google+, too.

View the original article here

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Marketers Expect To Increase Advertising on YouTube, LinkedIn & Foursquare [STUDY]

In the world of social media marketing, Facebook and Twitter dominate — but advertising on YouTube, LinkedIn and Foursquare is expected to increase in the coming year, according to research conducted at the May 2011 Pivot Conference.

Of the marketers surveyed, two-thirds were already participating in social media advertising, and 18% more planned to initiate campaigns in the next year. Success rates were nearly split down the middle, with 54% of those running ads reporting that they were satisfied with their social advertising activities.

Among survey respondents, 93% have deployed campaigns on Facebook, while 78% of respondents have advertised on Twitter.

The survey points toward an increase in advertising spend on YouTube, LinkedIn and Foursquare. At least 20% of respondents plan on deploying programs on those platforms in the next year.

It looks like a number of social platforms will be losing out on the advertising front in the coming year as well. More than 50% of advertisers responded that they have never — and do not plan to — run campaigns on MySpace, Meebo, Gowalla, Mylife and Tagged.

Despite the fact that a large number of advertisers surveyed have activated social campaigns, Facebook’s social advertising platform seems to be the only one that’s getting good ratings out of marketers. The above chart from eMarketer illustrates how ad offerings on social sites stack up against one another. Perhaps most surprising is the finding that only 22% of respondents believe that Foursquare’s ad offerings are “excellent” or “good.”

Regardless of the iffy feelings that marketers have toward current ad offerings on social platforms, this study indicates that marketers are ready to experiment with more social platforms beyond Facebook and Twitter.

What are your thoughts on social advertising? Which platforms does your company use and which does it plan to try in the coming year? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ooyoo

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YouTube Stars Now Have Klout

Klout now factors in YouTube activity as part of its scoring system for social influence.

The feature, which rolled out on Monday evening, allows a user to sync his or her YouTube and Klout accounts. Once synced, Klout will then analyze comments, engagement, likes, subscriber counts and other information in a user’s YouTube account and factor it into a user’s final Klout score. Klout uses social data from Twitter, Facebook and other social media services in order to score a user’s social influence from one to 100.

While some people may not care about a score of their social influence, more and more brands do. Businesses have been using Klout to identify social influencers in order to offer them perks and freebies. Most recently Klout partnered with Spotify to offer invites to users with high Klout scores.

The San Francisco-based startup has been on a roll in recent months. In June it added LinkedIn, and in July it started factoring in Foursquare data into Klout scores. It also launched a +K button to identify topical experts across social media. The startup has also announced that it will add Google+ once the search giant releases an API for its social network.

Klout has raised $10 million in three rounds of funding from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, ff Venture Capital, Lucid Ventures and a host of angel investors including Paige Craig and Bobby Yazdani.

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Like Jazz? Use YouTube To Create Your Own Jams

Too agoraphobic to make it to one of those outdoor jazz concerts? Well, then, check out YouTube Free Jazz, an interesting little digital art project that makes music from noise.

YouTube Free Jazz was created by new media artist David Kraftsow, who previously created such innovations as First-Person Tetris (an online game in which the screen rotates every time you move a piece) and YouTube Rave (which turns any YouTube video into a party).

Visit the site and YouTube Free Jazz will create a sound collage from random YouTube videos, reminiscent of jazz. You can type new keywords to create more mashups based on videos with that keyword.

It might not be as pleasing to the ear as the real deal, but, hey, it’s free.

[via MetaFilter]

Image courtesy of Flickr, aparutzi

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