Tag Archive for 'YouTube'

Old Spice Guy raises the bar on Twitter marketing with personalized video replies.

Published on July 13, 2010 in Twitter, business, social media and video. View Comments

Okay, I like this, it’s good marketing. It’s the kind of marketing people actually like, which is uncommon to say the least.

Following the hugely popular and entertaining Old Spice 30 sec commercial (which really proves that to be viral or contagious it just has to be good), the Old Spice Guy is currently replying to well known people on Twitter with funny, personalized videos. The videos are getting a big kick-along with the addition of a paid Old Spice Promoted Trending Topic.

Old Spice Twitter Promoted Trending Topic

So far the video replies are mostly to influential and popular people and blogs, such as Kevin Rose, Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton, The Huffington Post, Gizmodo, Alyssa Milano, Jason Calacanis and many others, even to Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. Needless to say, tweets and links to videos are being passed around Twitter at an incredible rate. They are of course being embedded in many blogs too, including this one.

This is one of the best paid campaigns I’ve seen so far on Twitter (and YouTube). The copywriter(s) involved must be having a a lot of fun writing the quick response videos too!

10 new stats showing the fast growing popularity of social media.

Published on June 16, 2010 in Facebook, Google, blogging, business and social media. View Comments

According to new data from Nielson and Hitwise, social media is becoming incredibly popular worldwide. Let’s get straight to it, the stats speak for themselves.

  1. Three quarters of web users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online.
  2. The numbers of people visiting social networks and blogs has increased by 24% from last year.
  3. The average visitor spends 66 percent more time on these sites than a year ago.
  4. The average visitor spent almost 6 hours on networks and blogs in April 2010 as opposed to 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.
  5. According to Hitwise, Facebook’s overall web traffic pulled ahead of Google’s for the first time in the U.S. in March 2010.
  6. People in the U.K. are now visiting social networks more than they’re visiting search engines.
  7. YouTube recently surpassed two billion views per day.
  8. Twitter has now reached 65 million tweets a day and 2 billion tweets per month.
  9. At 86 percent, Brazil has the highest percentage of web users visiting social networks.
  10. Australian web users spend the most time on social networking sites, averaging 7 hours 19 minutes in April. The U.S. and Italy came in second and third with six and a half hours each.

What seems clear from these stats and others before them, is that the internet is becoming a much more human and social place than it used to be. Do these stats reflect the amount of time and frequency you use social network and blogs?  My own usage is certainly way above the averages stated here!

Google launches Gulf oil spill crisis response and starts crowdsourcing news

Published on May 5, 2010 in Google, clean tech, environment, social media, technology and video. View Comments

google crisis response

Further to my previous post about the Gulf oil spill in relation to social media, Google has launched a Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Crisis Response page. Every day a new Google Earth layer is being produced to track the spread of of the oil spill.

In addition, Google is encouraging people to help by volunteering during the crisis and by donating to the Alabama Coastal Foundation.

Interestingly, they are also attempting to crowdsource news by asking people to upload their own videos of the Gulf oil spill as the situation develops. The videos will automatically be fed back to the crisis page.

There is also a Deepwater Horizon oil spill page developing on Wikipedia, with a substantial and growing number of references. No doubt this will become a significant resource as the disaster continues to unfold.

YouTube is now 5 years old: this was the first video

Published on April 29, 2010 in Google, social media, technology and video. View Comments

It’s hard to believe that YouTube is now 5 years old. Although the domain was apparently registered in February 2005, this was the first video, posted on April 23, 2005:

It’s not a very exciting video, or very funny, considering it’s in the comedy category. Hey that’s YouTube for you, and the internet in general for that matter. You take the good with the bad but it’s all there. In fact, YouTube now serves more than 1 billion videos per day!

Facebook: 1 Billion Video Views A Month, 250 Million Users

Published on July 22, 2009 in Facebook, social media and video. View Comments

That’s right, 1 BILLION video views a month. As TechCrunch points out, this is still fewer than YouTube’s 1.2 billion EVERY DAY, but it still makes Facebook one of the most popular video sharing sites on the web.

This news comes just a few days after Facebook announced that 250 million people now use the network worldwide. This was an increase of 50 million people in just 3 months. That folks, is strong growth!