Welcome to the Youtube Effect

Welcome to the YouTube effect. We all use YouTube. Some post videos, some just watch them, but we all can admit to being a part of the crowd huddled around a computer to gaze at some hilarious, or shocking, video. It is an internet phenomenon because of its financial success and its impact on the way information is gathered and shared. Individuals acting on their own, sharing what they think the world needs to see and understand. Every month, YouTube receives 20 million visitors, who watch 100 million video clips a day. There are 65,000 new videos posted every day. We all know the ridiculous clips produced by bored and/or intoxicated college students, but some are serious.

YouTube is a tool that is used by everyone; college students, businesses, human rights groups, and even terrorists. Some are clips of incidents that have political consequences or document important trends, such as global warming, illegal immigration, and corruption. Some videos reveal truths. Others spread disinformation, propaganda, and outright lies. All are part of the YouTube effect.

One example of a serious incident is the recent tragedy where Chinese soldiers shot down Tibetan monks, women, and children in cold blood. The government might have escaped, the deaths silent and frozen in the mountains. Instead, a passing climber who caught the murders on tape discovered and shared them with the world. YouTube was his tool through which he cried out for justice in the face of such an intimidating red horror. The world sat in their homes gasping at what played out before their very eyes. The response was less than what I had hoped for. Our ambassador wagged his finger in displeasure at the Chinese government while his boss (George W. Bush) turned a blind eye and calmly shook hands ensuring more economic commerce (which will benefit his pocket). I hope that in time, more injustices throughout the world maybe brought to the light. And as a nation of individuals (and hopefully soon a competent leader), once educated, can make this world a better place.

Popularity: 5% [?]

RSS: What is it?… and why use it?

RSS is a way to get the vast amount of info on the internet to come to you.

This is a great intro to RSS… (3:43)

After getting a good reader like Google Reader or Bloglines subscribe to some feeds. Every so often visit your reader to see what new content has come your way.If you’re looking for some good feeds, Lifehacker is a great one to start with. Copyblogger is a great blog for copywriting tips and blogging.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our feed!

Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader by ReadWriteWeb

RSS: Best Design Practices and Icons by Smashing Magazine

Creative RSS Button - Could it Work? by Ann Smarty

How do you Consume or Distribute Your RSS Content? by Lifehacker

14 “OTHER” Ways to Use RSS Feeds by makeuseof.com

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Google’s Prey: List of Acquisitions by Google

Here is a great list of acquisitions that Google has made over the years.

Google has built a veritable empire with its many acquisitions. And like Microsoft before them, have come under attack for building a “monopoly”.

The search giant is supposed to be going into the cell phone biz soon too. What do you think will come of that and what new businesses will Google be leaping into?

Photo by: keso

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Are you remarkable? Ditch the resume!

Marketing guru Seth Godin recently made a shocking statement…

“I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.”

Go read his blog post and learn why you shouldn’t have a resume and the 4 things you can do to impress a future employer.

Quick tip: Seth’s blog is a really great resource for anyone who does anything remotely related to marketing (i.e. anyone in business)

Popularity: 17% [?]

TV Shows Whenever! | Hulu

TV shows have now (legally) joined the internet!

Today, Hulu was opened to the public. This new site offers MANY popular TV shows.

This project has the support of NBC Universal , Sony, MGM, FOX and over 50 other media companies.

The shows are accompanied by small commercials and they are doing something I thought was quite creative, they allow the viewer to select which of two commercials they want to watch. Nobody likes commercials but at least you get to pick your poison?

Here is a taste of some of the shows they have:

• The Simpsons
• Family Guy
• The Office
• Monk
• Psych
• Firefly
• The A-Team (yes, Dr. T!)
• Prisonbreak
• House
• Arrested Development
• Heroes
• 24
• Terminato: Sarah Conner Chronicles
• Saturday Night Live
• Super Bowl Ads
• I Dream of Jeanie

Here is an alphabetical list of the dozens of shows they have.

Its movie list wasn’t as impressive but included:

• Ice Age
• Master and Commander
• The Simpson’s Movie
• The Usual Suspects
• Man on the Moon
• Juno
• October Sky
• Live Free or Die Hard
• X2: X-Men United
• Speed

Here is an alphabetical list of all their movies

Popularity: 59% [?]

Jott - Email a Phone Call?

Jott might be the next big thing in note taking. Pick up your phone, call a number, say something, and minutes later you are sent an email saying what you just said. This is a great service if you happen to have a great idea, but can’t get to a piece of paper.

www.jott.com provides a voice to text service (by the way, all for free) which makes it much easier to stay organized. In addition to straight emails, Jott allows people to set reminders and make lists as well. Whatever you speak into your phone, Jott will translate to text and provide it to you via email or a web site.

Popularity: 56% [?]

Anonymous: Cyber Vigilantes?

Blake’s Post about that bill against anonymous posting got me curious about things so I’ve been looking around, getting a feel for what folks reactions are online and checking out some of the legal issues. Anyway, in my curiosity I’ve stumbled across something that gives me pause and presents me with a bit of a problem. They’re a group self-dubbed “Anonymous” and I don’t quite know what to do with them.

From what I can gather, Anonymous is a rather decentralized group, there doesn’t seem to be any hierarchy or leaders or even qualifications for membership apart from deciding that you are one. My guess would be its a blanket term that covers a bunch of smaller individual group. Yet they still manage to act as a whole and have demonstrated on several occasions their ability to make an impact both on and off line.

On the one hand, they seem to be doing some good things. On December 7, 2007, Global News ran a story on the arrest of an alleged child predator by the name of Chris Forcand. The story said that the police investigation of Forcand began when detectives were contacted by a “self described internet teen vigilante group called anonymous,” who had already been tracking Forcand. Apparently Forcand had approached some members of the group and they began a campaign against him. Eventually Anonymous was able to dicover Forcand’s identity and location and contacted Toronto police, who set up a sting operation and arrested Forcand.

Global News Footage Story in Toronto Sun

At the other end of things, Amonymous hardly seems to be an entirely altruistic group. Anonymous has reportedly been behind less benevolent movements, including the Hacking of MySpace pages, “raids” on several forums, online gaming networks and other sites, and a massive campaign to spoil the ending to the Harry Potter books. (Okay… that one makes me laugh… but it’s still copyright infringement!)

Fox News Ran a story on Anonymous referring to them as an “Internet Hate Machine” and “Domestic Terrorists.” A writer for “Wired News” however calls the group nothing more than “Supremely bored 15 year olds.” And claims that the fox new story is the best prank the group has ever played.

In any case, these don’t always seem to be the nicest of guys. One of the groups slogans reads: “Anonymous: Because none of us are as cruel as all of us.”

The biggest notice Anonymous has gotten by far has been for it’s recent self proclaimed “war” against the church of Scientology dubbed “Project Chanology.” On January 12, 2008, a video produced by the Church of Scientology was leaked to the Internet and uploaded to YouTube. The Church of Scientology claimed copyright violation and requested that YouTube remove the video. Soon after, Anonymous released a YouTube video declaring their campaign against the church of Scientology. Anonymous attacked the church of Scientology with DOS attacks, prank calls and black faxes. In a subsequent YouTube video they called for protests outside of Scientology centers and on February 10, 2008 some 7,000 people world wide showed up to protest outside of Scientology centers in 93 cities worldwide. Cities in which 100 or more participated included Dublin, Ireland, Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas and Austin, Texas, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, Toronto, Canada, Clearwater, Florida, St. Louis, Missouri, New York City and London, England. Another rally is scheduled for March 15. Beware the ides?

This gives a pretty astounding picture of what this underground group is capable of. So the question is, how do we react to this? Yeah, the group is certainly responsible for some good things, no one likes a pedophile, but from what I’ve seen they can be pretty volatile as well, and is it really a good idea to encourage online vigilantism? At the same time, I can’t help but think of that bill against online anonymity. I don’t want my full name showing up places online, and if a bill like that managed to actually gain some support… well I’m pretty sure these Anonymous guys would fight it and fight it hard. That’s good for me, so I kinda want these guys around. But maybe it’s groups like this that inspired the bill in the first place.

Or am I way off base? Are these just supremely bored 15 year olds? Tell me what you think.

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The new Buzz on Yahoo

This past week, Yahoo pulled a fast one. After quickly turning down Microsoft’s bid to purchase the company, Yahoo launched a new advertising platform called Apex.  In a second announcement, Yahoo also launched a new site similar to Digg called Yahoo Buzz found at http://www.buzz.yahoo.com.

I have not had the time to personally look into these new Yahoo services, but figured it would be nice to let you all know what has been going on.

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There goes the neighborhood…

Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Make Anonymous Internet Posting Illegal

“Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.” Full article… New article (last broke)

This is sad if this bill gains any traction. Agree? Why would this be a really bad thing?

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Links: How Websites Succeed

When you have your own website there are a couple of things that are important for your website ranking. One of the most important things in declaring this is how many links you have coming to your site.

The first type of link you can get that would is the cheapest and easiest are directory links. These links are free to submit and they will put you in your database for free in order to link back to your site.

The second type of link would be more expensive but just as easy to get. The second type of link I am talking about is a link that you pay for as a website owner. If you pay for someone to link to you it is expensive but you can get good links if you have a relevant site linking to you.

Another type of link that a lot of people are willing to do is a reciprocal link. In doing this you put a link on your site and then you get one in return. These links are not as good for you on Google ranking but they still help.

Lastly, the hardest and the best links are the websites that link to you for free. These links are very important because they are relevant sites that are linking to your site because your site is a good site. So the key to getting these links is having good content on your site and lots of visitors so more people can see your good content.

A lot of people think that the only purpose of links is to get more traffic directly to your site. This can be true but the biggest key to links is that you can be rank higher on Google. I currently was submitting my site to databases and doing reciprocal links the other day and my site increased 3-5 spots on Google depending on the keyword. So all in all the way to be successful is to get as many links as you can to your site.

Popularity: 52% [?]