Online Video Stats

Nielsen, as well as a number of other companies, measure the number of streams viewed on online video destinations every month.

October was no exception, although the figures were more interesting than usual. mainly because while the top two of YouTube and Hulu remained the same, there were some big changes after that. And it could be the start of a trend set to get stronger over the next few months/years.

YouTube Beats All-Comers

First, the non-surprise. YouTube topped the Nielsen chart for streams in the United States by a huge margin. The Google-owned site racked up 6,632,964,000 streams and 105,923,000 viewers.

Hulu ranked second as it has for a goods few months now. The site managed 632,662,000 streams and 13,472,000 viewers, which though impressive enough isn’t even a tenth of the numbers YouTube can boast.

Facebook Jumps To Third

Then the surprise hits. Facebook has jumped from number 10 to number three in the space of a single month. The social networking site racked up 217,765,000 streams and 31,594,000 viewers – the latter being more than double the number enjoyed by Hulu.

According to CNET, Nielsen Vice President of Media Analytics Jon Gibs, said in a statement:

“Facebook’s rapid growth in online video during the last year illustrates the site’s evolution from simply a communications focused tool to a media portal.”

“Social networking sites are evolving from a venue for catching up with friends to a platform for personal expression, allowing consumers to share their experiences in the full variety of content formats available online.”

Conclusions

This is a potentially pivotal moment for Facebook as it could (and only could) signal a new trend where YouTube is being abandoned in favor for the social networking site.

Facebook has millions of users worldwide who want to share videos with their friends and family and the system Facebook has built-in provides everything they need to do so.

While I can’t see Facebook ever catching YouTube for sheer number of streams every month, Hulu is certainly catchable.

Citizen Journalists

There was a time when news coverage was strictly professional, delivered by paid reporters, photographers, and cameramen. And then everything changed with digital cameras and video cameras standard on cellphones.

Now, any Tom, Dick, or Harry can be a citizen journalist, reporting the news as it happens in front of them. Twitter and social networks are an important facet of this trend, as is online video and in particular YouTube.

YouTube Direct

Google has this week unveiled YouTube Direct, which is designed to be a meeting place for citizen journalists and the news media organizations increasingly using this amateur footage as the basis, or to embellish, news stories.

YouTube Direct is an API tweak that allows news organizations to set up a virtual assignment desk. Requests for video can be placed on the site, and citizen journalists who want to see their footage reach a bigger audience can respond.

At that point, editors from the news organization can vet the videos sent in and pick the ones most suitable. The Washington Post, ABC News, Huffington Post, Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR are already testing out the product.

Conclusions

This is good news for Google as it helps smooth over the search giant’s relationship with the news media. It’s also good news for the news media organizations as they get access to up-to-date amateur footage which won’t cost them a penny.

However, I can’t quite see what’s in it for the citizen journalists themselves. Apart from the five minutes of fame achieved by their video footage being picked up by major news channel or Web site, there’s little reason to participate in this.

[Via TechNewsWorld]

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is refusing to die. It’s been the largest and one of the most popular torrent trackers in the world for a few years now. But its notoriety and ability to taunt copyright owners meant trouble was never far away.

The Pirate Bay’s legal woes came to a head in February when a three-year investigation into the site arrived in court. By April, the four defendants had been found guilty and it looked as though this was the beginning of the end for TPB.

The TPB Tracker Is Dead

The last few months have seen The Pirate Bay tracker unavailable at various times as copyright owners managed to pressure its ISPs to cut off service to the site. But instead of fighting against it, TPB has decided to roll with it.

As announced in a blog post today, The Pirate Bay has now shut down its tracker completely, and there’s no going back. However, this doesn’t mean the end of the site and the end of torrents.

Decentralizing Power

The Pirate Bay claims that torrent trackers are now unnecessary. In its place comes trackerless solutions such as distributed hash tables (DHT) and peer exchange (PEX).

These methods mean that instead of locating .torrent files from a central repository, files can be found simply by querying other peers in the swarm.

In essence, this removes the central power needed for torrents to be shared over a network. And that has clear (positive) legal ramifications for The Pirate Bay and could make the IFPI and MPAA’s mission to control filesharing an impossible one.

The Pirate Bay is now offering magnet links, hence the new logo as seen above. These simply direct a BitTorrent client to the BitTorrent peers which contain the file in question.

Conclusions

This is a genius move on the part of The Pirate Bay as it appears to throw a very large spanner in the legal victory celebrated by copyright owners earlier this year.

I doubt they’ll give up without a fight but they’re now fighting an activity that is impossible to track and is clearly not going to cease anytime soon.

Live Streaming Video

Live streaming video services allow anyone to stream what they want over the Internet to anyone who is interested in watching. The only real rules are regarding the content, with no copyright-infringements or criminal offenses allowed.

There are already a number of well-established companies offering ordinary people the chance to host their own online television show, with Stickam, Ustream, Livestream, and Justin.tv all popular and all user-friendly to varying degrees.

TinyChat

However, TinyChat hopes to compete alongside these established companies with its new TinyChat.tv service.

TinyChat is a startup which has managed to gain a foothold in the live video chat sector over recent months. It’s popular even at this early stage of its life, mainly because it’s ultra-simple to use, with no sign in or technical knowhow required.

TinyChat.tv is, however, a different proposition.

TinyChat.tv

The basic interface of TinyChat.tv is very similar to that of the regular TinyChat. But room owners can customize their rooms and decide whether to force users to sign in using a Twitter or Facebook login.

The main advantage TinyChat.tv has over its competitors is the multi-participant shows. The main disadvantage is how long (relatively speaking) it takes to set up a room and start broadcasting.

Pro members paying the $9.95 asking price can set passwords for private rooms and stream in higher quality video. The service could and should be improved immensely by developers using the free API (Application Programming Interface).

Conclusions

I’m not sure we actually need another live steaming service but then TinyChat.tv is offering something slightly different than the rest. At this moment in time it cannot hope to compete with its long-established competitors but I wouldn’t bet against it managing to do so in a short space of time.

[Via ReadWriteWeb]

BBC iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer has shone like a beacon since its full launch almost two years ago in December 2007. The catch-up TV service lead the way not only in the U.K. but around the world, with Hulu being its big-name opposite in the U.S.

Rather than rest on its laurels, the BBC carried on improving the service despite already providing millions of streams to viewers. The current iteration of the iPlayer service is more user-friendly and easy-to-use than any Web application or online video site.

RTS Judges’ Award

Last week saw the iPlayer praised to the highest degree when the BBC won the Judges’ Award at the 2009 Royal Television Society Innovation Awards. Jeff Henry, chair of the awards, said:

“There have been great British innovations – the steam engine, the gas turbine, radio waves, jet engines and arguably video games. Even the inventors of Viagra. But seriously, the role of honour of great British innovation now has a proud new addition,”

“For all the hard work, commitment and belief shown by the BBC and its staff, with particular recognition of Anthony Rose’s contribution, the RTS Innovation Awards proudly presents the Judges Award to the BBC iPlayer, proving that it is not just a gift for Christmas, but for life.”

Being placed alongside such great inventions as the steam engine and radio waves is pretty unbelievable. But the iPlayer may well prove to be as innovative and important as those inventions in years to come for what it represents – a world where online television is the norm rather than niche.

IPlayer Wii Channel

The BBC topped off an already great week by unveiling its plans to launch a dedicated channel on the Nintendo Wii games console. The service has been available on the console for a while through the Web browser, but a dedicated channel should be much more accessible and user-friendly.

All Wii owners in the U.K. with a Broadband connection will be able to use the Wii iPlayer. From Nov. 18, the BBC iPlayer can be downloaded for free from the console’s online shop.

Conclusions

The iPlayer is a fantastic service that continues to improve and be added to more devices in order to gain viewers. And the RTS award for innovation is wholly deserved.

The only thing that the BBC now needs to do is launch the iPlayer internationally. Whether that’ll ever happen, and whether if it did it would be free, are questions that I personally cannot answer. But I can hope.

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This is an important move not just to support the increasing number of home video cameras with HD options but also to give professional content creators confidence that the platform is right for their work.

YouTube Video Quality

When YouTube first launched four years ago, video quality (360p) on the site wasn’t great. But that wasn’t what the site was about so it didn’t matter. YouTube was there to offer a free and easy way for people to host video online. And it did that so well that Google paid $1.65 billion for the site a year later.

But times move on, as does technology.

YouTube first started offering a ‘High Quality’ (480p) version of some videos, and while the difference wasn’t vast it was noticeable. Then in December 2008 YouTube launched ‘High-Definition’ video, which took the clips to a native 720p.

Full HD On YouTube

Now, after an announcement on the YouTube Blog, the site is starting to offer Full HD of 1080p. There’s already a test video running at that super high quality and the rest of the videos on the site will begin airing in 1080p from next week.

YouTube is in the process of re-encoding all content that has been uploaded at 1080p back to its original resolution. However, there will still be a 720p option available on all videos so as to support viewers who can’t view 1080p without massive lag or hardware problems.

There will still be a 10-minute limit on video uploads but the 2GB size limit will surely be increased to cater for this new breed of high-definition video clips.

Conclusions

This change could have a huge impact in a couple of different ways.

For the average home user of YouTube it’ll make the viewing experience more pleasurable than ever, especially for those watching on HD televisions via their games console, set-top box, or connected laptop.

But more importantly than that, it will surely help YouTube in its quest to entice professional content creators to the site. Some may have been resistant all the while their content was going to look relatively poor, but now it’s widescreen and in Full HD, that reason not to get involved flies out the window.

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YouTube Revenue Vs Pageviews

Since buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, Google has tried to turn it into a moneymaking site. It’s certainly managed to take the site to the next level, with it now managing one billion page views a day, but the revenue still hasn’t come.

There’s been some debate over whether YouTube makes money, breaks even, or loses money every year but needless to say revenue needs to be upped in order for Google to make its money back. Especially as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has admitted the company paid $1 billion too much for the online video site.

Advertising Experiments

Google has experimented with a range of advertising options on YouTube. From huge one-off banner ads to overlay ads which remain through the course of a video. From pre-roll adverts before clips to post-roll after clips. None of which has been the magic bullet required.

YouTube now carries a range of advertising, with Google clearly deciding a scattergun approach for different videos and advertisers is the right path to follow. But the company still wants to fine-tune the experience.

Skippable Pre-Rolls

According to MediaPost, Google is now testing out skippable pre-roll advertising. The ads will run on carefully selected videos from content partners who have agreed to be a part of the experiment.

Google will collect data on when the ads are skipped, on what length and kind of video they are mostly skipped on, and the people most likely to skip an advert rather than watch in full.

The results of this experiment will then be used to formulate a new advertising model.

Conclusions

Pre-rolls are already used successfully on Hulu and other sites, but the YouTube crowd hasn’t really accepted them as of yet. Whether the option to skip ads that are too long or for uninteresting products makes a difference isn’t yet clear.

Either way Google will obtain data it can then use in the future to further fine-tune and develop its advertising model. The ultimate goal, of course, is to turn a profit and make the most of those one billion page views a day.

Microsoft Returns

Microsoft is doing all it can to replenish its tarnished reputation. The release of Windows 7 is huge, and Bing is a search engine which may actually manage to provide competition for the ubiquitous Google.

Silverlight 3.0 is obviously proving popular with media companies seeking to stream video over the Internet but 2009 has also seen a few changes take place in terms of Microsoft’s approach to online video.

MSN Video>Soapbox

Microsoft killed its Soapbox video site off in June after realizing it stood no chance of competing with YouTube. Video sites focused on UGC are fine but stand little chance when going up against the ‘One billion page views a day‘ might of YouTube.

On the other hand, Microsoft launched the MSN Video Player in the U.K., which streams classic TV shows for free in a similar style to the BBC iPlayer and Hulu. Just with less style and options.

Bing Bong

Microsoft launched Bing back in June, and its video search differed from Google by the use of live video thumbnails. In essence, rather than needing to click on a video to watch it, you can gain a preview of the content simply by hovering over the thumbnail.

This had two effects: it meant porn was available to watch from right within Bing, without the need to visit any other sites; it raised questions over the fair use of playing copyrighted content from within a search engine.

MSN Video – Bing Video

Now, Microsoft is in the process of converting MSN Video into Bing Video, using the Bing brand to better show off video content. High quality videos from MSN, Hulu, YouTube, ABC and others are now all combined into the one site.

Bing Video looks classy and has a good range of video content, options, and features. And I must admit to having spent a while finding new video picks I hadn’t yet seen featured on WebTVHub.

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Fred Who?

Fred Figglehorn first came to my attention early in 2008 when his YouTube channel started gaining fans faster than most teen pop stars manage.

In June, I covered Fred’s story, which in actual fact is Lucas Cruikshank’s story, as he’s the kid who created and plays the character in numerous YouTube videos.

In short, Fred is the six-year-old alter-ego of a 14-year-old kid from Nebraska. His charms are talking in a squeaky voice, mugging to camera, and ranting and raving in a way most six-year-olds are incapable of. At least the ones I’ve met.

From YouTube To Hollywood

Bizarrely, although the plot of most Fred episodes, which are usually nothing more than three-minute pieces to camera by the fake tween, is shallow to say the least, Fred (and Lucas Cruikshank) has built up a huge following.

Fred was created in 2006 and reached his peak earlier this year when he hit 1.4 million subscribers. However, Nigahiga has now overtaken Fred as the most subscribed YouTube channel.

Not to worry, as Fred has bigger fish to fry.

Fred: The Movie

September saw TubeFilter News report that Fred was moving to Hollywood, with a movie version of the online video character on the way. Lucas Cruikshank will be starring as the titular Fred, with other recurring characters such as Judy, Bertha, and Kevin currently being cast.

The latest rumor suggests the filmmakers are looking for a well-known actor to play a cameo as Fred’s father. And would certainly lend some weight to a project that the prospect of has probably scared as many people as it has delighted.

Filming on Fred: The Movie (working title) is set to begin on November 20, with Fred chasing his would-be girlfriend Judy across the States in what sounds like a road movie of sorts.

Viral Video Stars

Lucas Cruikshank is already reported to be making a six-figure salary from playing Fred. And he’s now set to star in a movie based on the character he lovingly crafted and has nurtured for the last three years.

No wonder more people than ever before are trying to create a viral video hit and become famous off the back of it. What was once merely a hobby for light entertainment is well on its way to becoming big business. And I can’t see where the story will end.

Torrent Sites

What are torrent sites used for? Many of you would have answered that it’s pretty much all pirated content being shared via torrents. And while there is a lot of copyrighted material being shared illegally on them, there is also much that is legal and copyright-free.

There are very few companies and organizations who have taken advantage of the technology as a way to distribute content thus far. But VODO is one of these, allowing and encouraging filmmakers to use torrent sites to seed their features and get them out there being watched.

NRK and Blank

In January 2008 we looked at how the Norwegian broadcaster NRK was utilizing torrent sites to distribute a show called Nordkalotten 365. The experiment worked, with multi-platform distribution making the show a success outside of its native Norway.

Earlier this year we saw filmmaker Rick L. Winters and his company Annodam Productions choose to distribute Blank via torrent sites at the same time as releasing it on DVD. Donations were asked for but not mandatory.

VODO

VODO, a British organization which endeavors to help budding content creators find an audience, is taking a similar approach. It releases features on torrent sites such as Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Miro, and Vuze and lets the rest fall into place.

VODO requests a donation (VODO stands or VOluntary DOnations) if you download a feature from a torrent site. There’s also the option to subscribe to the site itself in order to gain access to more films and fund new projects which will end up being made available for free on torrent sites.

VODO’s founder is Jamie King, who enjoys a certain amount of notoriety for his pro-piracy Steal This Film documentaries. Us Now and In Guantanamo are the two features currently being promoted via torrent sites.

Conclusions

This kind of effort isn’t going to either interest or affect Hollywood but independent filmmakers are a whole other kettle of fish. And VODO, along with NRK, Annodam, and the like are proving that torrent sites aren’t the bid, bad wolves they’ve been painted as.

Tech Dirt said it best with its reason for why VODO is such a good idea, suggesting it’s because it helps “filmmakers who recognize that obscurity is a much bigger threat to their efforts than piracy.”

[Via NewTeeVee]