YouTube is now home to the ressurection of David Brent, the starring character of the original verison of The Office, a landmark British show that essentially launched Ricky Gervais’ career in television and film (as well spawning the much-beloved American version). Whether YouTube’s efforts at drawing original content for their native channels will ultimately pay off competitively is yet to be clear, but it seems a certainty that devotees of David Brent (in the interests of full disclosure, this includes at least a couple of us) will be grateful for the effort. source
In fact, Karp revealed, if an original piece of content is published to Tumblr, that content is on average reblogged nine times, appears in four Facebook feeds, and five Twitter feeds. So among the 80 million blogs on Tumblr, only between 10 and 15 percent of the content is deemed “original.” The remainder is reblogged — something you can either interpret as the inspiring power of the Tumblr network or the slow death of original Web content.
Tumblr talks marketing, user franchising, and the power of the reblog | Digital Trends (via elasticself)
This is a good piece, and it explains why Tumblr has yet to go down the road of monetization for individual users. Key line: “Because YouTube is sending a check to its users at the end of every month, YouTube’s monetization structure “shapes the behavior of the community” and normalizes content creation. It motivates content creators to churn out work for the sake of generating revenue on YouTube.
This week the Billboard Hot 100, the magazine’s 55-year-old singles chart, takes a evolutionary step by incorporating YouTube plays into its formula. The move comes just in time for Baauer’s song “Harlem Shake,” the latest viral video phenomenon, which will make its debut at No. 1 this week thanks to the change.
“Harlem Shake,” a bass-heavy hip-hop track with no lyrics beyond a few samples, got little mainstream attention when it was released in May as a free download. But this month its popularity exploded on YouTube, as thousands of fans uploaded videos of themselves dancing — some might say simply flailing — along to the song. By last week more than 4,000 videos were going up each day.
Imagine: ”Chocolate Rain” topping the charts. If this policy had been implemented a few years ago … it could’ve happened. Also: As “Harlem Shake” was released on an independent label, it makes it the third independently-released song to top the charts in history, the second being the song it replaced: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop.” (ht Ethan Klapper)
Like “Gangnam Style”? You’re not alone by a long shot — in fact, if Psy’s video’s popularity keeps up at its current pace, it will hit 1 billion views on YouTube by the end of the year — the first video to ever hit that tally.
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YouTube releases its official not-Apple iOS app: Unfortunately, they promoted it with screenshots of a Train video. Cool app, though — though we’re gonna warn you, this app comes with monetization efforts, so be warned. As Apple is dropping support for the YouTube app on their end, you’ll want to download this. More info here.
Google is making a ton of money from YouTube.What?! That’s right, patience pays when building platform businesses. If a media company had owned YouTube, it would’ve ditched it a long time ago, when it bled money. But kudos to Google for having the patience to realize the long-term business opportunity. (via corybe)
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YouTube comments, as you might have heard, are kind of terrible. Would a push to getting people to use their full names help? That’s what Google appears to be banking on.