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Just in case you thought Google was going to call their holiday celebrations over with the “let it snow” feature on YouTube and Google search, they had at least one more trick up their sleeve: a custom holiday Google logo doodle that plays Jingle Bells. The celebratory logo is interactive at the start, allowing users to click the different tones before the Jingle Bells song finally plays.

Google Wishes Happy Holidays

Here’s what you’ll see when the interactive Google doodle experience begins:

You can now click those colored squares below the letters to enjoy the short interactive part of the Happy Holidays doodle. As you do, you’ll turn each letter in the traditional Google logo into something holiday-related:

When you’ve activated them all, you’ll have Jingle Bells played for you. Here’s a video someone grabbed of it in action:

Click here to watch the video.

I don’t have the power or talent to create wicked-cool interactive video doodles for you… but I would if I did. I’ll have to make due with simply wishing you all a happy holidays.

Tags: Google, interactive video, YouTube

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There are a ton of potential uses for Google Plus Hangouts, and Google is doing something relatively big to help highlight them–they’re putting out another TV commercial. I think I can count on one hand (maybe just a couple fingers) the number of times Google has bothered to advertise on television, so it’s something to pay attention to anytime they do.

This time they’re promoting Google Plus by way of highlighting the benefits of Hangouts, the group video chat service within Google Plus. And while I’ve spent plenty of time on this site singing the praises of Google Hangouts for business uses, Google wants to remind you there are plenty of everyday uses for friends and family as well.

Like… rocking out.

Google Hangouts TV Commercial, Starring The Muppets

Click here to watch the video.

This is incredibly smart advertising for a number of reasons:

1. Google Plus needs to court the “common user” if they’re ever going to make a serious run at Facebook. right now, they’ve added an impressive number of users in just half a year, but most of those users are from the “early adopter” or “tech savvy” crowd.

Google knows that the everyday user is where it’s at, so by highlighting how fun Hangouts can be with your friends, they’re making the product instantly more accessible.

2. Muppets are hot right now. You might have heard they put a new Muppet movie out. It did incredibly well at the box office, and critics and fans alike were thrilled. They’re about as hot as they’ve ever been. Any brand that rides the wave of a cultural icon or hot topic is smart… the built-in interest in The Muppets will help the commercial grab attention on television and online.

3. Google doesn’t do television advertising lightly, and typically has good timing. The first TV commercial I remember was the Super Bowl spot (Parisian Love). Why the Super Bowl? Because everyone’s watching. And it’s smart timing to release the Muppets commercial now as well, as families gather for Christmas and televisions will be on in houses all over the world.

4. The ad walks the fine line between product demonstration and straight-up entertainment, and ends up being both. We’re smiling and laughing at the antics of the Muppets, but we may not even realize that we’re also learning how easy Google Plus Hangouts is to use.

The people behind The Muppets must be big Queen fans, as this makes the second song by the band that the Muppets have “covered” after Bohemian Rhapsody.

Tags: advertising, Google, Muppets, television, TV, YouTube

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Two weeks after Louis CK offered his downloadable streaming concert, “Live at the Beacon Theater” for $5, the experiment has now crossed the million-dollar mark.  A couple of days ago on CK’s website, he decided to tell everyone that he had made a million and what he was going to do with the money.  He even has a picture of his PayPal account showing the balance.  The questions raised by this successful venture become, “Do people copycat Louis CK in the future?” and “Can others be successful following Louis CK’s model?”

Louis CK: Live At The Beacon Theater Hits A Million Bucks

What is CK doing with the money?  On his website he says he’s splitting it up into 4 pieces:

• The first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.
• The second 250k is going to his staff and the people who work for him.  Christmas Bonus!
• The third, 280k, is going to charity.  These charities include The Fistula Foundation, The Pablove Foundation, Charity: Water, Kiva, Green Chimneys.
• The remaining 220k will be his.  I love this explanation:

Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my children. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.

And he plans on giving more away should he make any more with this special.  At $5 a pop, he’s sold 200,000 units.  That’s a freaking lot.

Is this whole “It’s $5, Don’t Steal It” experiment something others will copy?  I think you’ll see a few other comics (and maybe musical acts) probably do this, but I have to think that a lot of this money is coming from the fact that people like the idea of it.  Some are buying the experiment as much as they’re buying CK.  If a bunch of entertainers start doing this, the experiment starts becoming less special.  It’s hard to come up with a great idea like this and have it stick because the more it happens, the more it gets watered down in the public’s perception.

Yet, a DIY experiment like this doesn’t have to make a million dollars to be a success.  $5 is extremely reasonable, something that does make pirating less attractive.  The special was already a hit in its first day when it sold 50,000 for $250,000.  I think many DIY entertainers would take that in a heartbeat for their final sales, and for CK it was just the beginning.

It opens the door for a lot of people to try this on an even smaller scale.  We’ve seen authors self-publish with great success.  Radiohead released 2007′s In Rainbows with a pay-what-you-want model and ending up with a best-selling album.  What if someone like Freddie Wong made a movie for his YouTube channel and charged his viewers $1 to watch it, and he got even a quarter of the views he normally gets?

Whatever your take on the experiment, you’ve got to love Louis CK for trying it, succeeding, and ultimately sharing his money with so many people.  The guy has won fans just through that alone.

Tags: charity, future, live stream, PayPal, streaming

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The simplest concepts I’ve long held that Shazam is quite possibly the most useful smart phone app on the planet–it’s certainly the one I used the most out of all the apps I’ve ever downloaded. It’s definitely a simple concept (hear a song you want to know more about, press the button on the app, and then discover the title and artists within seconds), and one that appears ready to make the jump to other forms of media beyond music.

Mobile Video App MoviePal

The mobile video app MoviePal is a brand new app for iOS devices (iPhone & iPad) that basically wants to be Shazam for movie trailers. If you see a trailer on television or in the theater, you simply press a button on the app and the trailer is identified for you and tagged for later. Like Shazam, there are big plans for social interaction, allowing users to spread the word about what movies they’re interested in.

Here are the main MoviePal features:

• Capture and tag movie trailers you see on TV and in the theater
• Watch movie trailers on your device
• Get reminders when movies you tag are released
• Share movie trailers with friends
• See what movies are playing in the theater

This could be a pretty cool app–I don’t have an iPhone, so I won’t know until they release an Android version. Hollywood will love it, because it takes movie fans and makes them even more engaged and excited. Fans will love it because they’ll be able to identify a trailer they only caught a few moments of, or recall and rewatch a trailer they really enjoyed.

The funny thing about MoviePal, though, is that it’s really an audio technology. No need to point your video camera at the TV playing the trailer… the app uses the trailer audio to identify which trailer you’re watching.

Someone with an iPhone should go grab the MoviePal iOS app and let me know if it works as advertised, because if it does… it could be huge.

MoviePal is free, and currently available in the App Store.

Tags: Apple, Hollywood, iOS, iPad, iPhone, mobile, movie trailers, movies, television, TV, video camera

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So what have we learned from The YouTube Creator Playbook over the past three months?  I’ll tell you what I got most out of it.  Being a success on YouTube requires more than making great content and simply uploading it to the site.  In fact, even those people who stumbled into YouTube viral success had some sort of help, perhaps they didn’t initiate it and do the work, but most of your big “overnight” sensations come from a video getting passed along through a circle of friends, someone big in the media notices it, and it booms from there.  But we know that most people will not have that kind of success track.  Most of the time, you have to earn it.

In the final section of The YouTube Creator Playbook, social media finally makes its grand entrance.  Actually, it’s been there all along, hinted at, suggested…but this is where Facebook, Twitter, and the upstart Google Plus start coming in handy for more than, “Had a hamburger at McDonald’s today, wrote a check for child support, I hate Tuesdays.”  This is your personal interaction with all your friends, and your friends’ friends, and so on.  They can help crank up your videos’ views tremendously.  Social media is the instant Rolodex of the 21st Century.  You can share your videos instantly to everyone you know, and there is absolutely no reason not to use it if you want to be successful.

The Playbook overview:

Strategy: Leverage other social media to build viewership on your channel and engage with your audience in new ways.

Why It Works: Social media is a great way to turn your fans into a social army that will help you broadcast your content out to their friends

How To Do It: Engage with your audience and promoting your YouTube content on social media platforms.

Sharing Your Videos With Facebook

Of course you should have a dedicated Facebook page for your channel along with your personal page.  That way you can have your everyday, varied personal life separate from your hobby/professional life.  But you’ll be uploading the videos to both pages.  Keep an eye out for comments and get in on the discussion.  People like it when the creator of something they like, or even dislike, takes time to comment.  And nothing gets people watching a video more than something that is heavily discussed.

What we’ve learned time and again from the Playbook is that no matter where the video is, find ways to get in on the discussion.  Blogs, social media, on YouTube, wherever…take time to comment.  Even if the video is big this doesn’t take much out of your time, and it’s fun to watch people talk about something you created.  Facebook and YouTube even allow you to “like” comments, continuing the never-ending feedback structure of the sites.

As always, you can start the conversation much like you do on YouTube by simply asking a question that will get people to make comments.  Ultimately the purpose is to get people to watch your video, become a subscriber, become a fan, of your content, so keep the discussion lively but on topic, directing people’s attention to your videos.

The Playbook says a couple of times to use Facebook as a means to provide extra content.  In other words, make it worthwhile for fans to visit your Facebook page and built trust by providing things they can’t find anywhere else.  With that, you can upload photos from the shoot, alternate takes, stories, anything ancillary to the final product.  What’s more, you can even release those things each day, providing new content every day and giving people a reason to visit frequently.  An active Facebook page is meaningful, because one that doesn’t get updated gives people the impression that you are dead.  Or at the very least, can’t bother yourself with updates.

Reviewing the Playbook: Facebook

Creators and Partners should have a Facebook presence for their YouTube channel.  It is a great tool to interact with your fans in different ways and build audience.  Your activity and the activity of your fans on Facebook get multiplied out to their groups of friends, so it is a great way to rely on your fans to help introduce your show to new viewers.

Facebook Best Practices

• Post new uploads to your Facebook page.  Post updates regularly (at least once a day).
• Find ways to repurpose and share videos from your archive in interesting ways.
• Interact with your fans when you post content to your page.
• Ask specific questions about the content you post.  Asking a question to build comments on the post that will help you reach a new audience.  Every action your fans take on your page gets broadcast out to their friends, helping you reach new viewers.  Encouraging comments will also help you learn about the interest of your core audience.  Your Facebook fans represent some of your most dedicated viewers.
• Vary your updates to be both video-centric and conversational.  Your Facebook fans don’t just want to click links, they want to get something extra, more personal on Facebook.
• Provide extra or secondary content on your Facebook page.  Post behind-the-scenes photos, or interact with your audience in new ways on Facebook.
• Your Facebook strategy should be unique to that platform and part of the objective should be building your audience around your YouTube content.  Create a unique viewing experience for your Facebook fans by how you post and how you interact, but center your actions on driving views, increasing subscribers, and gaining more Facebook fans.
• Turn Facebook viewers and subscribers by consistently directing them to your YouTube content and channel.

Sharing Your Video With Twitter

Twitter recently changed their design so that videos could be displayed on the site.  And so, no longer do you have a mere link to the video, people can actually watch the video right there on the Twitter page.  Twitter is yet another huge social media outlet with its own unique functions.  It sort of demands to be updated as much as possible, since the 140-character “blog post” limit invites users to keep things current and updating frequently keeps you in your followers’ feeds.

Here’s a look at Twitter’s new video set-up:

Much like the discussion we had with the Playbook’s Blog Outreach, you can hit up popular Twitter users with links to your video.  Again, you have to play a game here if you don’t know that user personally or haven’t established at least some sort of relationship with them.  Don’t get spammy with your YouTube links.  Once you have established that someone might be receptive to one of your videos, give them a tweet that they might in turn re-tweet to their followers.

Twitter also functions like a search engine, so that’s what hashtags (this symbol: #) are for.  Hashtags for your show, if used in great numbers by you and your followers, tend to “trend” better on Twitter and thus, it’s best to make sure anytime you or your show is mentioned, the hashtag is used so that you can build search engine attention.

As always, update your Twitter feed frequently and interact with fans/followers as much as possible.

Reviewing the Playbook: Twitter

Twitter Best Practices

Twitter is another great tool to interact with your fans in a conversational way.  Twitter is also great for identifying your peers, adding to the conversations that are relevant to you and your audience’s interest, and spotting what is trending on the Web.

• Twitter updates should be a mix of personal updates as well as promoting your content.
• Share links to your newest videos on Twitter.  You can use URL shorteners to track Click-Through-Rates (CTRs).
• @reply power-users on Twitter with links to videos they would be interested in and may re-tweet to their followers.  Twitter outreach to relevant users should accompany your blog outreach.
• Create unique #hashtags for your show and always use them in your tweets and encourage your followers to do the same.
• Update your Twitter feed 1-3 times a day to stay visible in your followers’ feeds.

Sharing Your Video With Google Plus

Google Plus had a good year and capitalized a bit on some Facebook stumbles late this summer.  Google Plus is a bit of a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook and it allows you to create “circles” of friends, so you can choose who gets to see what you post.  In a way, you can make certain fans your special, inner circle, while making other, casual fans a part of a larger circle.  It’s a functionality that you don’t get with Facebook and Twitter. No matter how you decide to use Google Plus, you should follow basically the same tips you use with the other sites.

Besides the “circle” function, which allows you to decide who receives what information, there is Google Hangouts, which allows you to watch a video with others.  I think this is a tremendous way to get premieres of your video rolling.  You can schedule a time and actually be present and comment during the video, and it gives you face time with your friends/fans.  You can make your video an event with the Hangouts feature, and that’s really cool.

So imagine this.  You can have a viewing party of your video on Hangouts, update your Facebook and Twitter pages with the video during the viewing party, comment and respond to fans on all three social networks, have face time, and create a blizzard of activity all in one night.  That’s a social networking dream, and it only requires a few clicks and a very small part of the day.

Here’s a summary video of The Muppets using Google Hangouts for promotion during the week of the new movie’s release:

Click here to watch the video.

Reviewing the Playbook: Google Plus

Creators and Partners should have a personal Google+ profile to engage with their followers and YouTube fans.  Google+ allows you to interact with your YouTube audience in different ways than you would on YouTube.  Using Google+, you can interact with different “circles” or your followers in ways that are specific to their interests or needs.

Google+ Tips

• Create different circles for the various types of audiences you want to communicate with on your Google+ profile.
• Post new YouTube uploads to your Google+ profile.
• Target your updates (including video uploads) to specific circles.  Provide different information or messaging to your different circles of friends and followers.
• Find ways to repurpose and share videos from your archive in interesting ways.
• Create circles for other YouTube creators so you can interact and communicate with other creators on YouTube.  Use circles of other creators to find more channels to collaborate with and build promotional opportunities.
• Interact with friends and followers when you post a video.  Ask specific questions about the videos or information you post.
• Vary your updates and posts to be both video-centric and also conversational.
• Post behind-the-scenes photos, or provide sneak-peaks of videos or other content.
• Encourage your followers to +1 and share your posts or videos with friends if they like it.
• Create Hangouts with your fans to interact with them in a small group.  Google+ Hangouts can be a great way to ask your fans questions and for you to speak to you directly.  You can also watch your videos together in real-time in a Hangout.  Google+ Hangouts can be a great way to reward your super-fans providing them a personal experience with you.

Our Coverage Of The YouTube Creator Playbook Comes To A Close

While we have discussed every section of The YouTube Creator Playbook, and specific articles covering it will come to an end, this won’t be the last time we visit it.  It’s here, it’s on the Internet.  It has a ton of valuable information.  Most of it, I’d say about 95% of it, is absolutely solid advice.  The other 5% that is not is something that can be fixed with clarity or easy policy changes. It’s likely the Playbook will continue to be updated moving forward, as was the case recently when Analytics replaced Insight.

You can sum up the Playbook with a few words: Always be active with your video, share it, encourage discussion.  The issue of “relevancy” comes up a lot, especially in where or with whom you decide to share the video, how you name it, how you try to get it found in search engines with keywords and tags.  Ultimately, be smart and don’t expect anyone to do the work for you, unless you have the kind of money to hire someone to do that.

We hope you enjoyed our coverage of the Playbook!

Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, social media, social network, strategy, tips, Twitter, YouTube, YouTube Channel, YouTube Creator Playbook

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Friday is always a tough day to focus on work. With the weekend near, it can be hard to focus on the pile of paperwork in front of you. And since tomorrow’s Christmas Eve, most of you are probably even more distracted than usual. Which is where I come in. I deliver hand-picked video goodness from the past week in viral video, and you sit there at your desk and pretend to work. It’s a win/win as far as I’m concerned: you enjoy some videos and your boss thinks you’re working (unless the volume is up too loud).

Star Wars

Star Wars may never go out of style. It’ll certainly be decades–maybe centuries–before people stop making online videos that are influenced by or paying homage to Star Wars.

Sometimes the Star Wars videos are from the Star Wars people themselves, like when there’s a new Star Wars video game to promote. In such times, you might find spontaneous lightsaber flash mob in Times Square:

Click here to watch the video.

Sometimes all you have to do to get viral attention for a video is take two ordinary words and mash them together… particularly when those two words are “jedi” and “ninja”:

Click here to watch the video.

The reach of Star Wars knows no end. At Algonquin College recently, Darth Vader strode onto the campus and proceeded to use his force powers to compel students to sing the Carol of the Bells–well, that or the school is doing a little online video marketing (and doing it well, I’d say):

Click here to watch the video.

Cuteness

The videos in this section of today’s round up may not have much in common in subject matter, length, or style… but they do all share one important trait: cuteness.

You might call it a stretch to call a daily comic strip cute, but I don’t. That’s because I read Calvin & Hobbes growing up and still consider it one of the most insightful and adorable in history. And I’m not alone. One fan, Jim Frommeyer, put together this touching tribute to the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, and an ode to Calvin’s twisted snowmen:

Click here to watch the video.

Every few months or so, another video comes along to challenge for the title of “cutest wedding proposal video ever.” And we got another one this week. It’s a custom animation that the groom-to-be set up to play automatically when his girlfriend opened her iPad:

Click here to watch the video.

I don’t know who this little boy is, what he’s singing, or why. But I do know this: cuteness transcends cultural boundaries:

Click here to watch the video.

In the online video world, cats are like… well, catnip. And so are babies. So when that rare clip comes along featuring both a cute baby and a cute cat, the cuteness level goes off the charts:

Click here to watch the video.

Trailers

Trailers dominated the online video world this week, with two of 2012′s biggest films releasing their first previews.

The Hobbit trailer came out 10 years from the anniversary of the release of The Fellowship of the Ring. With the director and many cast members returning from the trilogy, this film has a built in audience of roughly the entire world’s population:

Click here to watch the video.

Batman’s not letting Bilbo have all the spotlight, though, as The Dark Knight Rises released a trailer as well:

Click here to watch the video.

And Ridley Scott’s anticipated Prometheus (which may or may not be part of the Alien universe) released its first trailer today. It’s not viral yet, of course, but I promise you it will be:

Click here to watch the video.

Grab Bag

Of all the Top Ten videos you’ll watch here as we near the end of 2011, please do yourself a favor and make sure that this Top Ten Table Tennis Shots video is one of them (I’m not even remotely kidding):

Click here to watch the video.

Some YouTube channels exist just to explain stuff to you. We saw viral activity this week for DocMikeEvans’ visual lecture called “23 1/2 hours”, which talks about healthy living:

Click here to watch the video.

Two Corvettes drag racing on municipal streets. It’s on YouTube, so can you guess what happens?

Click here to watch the video.

A frog playing an iPhone app… with a twist ending? Yes please:

Click here to watch the video.

How can you not love the Slo Mo Guys? Everything they do is slow-motion–except the outtakes at the end showing how tough a time they had actually getting the coffee mugs to break on impact:

Click here to watch the video.

Stupid and funny aren’t always mutually exclusive, as this video is definitely a bit of both:

Click here to watch the video.

Here’s a great little nugget of fun. It’s an incredibly well made and clever video that substitutes cameras for guns in modern warfare:

Click here to watch the video.

Christmas-Related Grab Bag

I don’t really get too into decorating my house for Christmas… at least not the outside. And I’m not into heavy metal music. And yet… I enjoy this video that appears to be the perfect combination of those two things:

Click here to watch the video.

Do you like Angry Birds? Do you like Christmas lights? Would you like to see a playable version of Angry Birds built entirely out of Christmas display lights? If so… I’m really glad I decided to include this strange but cool video:

Click here to watch the video.

It seems like maybe this is the right time of year–I don’t know… I could be wrong–for a video on the history of Santa Clause:

Click here to watch the video.

JibJab says goodbye to 2011:

Click here to watch the video.

YouTube brought us the 2011 year in rewind, hosted by–who else?–Rebecca Black:

Click here to watch the video.

Tags: audience, cameras, flash mob, funny, iPad, iPhone, Star Wars, TV, Vimeo, viral, viral video, YouTube

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