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Why You Can’t Afford Not to Have Captions on Your YouTube Videos

Posted Jul 22 2011 by in SEO, YouTube with 0 Comments

These days, every SMB wants SEO to boost their ROI so they can make an IPO and eventually, one day, STFU and BBQ on a warm, sunny beach somewhere. But what we’re all finding is that it’s not that easy. As Google and Bing continually re-structure their search algorithms, some time-tested strategies break down, and some new strategies emerge. The important thing, as the plethora of new social media experts know, is to ride the tide between consumer activity and technological advancement – to pay attention to what’s being searched for, and how those searches work.

Recently, YouTube added the Caption & Subtitles functionality to all YouTube videos. It’s simple to use – you just type out a plain-text file of everything that’s said in the video, and upload it to YouTube. But here’s the exciting part – YouTube’s given us yet another SEO opportunity, in addition to titles, descriptions, and keywords: your video can now be found by searching for a phrase present in the subtitles.

And the potential SEO benefits are only one reason to add captions to all your videos – you never know who your next client will be. Perhaps theres a deaf business owner in your city right now, who desperately needs better IT support. Maybe they’ll search and find you, and maybe they won’t – but if your video has captions, the chances are better that they will.

So don’t waste another minute! You spend time and energy thinking of the right keywords and phrases for your website, why not spend a little more writing out some subtitles? I think I’m going to get started right now.

YouTube to Stream Live NHL & NBA Games

Posted Feb 25 2011 by in Online Video, YouTube with 0 Comments

Google’s YouTube is currently in discussion with the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and certain European soccer leagues about streaming live games online, according to a Google executive. And, in an interview on February 23rd, The Bloomberg Report quotes Google’s Director of Content for Asia Pacific Gautam Anand as explaining how YouTube is hoping to show more live sports by the end of 2011.

This isn’t the video giant’s first foray into the sports world, as in January of last year a contract was made between YouTube and the Indian Premier League to host live streaming cricket games for the whole 2010 season. This deal provides Google with a share of ad revenue from both the league’s website and the games, with the channel bringing in about 55 million visits from more than 250 countries.

If this deal goes through, it would be a major win for YouTube, and could potentially be a huge blow to cable networks if people start watching the games online, rather than on their networks. The significance of sports programming lies not only in the huge boost in viewers YouTube would receive, but also in the length of the programs themselves. Consider the average length for an NBA game (2 hours 30 minutes) and the average length of an NHL game (anywhere from 2-3 hours, or more) in comparison to the typical video clip you see on YouTube. Having more viewers who’re staying on their site for longer periods of time gives Google’s YouTube a huge opportunity for the advertising dollar, and will also open the floodgates for online video advertising. We’ll be following this story and keep you posted on any updates.

 

Business Side of Video Encoding Rears its Ugly Head Again

Posted Jan 28 2011 by in Apple, Google, Internet Delivered Video with 2 Comments

Google and Apple are (in a roundabout way) at it again, as both make attempts to bring their own video encoding technologies to the forefront of internet-delivered video. The most recent shot was fired from the Google Chrome camp, when they claimed that future versions of the Chrome browser would not support H.264 (Apple’s favorite), instead boosting support for the WebM and Theora codecs. WebM is Google’s favored “open source” video codec, in contrast to H.264, which is licensed by the MPEG LA patent consortium, who hold Apple as a member.

Google’s announcement comes as another turn in the long-drawn battle for online video supremacy. Back in April of 2010, Steve Jobs wrote a long manifesto on why Apple products don’t and won’t support Adobe’s Flash codec, and would be promoting H.264 as the web-video standard for mobile and desktop viewing. Many were outraged at the time, and couldn’t conceive of an internet video experience without Flash. And yet by May of last year, H.264 was already the format of 66% of web videos. Many more, I’m sure, didn’t notice at all when their beloved funny cats YouTube videos were in a different format than before.

Currently, MPEG LA is offering H.264 as “royalty-free”, primarily due to pressure from the press when they got wind of the free open source codecs. However, “royalty-free” does not mean free for all: H.264 is only free for those who would use it for Internet-delivered non-commercial uses. All other uses of H.264 run the risk of being asked for not-insignificant amounts of money from MPEG LA. Google’s announcement implies that it would be better for everyone if they switched over to WebM – less risk for encoders, better for the open-source community, potentially better for end-users – but the real question remains to be answered: How is it better for Google?

And so, Adobe may indeed be the Helen of Troy in this battle between titans. Because, as it turns out, Adobe Flash supports WebM technologies, and is in fact a WebM partner. Was it a heartfelt plea from Adobe that got Google to lay the smackdown on Apple favorite H.264? Or are they really in it to uphold the principles of open source? As usual, we, the little guys, will have to wait for the next press release to find out.

Thanks to Peter Csathy for his blog post on the background of the encoding business.

City of Bellingham Beseeches Google for the Gift of Fiber

Posted Jan 6 2011 by in Google, Local Business, Web/Tech with 1 Comment

In February of last year, Google announced that it would be establishing a series of experimental high-speed fiber-optic networks in locations around the US, which would offer speeds more than 100 times faster than what most people are used to.

Rather than simply opening up Google Earth, spinning it around and choosing whatever location their mouse landed on, the cooler heads at Google decided to allow local governments and citizens to prove why they’re more worthy to get a taste of that sweet, sweet fiber. And in the two-month span while they were accepting proposals, America answered emphatically: Google received over a thousand responses from communities around the country.

In addition to the heartfelt plea above, the City of Bellingham also produced several testimonial videos from notable Bellingham residents who argue the case for fiber in Bellingham. But will Google listen?

We at Varvid sure hope so. Fiber would allow us to send and receive high-quality video files much faster and more cost-effectively, and potentially to create more comprehensive solutions for those who need them. Events could be streamed live at a much higher quality. Most of all, we love the city of Bellingham and those who live here, and think they all deserve to have the best internet experience available.

Unfortunately for us and the rest of the country, Google has delayed the supposed year-end announcement of which cities were charming enough to get the gift of fiber. For now, they’re working on installing a small test network at Stanford, and we will have to wait to learn of their decision until “early 2011.”

HTML5: The Way of the Future?

Posted Sep 21 2010 by in HTML 5, Social Media with 3 Comments

Ever since last April, when Steve Jobs of Apple announced that the iPod 4 would only run HTML5 and wouldn’t support Flash, there has been a lot of buzz around HTML5. But there are a few questions that continue to crop up all over the online community like: why HTML5, what’s different about it, and how will it change the way we all interact online?

A simple way to explain HTML5 is to say that the entire web browser operates in a similar way as an application. Current HTML format only allows pictures and text to be viewed on the web page and other programs such as Adobe’s Flash, Shockwave, Microsoft’s Silverlight and Javascript function “on top” of the browser and separate from the HTML code. HTML5 rids the web browser of any extraneous or separate programs, allowing all of the animation, video and effects to be done within the coding itself. Here is a great diagram I found that gives a more in depth explanation of HTML5, and here is an example of how Scribd converts digital text and graphics into HTML5.

Apple isn’t the only major company that has shifted their focus to HTML5, as Youtube, Facebook and Google all have made strides in making their sites HTML5 compatible, and the main reason for the change has to do with performance. A website that uses HTML5 as opposed to regular HTML can access any multimedia and interactive online content without pre-existing Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight or Javascript software needing to be installed. This makes the web much more accessible and navigation within the browser becomes way more efficient. On top of this, HTML5 is considered to be doing great things for both online social media and video.

In a Flowtown blog titled The Rise of HTML5, they state: “…HTML5 is also on pace to revolutionize online video. By doing away with the need for third-party plug-in software, video can be embedded into a website with the speed and universal compatibility that images are now. Video elements will come with standard controls as well, including play, stop, rewind, and volume manipulation.” So, in a nutshell, video in HTML5 will function in the same way that images in regular HTML do, they are right there in the HTML code and no third-party player is required for playback; this online video optimization was the major factor in both Youtube and Facebook’s decision to switch to HTML5. Additionally, the article claims that HTML5 is pertinent to social media enthusiasts because: “HTML5 has already been used to create application caches which allow you to store web apps (such as Facebook) locally. This allows users to access pages without connecting to the Internet, a useful feature when your signal dies out. Google Gears is an example of this technology in use, ” meaning that HTML5 could allow people to update their profiles, sites and applications even if they don’t have an internet connection, and all their online information will instantly update the next time the computer gets online. This will definitely be appealing to avid social media users.

Flowtown isn’t the only site that sees promise in HTML5′s boost to online social media and video. Codingthis.com says that video is the number one perk to HTML5, stating that: “You can embed a video on a page with the same amount of ease as you could embed an image with the help of HTML5 codes. And what makes it better is that you can manipulate videos and built-in video controls and of course you don’t need to rely on third-party codes to embed a video.” The video-centric social network Vimeo has caught on to this and released an HTML5 version of its video player last August stating the reason for their decision was because of the great demand for an embeddable player in HTML5 for devices like the iPad and the iPhone. Which makes a lot of sense, especially when considering the VAR Guy’s recent blog about how iPad’s are faring very well in their competition with notebooks.

With innovative technologies like HTML5 comes the opportunity for talented people to come up with original and creative ideas. Check out this experimental film called The Wilderness Downtown by Chris Milk, which is a music video for the song by Arcade Fire called “We Used to Wait”.  The film incorporates multiple windows opening and closing, Google Maps, and even allows the user to interact with the film, which makes for an awesome HTML5 video experience. There has been an explosion of games in HTML5, one of my favorite games is Entanglement and here are the top 5 best HTML5 games to play in the office, brought to you by inslices.com. I also found this stunning display of 8-bit graphics using HTML5 as well as a full 3-D engine done in HTML5.

So, is HTML5 the way of the future? With all the talk surrounding it and with major companies like Apple, Youtube, Facebook and Goggle all making great strides to be HTML5 compatible, I don’t see how it couldn’t be, which is great news for anyone involved in the internet video industry.

First Page Organic Rankings with Video Content

Posted May 20 2010 by in Drew Thoughts, Uncategorized, Video Delivery with 0 Comments

If you’re not optimizing your videos, you should start. “Blended search,” the practice in which search engines display videos, images, news stories, maps, and other types of items alongside their standard search results, is now the norm on major search engines. And optimizing video content to take advantage of blended search has by far become the easiest way to get a first-page organic ranking on Google. 

Not only are video results increasingly common in Google’s search results, but your videos stand a much better chance than your text pages of being shown on the first results page. On the keywords for which Google offers video results, a recent study by Forrester.com found an average of 16,000 videos vying to appear on results pages containing an average of 1.5 video results — giving each video about an 11,000-to-1 chance of making it onto the first page of results. By comparison, there was an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results — giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results. Now that’s a lot of math, but here’s what it means: on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index. Those are some attractive odds. 

Here’s the kicker… so few interactive marketers focus on video optimization that most of the videos in Google’s index aren’t very well optimized — so if you optimize your videos well, your chances of success will increase even further. 

Sure, it’ll take time to reorganize and tag your videos, but it’s so worth it. If you need help or want to add an online video delivery system with your personal branding… well, we know a company that specializes in just that. 

*Most of this information and content was provided by Nate Elliott of Forrester.com 

Google announces new OS to compete with Microsoft

Posted Jul 8 2009 by in Win7 with 1 Comment

The New York Times this morning has an insightful article about Google’s new Chrome Operating System (now more than a browser!).  Google is thinking that a netbook optimized OS will be successful for them, and that’s what Chrome is.  The browser will be the OS, the OS will be the browser.

Well worth reading – the key issue with this whole move into operating systems is well stated by the reporter – “But while Google has deep pockets and a vast reach, it is in for a difficult battle when it comes to challenging Microsoft in the operating system market. Many companies have tried this over the years, with little success.”

Big move by Google.  It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.  To date, Android (despite early and considerable hype) isn’t exactly taking the mobile marketplace by storm.  Google is facing Win7 and possibly some sort of Mac tablet/netbook as well as other linux distributions.  I haven’t run Win7 on a netbook yet, but it’s AWESOME in Fusion on my Macbook Pro, so I expect it’ll perform amazingly well on netbook hardware.  (Win7 is faster than XP Pro was in my virtual machine)

I think that Win7 is really going to surprise a lot of people – it’s got all the advantages of Vista, but the speed is what is most impressive.  The other killer feature is that this OS speed is combined with true and fast universal search. The reason I live in Fusion instead of the Mac natively is because the built in search in Vista/Win7 is so excellent. Spotlight on the Mac was first to market but hasn’t improved much since in my opinion.  For a couple of years, I’ve opened all my applications by searching for them – ie “Word” instead of fumbling around in Programs, Microsoft Office, etc…

Watch here at Varvid.com next week for video coverage of Win7 from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.  We think that Win7 is the biggest story of the coming year for Solution Providers, so we’re focusing on it at WPC.  In our opinion, Win7 is ready for primetime today - and it’s still a release candidate…

Update – looks like we’re not the only people who see this OS the same way – Ed Molzen over at ChannelWeb says much the same…