Posted by Caroline McCarthy

From a MySpace-related suicide to hate speech on YouTube, the world of user-generated content has been plagued by plain, old nastiness since its early days.

That’s why, as part of the Family Online Safety Institute conference in Washington, D.C., YouTube parent company Google has unveiled an “Abuse and Safety” resource guide.

According to a post on the official Google blog, the new section of YouTube’s help center features “straightforward safety tips and multimedia resources from experts and prominent safety organizations” regarding topics like cyberbulling, privacy, spam, and sexual exploitation.

YouTube also said that the resource guide will make it more straightforward to find out how to manage privacy and safety settings.

The dark underbelly of online video was in the spotlight once again when a Florida teenager used live-streaming service Justin.tv to broadcast his suicide last month.

TalkShoe this afternoon released a major upgrade to their live podcasting platform, one that allows for a call to be created mobile, on the fly and independent of a connection to the web.

CEO Dave Nelson posted the details to the company blog today:

So now you can do a movie review as you leave the theater, inform your audience about a breaking news story, or tell your friends about a hot new restaurant while the taste is still on your tongue.

You may recall a similar service was released back in March by TalkShoe competitor BlogTalkRadio called CinchCast. The primary difference between the BlogTalkRadio offering and TalkShoe’s new feature is the ability to bring in callers to the show and broadcast it live (Cinchcast is time-shifted only).

As a podcast producer who has frequently used TalkShoe as a valued production tool, I can say that this is one feature that’s been on my personal wishlist for quite some time. It allows TalkShoe to move into the category of journalistic tool that Twitter has found itself in, and adds another utility to the repertoire of the New Media producer.

In essence, it finally allows users to have the same functionality in audio format they’ve had for quite some time with the video format thanks to services like Qik and Flixwagon.

Why do certain videos on YouTube become mass phenomena while the vast majority of videos just get a handful of views, if any?

Riley Crane, an American post doctoral fellow currently researching at the Chair of Entrepreneurial Risks at ETH university in Zurich/Switzerland, says he has the answer: According to him, the success of online videos can be explained with physics.

Crane claims every time a YouTube video turns into a hit, the development takes the form of an “attention spiral”, a geometric pattern that partly follows physical laws. He discovered that a decrease of popularity with certain videos, for example, can be explained through methods usually utilized in modeling the aftershocks of earthquakes. He believes social systems on the web follow the rules of physics and can therefore be analyzed mathematically.

The popularity of YouTube videos can be characterized through curves visualizing increases and decreases in the number of viewers and the amount of attention they pay to each video. For example, the following graph shows two different attention spirals (top left: level of search activity following the Tsunami that hit part of Asia in December 2004; top right: the volume of search queries for Harry Potter between April and October 2007, bottom left:views of Harry Potter videos on YouTube; bottom right: views of tsunami videos on Youtube):

After researching the usage of about 5 million YouTube videos over 8 months, Crane found out that only 10 percent are viewed more than 100 times a day. According to Crane, the popularity of these videos can be measured through distinguishing whether a burst of activity was observed after a large-scale “exogenous” (external) shock or whether it’s the result of a number of smaller “endogeneous” (internal) factors that had a cumulative effect. Also, it seems to be important to take into account the extent to which web users can influence others to take action (what he calls “critical” vs. “subcritical,” where the latter term means exerting influence is impossible).

Crane categorizes especially popular videos into three different classes:

• “junk” (exogenous subcritical type, videos that quickly pick up and lose viewers / see the green diagram at the bottom left in the picture below)
• “viral” (endogenous critical type, videos spreading through the site through word of mouth / see the red diagram at the top right in the picture below)
• “quality” (exogenous critical type, videos that attract attention quickly and only slowly lose their appeal over time because of their high quality / see the blue diagram at the bottom right in the picture below)

Junk videos are characterized by a significant peak that contains the vast majority of views and fail to spread through the site. In contrast to quality videos, viral videos show precursory growth before peaking out and decaying slowly (see the Harry Potter example above, diagram A): It takes time for the endogenous phenomenon to build up and spread within the network. Quality videos, however, reach the peak much faster as a reaction to an external “shock” but also decay slowly (see the Tsunami video example above, diagram B).

Crane claims that viral and quality videos show very characteristic patterns over a specific period of time, supposedly making it possible (through the analysis of tendencies) to predict if a video has the potential to become a super hit.

The final goal is the development of an encompassing and science-based online trend monitoring system. The university newsletter writes (German only) Amazon is currently in negotiations with Crane to integrate his model into its site, hoping to predict the potential of newly listed products at an early stage.

The critical factor here (and one of the long-term objectives) is to correctly determine the tipping point, the point in time at which the viral effect kicks in and sales or (in the case of YouTube) views of videos take off. Details of the Crane model (presented with fellow researcher Didier Sornette) can be found in the October issue of PNAS magazine (available online here).

A topic I’ve tackled several times here at Mashable has been the question of Hulu versus YouTube in terms of their advertising strategies. My friend Frederic Lardinois over at ReadWriteWeb brought the topic up today in reference to news from the Financial Times regarding the revenue of the two video business units.

In the past, though, tons of bloggers have taken potshots at YouTube for not realizing the potential of the $1.65 billion investment by Google. One of the more recent times I got on this particular merry-go-round was back in June in response to Mark Cuban, who said that Hulu was in danger of roundly kicking YouTube’s ass in terms of viewership and monetization. Back then, as they do now, the traffic numbers simply tell a different story.

As you can see, back in June through October of this month, Hulu has seen significant gains relative to their current traffic patterns (very likely due to the highly watched election videos and Sarah Palin – watch for this line to drop in December). Compared to YouTube? The difference is still monstrous.

How is it possible, then, that the Financial Times is able to make statements like this:

Neither company breaks out its advertising revenues but Arash Amel, analyst at Screen Digest, forecasts that in 2008 YouTube will generate about $100m in the US, compared with about $70m at Hulu. Next year both sites will generate about $180m in the US, he says. YouTube currently earns around half of its revenues in the US, while Hulu has not yet launched internationally.

Setting aside any quibbles we may have with their estimates, for a moment, very simply put – the Hulu sales team is lightyears ahead of what’s being done at Google.

Aren’t Advertisers Just Scared of YouTube?

That’s the phrase that pays when pundits and analysts come together to talk about monetization efforts on UGC video. Frederic mentioned it in his writeup. Henry Blodgett said something similar when he deigned to advise Google to “throw in the towel” on YouTube. The issue doesn’t have anything to do with advertiser readiness to throw down with the money, and more to do with the limited avenues to do so.

Just as a proof-of-concept on this theory, give yourself a five minute limit to figure out how to put an ad on the side-bar on a Google search result.  Even if you don’t know where to start, you should get there with four minutes to spare, assuming you know how to … you know … type a Google query.

Now try the same thing with YouTube.

Not so easy, is it?  If you’re lucky, on your third or fourth search query, you’ll turn up this page, which YouTube dubs its online media kit. If you have the patience, you can spend about a half-hour watching Googlers tell you how awesome it is to advertise on YouTube, complete with some product manager playing with his plastic dinosaurs.

This is what I’m talking about.  If you actually watch these videos, you get the picture that YouTube is running advertisements on only a fraction of those gazillions of page-views and video views. In fact, they only run ads on videos that participate in the “Partner Program,” a program not easy to figure out how to join, either.

Just think of the money YouTube could make if they ran just a stupid little text-based AdSense unit on every page on YouTube. We started running through this intellectual exercise the last time this topic came up here – we determined that YouTube needed to monetize (generously) 1% of their traffic to thoroughly trounce Hulu.

It’s easy to see here that the same minds that brought us search ads aren’t working on what’s at YouTube, otherwise they’d have this problem licked by now. For further proof, take a gander at your AdWords account, and try to find the button that allows you to advertise on YouTube.  I’ll save you some time – it isn’t there, not even next to the “advertise on radio” or “advertise on TV” links.

Hulu Doesn’t Have an Easy Advertiser Form Either. How Are They Doing So Well?

That’s because they don’t need one. As Blodget notes in his write-up, Hulu gives more money back to its partners than YouTube does with theirs.  What Blodget fails to mention is that this is a pointless statistic, since Hulu is essentially a puppet entity for News Corporation and NBC Universal.

This means that they don’t really need to rely on an in-house sales team as YouTube does, at least not throughout the year. They do the bulk of their big name, high dollar selling at what’s called the “upfronts” every year. Millions of dollars trade hands after the May sweeps at these star-studded events, and YouTube hasn’t made inroads to tap into this market.

If they sold at the upfronts, it isn’t like it would land them the type of money Hulu’s getting.  Even the most watched content on YouTube still doesn’t have the international brand recognition of your average show on the WB. Simply put, the TV networks still have decades of brand recognition built up, and YouTube is technically still a toddler.

As Soon as Google and YouTube Start Playing to Their Strengths…

Here’s the point I’m driving at – YouTube has been doing things right in almost every category so far when it comes to growing the brand and traffic to the site.

They have a lumbering behemoth in terms of traffic, and it looks to me like they’re trying to outlast some dinosaurs of Old Media just long enough so that some of these pesky copyright issues outmode themselves (either by these Old Media companies dying off themselves, or their grasp of New Media catching up with reality). That’s frankly the only explanation I can think of behind why they’d not treat their YouTube traffic like every other type of traffic contained within the Google family.

Playing to their weaknesses, and by that I mean trying to compete with Hulu and other studio produced aggregators head on… it’s akin to looking for the golden needles in the haystack, instead of feeding all that hay into the gold-spinning wheel they have sitting in the back.

I’ve said it twice before already, but I’ll reiterate: This is the YouTube election. Yes, Twitter has played some part. Reputable bloggers on all sides of the fence, too. But YouTube has been the glue that’s bound this big beautiful mess of a social media space together.

The class of political watchdogs that inhabit the space have given the presidential candidates, as well as the mainstream media, a real qualitative sense of what viral video is all about.  That goes as much for the ups as it does the downs. It’s all part of the puzzle, and plenty of us can delight in the fact that the people have influenced things more than they ever have before, either through sheer vigilance or vocal responsiveness to events on the campaign trail. Still, it’s not over. There’s November 4 to consider – and the many minutes of citizen journalism that will presumably be recorded that day.

Indeed, if there’s anything that can bring more noisemakers to the fore in the land where user-generated content remains supreme – quantitatively, at least – it is the method of granting a single day of voting in order to elect a new leader of a nation of 300,000,000-plus people. (Not counting the many preceding days for so-called absentee ballots that one-quarter to one-third of the voting public has chosen to deliver to Uncle Sam, of course.)

It’s bound to get ugly. Somewhat, anyway. From touchscreen mishaps to entirely dysfunctional or broken machines to challenges over valid and invalid registrations, the battle for a majority result one way or another is never clean-cut and never above-board 100% of the way through.

In light of this expectation, the reality of the ever-present “citizencam” makes for one such national situation that gives the public at large a teensy bit more powerful a role than it had on its person for elections past. Okay, not a teensy bit. A major leg up, you might say.

I’ll certainly leave it up to others to determine the who-what-when-where-and-how of the events which are to occur on Election Day, but suffice it to say that them handicams Mr. and Ms. America will inevitably have on their possession outside the voting booth and station will go far in exposing that which may not have received just attention 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, or 20 years ago.

Now, putting aside the political leanings of the man for a moment, the actor and and director Tim Robbins made it a point to mention on a recent edition of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” to urge citizens to keep the cameras rolling, as it were, throughout the day, as often as possible. Good advice, for sure, but whether that advice reached the right ears that evening last month is hardly of much pertinence here, of course, since it is undoubtedly going to happen anyway. I dare say people would have a harder time doing their due diligence in gathering the appropriate identification than they would their digital recorders.

So the only thing left to question is: Will you be ready on Election Day?

Imagery provided by iStockPhoto/3dbrained

ovember 1, 2008 – 5:03 pm PDT – by Paul Glazowski

I don’t know whether to think recent calculations for mobile video consumption (or lack thereof) via the four top wireless carriers in America are just a little bit Halloween spooky, a big point of concern, or perhaps a good omen.

It’s come to be a common refrain that most of the country’s residents are mobile phone users. But what they do with their devices is, particularly in media consumption, very unlike the advanced markets of Asia and places elsewhere. Less than 3% of American subscribers bother to consume on-demand video in any form. “Woe is US?”

That number, released by Comscore yesterday, is certainly not an attractive one for any carrier to next to its name, especially given the activities made possible by new(ish) strides in mobile broadband penetration across the country by various networks. Whether it is a 4.4% usership that AT&T managed to serve circa June-August 2008, the 4.2% tallied for Sprint, or the the 2.4% figures each given to T-Mobile and Verizon, none shine very brightly.

To get specific for a moment, so-called amateur video clips (a la YouTube) ranked #1 among those who did use the carrier’s video services, followed by music videos, comedy clips, and film trailers. Each segment managed to net over 1 million users. (Alternatively, Web browsing, email transfers, and photo and video sharing are all working double-digit percentiles themselves, totaling over 100,000,000 users.)

As anyone with a good perception on data rates demanded of video downloads knows, the “packaged” experience delivered by carriers is 1) nowhere near like using a desktop-sized Web browser, and 2) costly. These factors, compounded with unavailability of many media options and television channels and whatnot, do much to make media services somewhat unappealing to many people. New software breaches that barrier, no doubt, but such developments are young and far from a common convenience.

What’s more, present platforms used to deliver streaming and on-demand video to handsets (only few of which manage to interface with online services really well) should really be taken for what they are: mobile broadband and Internet use. It’s entirely reasonable to think, then, that consumers wish to consider mobile broadband and Internet use very much the same way they do their land-based residential and at-work broadband connections. Which is to say, “give me access for a fee and let me do what I want to do and see what I want to see.”

Wireless carriers of course don’t appreciate this sensibility very much, since it essentially designates their task as a dumb ISP, so to speak. No value added. Just build the towers, sell the handsets and monthly connections and allow the user to do what the user wants to do from there on out. (How very libertarian and Ron Paul-like of the user. And we all know how wigs in the major parties regard independent thinkers.)

All said, I would think that an average of 2.8% penetration for the on-demand mobile video market is just a notch or two above crumb-sized. So I can only imagine that the figure is directly attributable to the age-old law of supply and demand. If the product isn’t adequate, nor will demand be. Time for carriers to be a little more free-thinking (philosophically, if not financially) with their mobile media delivery models, it seems.

Many people watch free, advertising-supported episodes of shows on sites like Hulu.

The conventional wisdom is that people on computers only have the attention span to watch very short video clips. But it’s clear that getting network programming on their own schedule makes it increasingly worthwhile for some viewers to watch full episodes on their computers.

Hulu, the NBC-Fox venture that just celebrated its first birthday, and despite initial ridicule, it is now the sixth-biggest video site on the Web. Hulu served 142 million streams, both episodes and shorter clips, to 6.3 million users in September.

And Internet users are becoming much more engaged with other forms of video content. That was one of the themes that jumped out at me in a roundtable Tuesday organized by Andy Plesser, the publicist and video blogger on Beet.TV.

On WashingtonPost.com, the most popular video programming has been its live coverage of election nights and conventions, said Chet Rhodes, the assistant managing editor for video. The Wall Street Journal has been experimenting with four- to seven-minute “mini-documentaries” in addition to shorter video segments that sometimes accompany news articles.

On Blip.TV, a site that aggregates semi-professional and professional videos, the average length of a program has increased from 3-5 minutes a year ago to 5-7 minutes now, said Mike Hudack, its chief executive. Certain programs, such as how-to programming, keep audiences for a long time. “If someone says at the beginning of the show he will make a chair, he spends the next 20 minutes making it in his garage, and then he sits down in the chair, people will watch that all the way through, and they love it,” Mr. Hudack said.

There is less interest in longer sitcoms and dramas made by amateurs, Mr. Hudak said. The issue is that independent film makers don’t have the resources and skills to make something that is compelling for much longer than five minutes, he said.

Many sites are finding, in fact, that users want to construct their own video programs out of parts.

“The consumer shows up with a partial idea in her head about what she wants to watch,” said Adam Berrey, a senior vice president of Brightcove, a video technology firm. “She moves from video to video in a non-linear way.”

Once a video finishes, sites are finding it useful to present a range of options for related content to watch next. After a breaking news story about China, Mr. Berrey said, sites should offer both more breaking news and more video from China to appeal to all the possible interests. MSNBC is developing technology to recognize key words spoken in its video segments so they can be indexed and presented on topic pages about various subjects.

This offers a bit of confirmation to a theory I’ve had for a while: that the Internet will reverse the dumbing down of news that was caused by television. One reason that TV reduces most news segments to two minutes is that everyone watching a newscast has to watch all of them, even the topics that bore them. Video on the Internet is more like reading a print publication. You decide how much you want to watch and when to switch to the next topic. And so programmers don’t have to be afraid of providing information that some people want because they are afraid that others will switch to a different channel.

That’s not to say that the conventional wisdom doesn’t have a point. All things being equal, it is easier to relax and watch video for a long time sitting on your couch than at your desk. And bringing Internet video to living room televisions, as Blip and some other sites are doing, dramatically increases how much people watch.

“Viewing time triples, quadruples, quintuples, when people are watching in a lean-back environment with a remote control and an HDTV,” Mr. Hudack said.