YouTube has long been considered a loss leader for Google since the search giant bought it for $1.65 billion in November 2006. "How can you attach advertising to video uploaded by users?" the sceptics asked. Well, here's how.
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There have been many bands that made it big on the Internet before signing with a label, the name Arctic Monkeys springs to mind. But one of many bands riding the sea of change and going the other way is OK Go, who this month are featured on the cover of Billboard magazine. And although their backstory is not one of broken homes and drug addiction, it is interesting nonetheless.
As frontman Damian told The New York Times:
My band is famous for music videos. We direct them ourselves or with the help of friends, we shoot them on shoestring budgets and, like our songs, albums and concerts, we see them as creative works and not as our record company’s marketing tool.
In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song “Here It Goes Again.” We shot it at my sister’s house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission. Technically, this put us afoul of our contract, since we need our record company’s approval to distribute copies of the songs that they finance. It also exposed YouTube to all sorts of liability for streaming an EMI recording across the globe. But back then record companies saw videos as advertisements, so if my band wanted to produce them, and if YouTube wanted to help people watch them, EMI wasn’t going to get in the way.
To cut a long story short (definitely follow those links for more info), that quickly changed. EMI eventually blocked embedding of the band's videos on the blogs that had made it such a success. OK Go had no choice but to split from its record company and go it alone - celebrating by sharing this incredible video around the globe.
The video is great and has tremendous feelgood value - would a record company ever commission anything so outrageous? - but the story of OK Go is also a valuable lesson to anyone looking to use the Internet in any way at all. In short, successful promotion is not about spending vast sums on marketing that makes something look better than it is - it's about the product having that unpredictable something that makes users want to share it with their friends. Once you go "viral", the rest takes care of itself.
This is the BBC's April Fool's Day prank from 2008 - and demonstrates how, like YouTube, the iPlayer makes the unmissable... unmissable - for years to come.
This broke over the weekend, and means that no one actually has to go over to Chatroulette.com (for those with their heads in the sand, here's a write-up from the Guardian's Bobbie Johnson), because this is basically all you need to know. Next!
UPDATE: Now that the video above has been removed (not even Mashable knows exactly why) the baton has been passed to pianist/songwriter Ben Folds, who copied Merton 1's example by incorporating Chatroulette into a live performance. Here it is:
chatroulette+ internet+ youtube | in internet I just watched this on the Google Docs login page and it made me laugh.
Here's the skinny on the clip above from Mashable.com:
Ann Minch of California launched what she calls the “Debtors Revolt” by posting a video on September 8th, following what she felt was an unjustified APR increase on her card. The result has been more than a quarter million views, and other credit card holders posting their own videos vowing to stop paying the credit card companies until they “stop this outright financial rape.”
Good work, I enjoyed the choice language!
The video above not only provides food for thought for advertisers, it is also a way for The Open University to advertise its courses.
psychology+ the open university+ youtube | in education 