Expect to hear a lot of buzz about YouTube Direct.  And, for good reason.  It may be the solution for you to get user-generated video and viewer comments on your site, or on-air, without costing you anything.  

Except, this model has no revenue component, a fact established solutions like  YouNews, USTREAM , KickApps , will surely point out.  Oh, and you are helping YouTube build out it’s news presence online.

YouTube Direct allows you to embed the upload functionality of YouTube directly into your own site, enabling your organization to request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease. News organizations can ask for citizen reporting; nonprofits can call-out for support videos around social campaigns; businesses can ask users to submit promotional videos about your brand. With YouTube Direct, the opportunities to connect directly with the YouTube community are endless.

Key features of YouTube Direct include:

• Built on the YouTube API, this 100% open-source solution provides you with an easily-integrated audience engagement platform for your website
• The customizable interface allows you to tailor the look and feel of the tool precisely to your audience
• Visitors can answer your call for content by uploading their videos to YouTube via your site without leaving the page
• A moderation panel enables your editors to review and approve/reject all submitted videos, deciding which ones meet your organization’s editorial criteria
• All videos approved by your editors include a link back to your site when viewed on YouTube

Examples:

WHDH, Boston

          San Francisco Chronicle

          Here’s how to sign up and start uploading.

Note: The Hitwise data featured is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US internet users. Hitwise measures more than 1 million unique websites on a daily basis, including sub-domains of larger websites. Hitwise categorizes websites into industries on the basis of subject matter and content, as well as market orientation and competitive context. The market share of visits percentage does not include traffic for all sub-domains of certain websites that could be reported on separately.

We LOVE Lists! So I couldn’t resist posting these lists of a few quick and easy ways journalists can use Twitter Lists to keep tabs on their sources. ( From Jeremy Porter, a veteran public relations professional. He is the founder of Journalistics.com) :

* Create a public list of all the journalists at your organization
* Create a private list of your sources, organized by beat, story topic, or by people you’ve interviewed in the past
* Create a private list of your competitors, so you can keep tabs on what they’re writing about
* Create industry-specific lists of experts to brainstorm new story ideas
* Create geographic lists for sources in specific markets
* Create hashtag-based lists, for people who regularly participate in discussions around a particular tag (i.e., a conference or current event)

How PR professionals can use Twitter Lists

* Create a list of your clients who actively use Twitter
* Create a list of your colleagues at your organization
* Create a private list of journalists you want to follow or target with story ideas
* Organize media contacts by geography, beat, past interaction, etc.
* Create a list of media organizations, to keep tabs on current events or stories – for example, create a list of the top social media Twitter users

Though Twitter Lists are new to most users, some news organizations are trying to stay ahead of the curve by taking advantage of the new feature and implementing it quickly. Whether by creating staff directories to make their journalists easier to find, or recommending tweeps to follow on specific subjects, Twitter lists are giving news sites the ability to curate news and further open up to Twitter users that can help them to gather news.

via 4 Ways News Organizations are Using Twitter Lists.

What’s the weather, what to wear? Obama helps you everywhere!

How does it work?

The site gets a detailed weather report from a weather.com service, analyses a relation of temperature, humidity, strength of wind and some other characteristics and, finally visualizes the most comfortable set of clothes to wear this day. Of course, our commander-in-chief models the clothes you should be wearing.

Why do you need it?

The site sez: You don’t have to check your thermometer anytime you go out in order to decide what clothes to wear. No more ‘let’s look out of the window to see what people wear today’ or go out to the balcony to feel if the clothes you’ve chosen is ok not to get freezed or hot. All you need is to check what Obama or his friends wear.

Moreover, obama-weather.com can become your major adviser while planning a business trip or a vacation journey. You’ll always know for sure what type of clothes you should take with you.

How to use it

Maybe a fun feature for the end of the weather segment or at the end of the newscast.

The Twitterholic.com Top 100 Twitterholics based on Followers

As expected, Ashton, Oprah, Ellen, and CNN Breaking News made the top of the list.  Products and shows like Chelsey Lately, Martha Stewart, and Whole Foods Market are in the 2nd 25.  Also, notice how few people the top Twitterers follow.   BTW, Griff Potter is ranked 206,631st on twitterholic! 

#	Name (Screen Name)		Location	URL	Followers	Friends	Updates	Joined
1.		ashton kutcher (aplusk)	here	http://blahgirls.com	3,913,292	255	3,832	10 months ago
2.		Britney Spears (britneyspears)	Los Angeles, CA	http://www.britneyspears.com	3,670,789	430,879	310	14 months ago
3.		Ellen DeGeneres (TheEllenShow)	California	http://www.ellentv.com	3,648,942	3,913	720	15 months ago
4.		CNN Breaking News (cnnbrk)	Everywhere	http://cnn.com/	2,798,339	16	1,167	35 months ago
5.		Twitter (twitter)	San Francisco, CA	http://twitter.com	2,589,815	108	553	33 months ago
6.		Kim Kardashian (KimKardashian)	Armenia	http://KimKardashian.com	2,574,108	64	2,175	8 months ago
7.		Barack Obama (BarackObama)	Washington, DC	http://www.barackobama.com	2,559,857	751,782	396	32 months ago
8.		Ryan Seacrest (RyanSeacrest)	Hollywood, CA	http://www.ryanseacrest.com	2,541,033	123	1,681	14 months ago
9.		John Mayer (johncmayer)	USA	http://www.johnmayer.com	2,525,771	70	2,388	9 months ago
10.		Oprah Winfrey (Oprah)	Chicago, IL	http://www.oprah.com	2,516,946	17	74	9 months ago

THE REST OF THE LIST >> HERE!

Browser Browser maker Opera has released its latest ‘State of the Mobile Web’ report this morning, claiming that there was a huge surge in mobile web usage past September, reports TechCrunch.com.

Last month, more than 35.6 million people used Opera Mini (which is now serving over 500 million pageviews per day on average on a wide range of mobile devices), up 11.5% compared to August 2009 and more than 150% compared to September 2008. The Norway software developer also claims more than 2 petabytes of data is now processed by its servers on a monthly basis. That’d be 2,000 terabytes.

Data traffic through Opera’s mobile browser — which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth – rose 8.7% in September compared to August, the company said. In total, it gained about 4 million new Opera Mini users in that same period of time.

Opera also said users in the top 10 countries (Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam) save up to $672 million USD per month, or over $8.1 billion USD per year, thanks to the compression rate of 90% and the subsequent savings in mobile data charges from users’ operators.

To calculate these numbers, which I question, Opera looked at the top operators in each country, determined how much they typically charge per MB of browsing, and averaged those figures together. The average cost of browsing in each country was then multiplied by the amount of traffic generated in each country, and the resulting totals were summed and compared to the totals for uncompressed data traffic. The big caveat: Opera’s survey only reflects metered rates (cost per MB) and not flat-rate subscription options, which skews the numbers in their favor.

The fact that mobile web usage continues to surge is hardly surprising, but Opera’s monthly reports reflect the rate of increase quite nicely on a monthly basis. Here’s a graph that shows the evolution as measured by data consumption:

Asks How CNN, Others ‘Like Being Patted on the Head’ by White House-

From Mcnorman’s Weblog

Newsbusters: On the Oct. 19 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Hume gave his best effort to rationalize why White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod used two Sunday morning news show appearances to beat up on the highly rated news channel. According to Hume, it was because they disapproved of the stories his channel broke over the last few months.

more about “Hume Defends Fox Video“, posted with vodpod

Ouch! Graeme Newell has again delivered a much-needed jab to the midsection.  If you contribute to your station’s social media efforts, at any level, you need to read Graeme’s new blog post The Social Media Marketing Test.  He points out what I’ve been telling partners and clients for months: Social Media is not a new promotion or ad platform. It is a relationship and all the rules of relationships apply.  Give freely, don’t dominate the conversation, Listen to what is being said back,  don’t rush the conversation.

Newell writes: I often think that social media marketing has become an oxymoron.  Why?  Because so many companies try to gain entry into this new medium using the outdated tactics of traditional marketing.  Do you have a measurable goal for social media that goes beyond the mass-marketing mindset of “get more followers and make more sales?”

I have seen so many social media campaigns go wildly off course when they are executed using this Madison Avenue mindset.  Social media is not just another form of advertising.  We treat it like a monologue, when it is actually a dialogue.  Social media really is a new form of communication, not just another medium to be included in a traditional marketing plan.

For those of us who grew up in the traditional advertising world, we just can’t help ourselves.   We know that social media is two-way personal interaction, but we still tend to fall back to practiced one-way communication.  In the old ad world, copy space was scarce, and messages were short with succinct calls to action.  It was a world guided by the need to quickly bang the drum and get attention.

The true power of social media is its ability to persuade by socializing, not advertising.  It has a longer selling cycle. This more leisurely pace often chafes the hurried corporate agenda.  Impatience is its most beguiling temptation and most ruinous attribute.  Social media does not tolerate commercial exploitation and over-the-top selling. Yet, a casual read through many company social media pages quickly reveals a disingenuous, transparent selling agenda.  No one wants to be friends with a salesman working a crowd.

Successful social media campaigns have a deeper purpose and are all about human interaction.  Zappos uses it to showcase great customer service.  Ford & Molson use it put a human face on an impersonal company brand.  Dell uses it to battle a perception of bad customers service.

Put your social media posts to the test.  Evaluate your fan page.  These telltale signs show customers they are a sales mark to be harvested, not a friend to be wooed.

Take the Social Media Marketing Test