YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at its most popular videos of all time. Our latest update has Justin Bieber still at number 1 with Baby, which was the first video to earn a half a billion views! Currently, Bieber and Eminem between them make almost half of the top 10. Also of note is a music video by Jennifer Lopez called On The Floor ft. Pitbull, which has risen to number 2 with almost 500 million views in only 10 months.
We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views (it's now outside the top 10). The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million views. In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views. By the beginning of January 2011, Justin Bieber was at number 1 with over 400 million views for Baby.
Here is the top 10, as of February 2012:
The Internet is fascinated by teenagers. People are in awe of the things that teenagers do and say, online and offline.
Dr. danah boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft, assistant professor at NYU and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, thinks that perhaps adults are worrying too much about what teenagers are doing and saying online. What happens at lunchtime on the playground is now happening on the Internet, mostly on social media sites. Kids talk about stuff they can't discuss in class, they flirt with each other, they make crude jokes. They openly discuss what they'd never utter at the family dinner table.
In a moment of passionate texting, they decided it was time...to share their passwords.
A thoughtful New York Times article published yesterday speaks to an eerie new trend: In the digital era, teenagers in love want to share their most intimate secrets, ideas and, of course, their Facebook accounts. They leave virtual residue on each others' Facebook walls, they send Facebook messages, they text each other and video chat. And they even share their passwords with each other.
Despite all of the technology available to teenagers today, they still prefer meeting IRL to texting and "liking" each others' Facebook statuses.
A new study out from Ericsson surveyed 2000 U.S. teenagers ages 13-17 to understand more about how they socialize through technology.
Texting and Facebook in particular have changed the way that teenagers date, particularly in the "courting" process which concludes with an actual date. The initial first interaction still takes place offline. In fact, when asked the question what type of communication would they miss most if it were taken away, teens responded with "face-to-face."
Did you know that almost half of the TV shows that are recorded are played back on the same day? How about that the average Netflix customer watches five TV shows and four movies a week? Or that (no real surprise here) visits to video streaming and sharing sites continue to climb?
A new infographic from G+/Gerson Lehrman Group shows these and a few other interesting trends too. For example, Dell was able to cut service calls by posting video how-tos on its support site. This and other TV oddities can be found below.
So, how do you feel about email? It's a rough question to ponder on the first no-excuses work day of 2012. Email is like a treadmill. If we don't keep running, we're going to fall down. Maybe email would feel better if we started the new year off with some better practices for managing it.
ToutApp has built a free service called Year In Review that will help. It scans your Gmail/Google Apps account and gives you all kinds of feedback. Tout is upfront about privacy, and your report is just for you, unless you share it. ToutApp has the same goal for Year In Review as its users do: to get better at email.
We all know that the world is going to end in December 2012 because a giant solar eruption is going to swallow the Earth. Or is it supposed to be the implosion of the Yellowstone Caldera? Reversal of the global poles? Does anybody even care about how the Earth will end if we are all doomed anyway?
Apparently, yes. NASA has set up a Frequently Asked Questions page on its website to answer questions pertaining to the end of existence. According to NASA, there is no scientific evidence that the world is going to end in 2012. Contrary to popular beliefs, put your trust in science and do not set up the foundations for that underground bunker just yet.
Surely you saw the #OccupyWallStreet pepper-spraying cop Internet meme. And perhaps since then you've been inspired to create your own Internet meme. If so, then take a hint from the "Hey Girl" Ryan Gosling Internet meme, which features a picture of the actor alongside an intellectual pick-up line. It's been going strong since December 2010, and it's not disappearing anytime soon.
Ryan Gosling Feminist, one of the smarter iterations of this meme was created by Danielle Henderson, a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin Madison's women and gender studies program. We asked her a few questions about her take on the popularity of "Hey Girl." And just days after we did that, the Internet produced Museum Hey Girl, for the artier among us. Hey Girl Happy Hannukah appeared on December 20, the first day of the holiday.
Today Digg and Facebook are getting close. Real close. Digg is unleashing its new social reader on Facebook. When users turn on social sharing from their Digg accounts, all the stories they read will be frictionlessly shared to their news feed, Timeline and their friends' news tickers.
This new feature smooshes together your Facebook social graph and your Digg social graph, two social sets that might not really have much in common. This is yet another attempt at making Digg more social, following on the heels of Digg's real-time newswire and social newsrooms, which function like topical channels curated by users. Will this new feature help Digg get back into social news?
This year wasn't the first time any of us heard about the impact of social media on television. People have talked about TV shows on Facebook and Twitter for about as long as those social networks have existed, and the trend has only accelerated as social media usage in general has exploded.
Last year, chatter on Twitter helped the MTV Video Music Awards boost its audience to the biggest it had been in eight years. In 2011, services like Twitter and Facebook served as the virtual water cooler for just about every major news story and broadcast media event. It may not have been invented this year, but 2011 was pivotal for social TV.
