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:
Showyou 3.0 launches today, and if you watch videos on an iPad, a Kindle Fire, an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you need to try it. If you have an Apple TV, so much the better. Showyou brings in all the videos from your various social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more. It displays them for you in a glorious, sweeping grid organized by magic. The new version makes browsing a little more down-to-earth, too (in a good way), adding category channels, browsable lists for individual users, and an easier navigation tray.
We've compared Showyou's previous versions to Flipboard and Instapaper, which is pretty esteemed company for an iOS app. As a set of features, those comparisons are apt. But the interface takes it a step further. The app takes full advantage of the touchscreen. It's a better interface than TV has ever had. And you don't just watch on your device; you can AirPlay it to your Apple TV and just use Showyou as the remote. Whatever it was about TV that Steve Jobs said he "finally cracked," it was probably something like this.
A startup is hoping to combine two hot web trends, crowd sourcing and microearning, into a single savior for cash-strapped, broadcast newsrooms.
Rawporter, an iPhone app that will soon be rolled out for Android, turns almost anyone into a local news cameraman or camerawoman. Instead of dispatching a camera crew to a fire during rush hour and risk they won't get there until after the flame is out, a television news reporter can create an assignment from Rawporter's Web interface and send it to anyone with the app who may be in the area of the fire.
It's easy to slam Hollywood for not understanding how technology works, or for putting its legacy business models ahead of user experience. Especially when big media companies do things like restrict digital access to movies and then cry about piracy.
But Hollywood isn't always acting alone. Sometimes, the savviest Web companies around - Netflix, for instance - are playing along, with their own agendas.
The latest example: Not only must Netflix customers wait 56 days before renting Warner Bros. new release discs, but they can't even add them to their rental queues until 28 days after they've been released. Sounds a little nuts, no?
Tout got a big boost when Shaquille O'Neal announced his NBA retirement in one of the service's 15-second video clips. Before then, few people had heard of the service, which allows users to easily link the videos to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Prior to O'Neal's unsolicited endorsement, Tout, which just launched in April, was largely unknown. After Shaq's quick message thanking fans, however, interest in the service exploded. "We got lucky with him being so involved with it," said Melissa Breen of Tout.
But since then, interest in Shaq may have risen thanks for Tout.
When it comes down to it, the value offered by services like Netflix and Hulu is primarily in their content offerings. Sure, they provide an on-demand, convenient way of consuming that content from a multitude of devices, but at the end of the day, it's all about the television shows and movies available on each service. Historically, the premium videos that stream online have consisted almost entirely of material originally produced for another, older medium. In 2012, that's slowly beginning to change.
After what turned out to be a pretty good year in 2011, Hulu announced last week that they are planning to invest $500 million in new content initiatives. That will undoubtedly include more pricey agreements with traditional content providers, but today the company revealed another place it plans on spending that money: on original programming.
Today Twitvid announced that it is launching a new open social video network and redesigned site focused on helping users find their favorite videos. Twitvid wants to make it easier to upload clips and share them to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and Twitter.
For now, Twitvid's frontpage interface looks more like Digg's (before the social newsrooms). It shows most popular TwitVids by views, along with a featured Twitvid and a Twitvid Tuesdays Winner. There is a list of popular members on the right rail. Twitvid is tossing this simplistic design for user profiles that focus on personalized video taste. Sharing will be more focused around personal interests rather than top rated content. Imagine the Facebook news feed, but only populated by video that has been personalized to your tastes.
Telecommunications giant Verizon is reportedly working on a Web streaming service akin to Netflix, according to a report from Reuters. The new service could be available to as many as 85 million U.S. households beginning next year, sources said.
At first glance, a company with the size and clout of Verizon would appear to be a formidable potential challenger to Netflix, who has been especially vulnerable lately. Still, there are reasons to doubt that Verizon would be successful in making a dent in Netflix's dominance of this space.
VideoSurf, a search engine for online video content, has been acquired by Microsoft, it was announced today. The service's sophisticated, multi-source video search technology will be built into Microsoft's XBox Live platform, which will see several new entertainment media partnerships in the coming months.
The acquisition, which cost Microsoft a reported $70 million, brings facial and object-recognition video search to the XBox, so it no longer relies solely on descriptions and other meta data when conducting searches. It works across services, so a search for "Lady Gaga" will return results from Netflix, Hulu and a variety of online video sources.
A new social video service called Spreecast launched into public beta today, promising users a more social, portable version of the functionality offered by Google+ Hangouts.
Think of Spreecast like a multi-person video chat service mashed up with a traditional, text-based live chat feature. It allows up to four people to appear on camera at one time and invites an unlimited number of viewers, all of whom can make comment and ask questions of the participants. Alternatively, sessions can be held privately.
