Interviews

Earlier this year, British YouTuber Benjamin Cook’s “Becoming YouTube: Girls On YouTube” sparked some controversy–mainly because it ignored the fact that there are hugely successful female YouTubers, such as Grace Helbig, iJustine, Hannah Hart and Jenna Marbles, the second most-subscribed-to creator on YouTube with over 8 million subscribers and 1.1 billion video views. It also left out the voices of some of YouTube’s more seasoned and successful female stars, many of whom actually feel empowered by their YouTube fans and tout the advantages of being women on the video site. We’ll hear from a couple of these more optimistic female YouTubers shortly, but first – here’s a look at some of the biggest issues brought to light in Cook’s ‘Girls On YouTube’ video.

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“If my listeners don’t call, tweet, text, email or Facebook, I don’t have a show,” said Jay Mohr in the latest installment of Mediabistro’s So What Do You Do? The man of multiple media who currently hosts an eponymous show on Fox Sports Radio has an engaged following on social networks, and even got his fans to start tweeting about his sponsors. So how exactly did he manage to do this?

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“Facebook is a journalist’s rolodex,” said Facebook journalism program manager Vadim Lavrusik. No longer a walled garden, reporters can now search through Facebook’s database of more than 1 billion people for sources and connect with readers without accepting a friend request. These two changes, Lavrusik said, have changed everything about the way journalists can use the social network to report the news. In a recent interview, Lavrusik explained how Facebook’s search bar, Graph Search, “is an incredible tool for finding sources and discovering content for your stories.”

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These days, more and more brands are incorporating YouTube into their online advertising and marketing strategies. But if you’re new to advertising on YouTube, it can be tough figuring out how it works and where to get started. We spoke with Michael Lanz, Industry Director, Social & Information at Google, and Jane Barrett, Director of Marketing and Communications at Zoosk, to glean some insight into the benefits of brand advertising on YouTube, as well as some tips on how to get started.

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After producing hit films like Soul Food and reality shows for BET and TV One, Tracey Edmonds is looking to conquer the Web. In March, she launched Alright TV, a family- and faith-oriented Web network.

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John Barnett, co-creator of Bright Mango’s Wood Camera app, is a professional travel photographer and cinematographer and a contributor to Getty Images. While some photographers reject photo-sharing sites that are aimed at artsy amateurs, Barnett has embraced Instagram as an artistic and social medium. Since joining the network in 2010, he’s attracted more than 43,000 followers. Here are a few of his best tips.

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With 20 years of experience, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher has seen more than her fair share of digital scandals. However, she calls the recent lashing blogger Adria Richards took after she tweeted about sexual harassment at a tech conference an especially unfortunate one for all parties involved.

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Syfy and Trion Worlds spent five years making “Defiance,” the groundbreaking series that’s part post-apocalyptic drama, part third-person shooter video game. Syfy’s marketing team spent an unprecedented 10 months promoting the show on social media to get viewers to watch the first episode. Was it worth it? Dana Ortiz, VP of brand marketing for Syfy at NBCUniversal, explained how the team set “New Earthly Rules” for introducing sci-fi fans to a futuristic story by starting the conversation in the past.

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If the internet followed school schedules, these 119 memes would have been at the top of their class in 2012/2013: Dramatic Chipmunk, Courage Wolf, and Grape Lady are just a few of the characters who appear in College Humor’s interactive meme poster,”Internet Class Photo.” We asked the poster’s creators — College Humor illustrator Caldwell Tanner and and editor-in-chief Streeter Seidell — to sign our yearbook. They gave us something better: a full explanation of how and why they made the most labor-intensive meme round-up we have ever seen.

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Fans who followed USA’s “Psych: The S#cial Sector” to its conclusion probably know whodunit, but they might not know who made the video storytelling platform that they used to help solve the mystery. Meet Tracy Evans, co-creator and COO of Theatrics.

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