Video Sites

Google’s announcement that it would spend $100 million to create original programming for its YouTube video site was the subject of 10 percent of news links shared via Twitter, topping that category in the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index for the week of April 4-8.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Celebrities including Jessica Biel, Edward Norton, Justin Timberlake, and Jason Mraz are participating in Real Men Don’t Buy Girls, a video campaign on YouTube led by the DNA Foundation, which, in turn, is led by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.

The National Basketball Association’s regular season may be winding down to an end, but Miami Heat superstar LeBron James’ new animated series on YouTube is just getting started.

A former death row inmate who won a $14 million from the Supreme Court was the subject of the most shared news links by bloggers, while the new Google +1 service topped the Twitter list, and the most-watched news and politics video on YouTube was a Japanese Coast Guard vessel heading straight into a wave to avoid damage, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index for the week of March 28-April 1.

Tennis, everyone? The Family Circle Cup tournament added a fully functional mobile site to its social media arsenal, joining its already existing presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

In the Monday blog, Kilar also said that Hulu grew the number of content partners to Hulu Plus and Hulu to 264 in the first quarter, up from 211 in the year-ago period, with latest additions including brands from Viacom, such as MTV and Comedy Central.

The March 23 death of legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor dominated news links shared by bloggers for the week of March 21-25, while AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile accounted for the most Tweeted news links.

YouTube announced the launch of the YouTube Person Finder, a channel dedicated to video messages from victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. More from product marketing manager Tai Hasegawa via the YouTube Blog:

We’re in the process of adding more than 80 video messages shot at the shelters by TBS, a major TV station in Japan, and we’ll try to increase the number of videos by adding more content from other TV stations and news network in the coming days.

We’re also trying to include videos shot by the individuals impacted themselves, but we have to wait until the infrastructure situation there recovers.

You can search for videos via the search box within the module: Enter the names of a missing person in Kanji, Katakana, or Hiragana letters (sorry Japanese letters only); the name of the place they lived; or the name of the shelter locations. You can also browse videos by Japanese alphabet on the playlist embedded within the video navigator in middle of the channel.

Our hope is that this channel will help victims and their families to establish each other’s safety, and that the video messages will reach many viewers and motivate them to contribute to the recovery and restoration of the disaster-stricken areas.

Sports fans: If you’ve captured a great sports moment on video and thought, “This ought to be on SportsCenter,” here’s your chance. YouTube teamed up with ESPN on the second installment of the YouTube + SportsCenter Your Highlight contest, sponsored by AT&T.

Videos must be submitted via the ESPN YouTube channel by May 5, and SportsCenter producers will select the best ones, which will then be voted on by YouTube users. The winner will receive a trip to ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to tape a special SportsCenter segment.

The earthquake and tsunami that victimized Japan March 11 accounted for a whopping 66 percent of Tweeted news links for the week of March 7-11, despite occurring on the last day of the period, while the upcoming 2012 presidential campaign dominated the blogosphere, and the most-watched news and politics video on YouTube was a Spanish news report about a soccer player kicking an owl during a game, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s New Media Index.

The disaster was followed on the list of most-shared news links via Twitter by: the civil war in Libya, at 15 percent; a report in The Sun that Justin Bieber skateboarded through an airport terminal in Birmingham, at 13 percent; Google, at 10 percent; and a preview of the Apple iPad 2 from Mashable, at 7 percent.

The race for the 2012 presidential election accounted for 37 percent of news links shared by bloggers, followed by: the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist David Broder, at 17 percent; the executive order signed by President Barack Obama to create a formal system of indefinite detention for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, at 10 percent; a column in The Washington Post by George Will questioning the United States’ intervention in Libya, at 7 percent; and a Washington Post interview with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko regarding allegations that the recent election there was fraudulent, at 6 percent.

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