YouTube News manager Olivia Ma spoke with Beet.TV about the role that mobile uploads to the Google-owned video site have played in breaking news coverage of the political conflicts in the Middle East and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. Olivia Ma of YouTube News and Politics detailed coverage of the crisis in Egypt that is accessible via the Google-owned video site in a post on the YouTube Blog:
We understand how closely the world is following these events, and we want to help people access and share this information quickly and easily on YouTube. We’re helping people do this in three ways:
Highlighting the latest footage on CitizenTube, our news and politics channel, and inviting people to submit video they’ve come across.
Pointing our users directly to these videos through banners at the top of YouTube pages, and through links alongside YouTube videos.
Streaming live coverage of Al Jazeera’s broadcasts about the unfolding events, on both its Arabic and English YouTube channels.
And our Google colleagues have also turned on a speak-to-Tweet service to help people in Egypt stay connected at this difficult time.
YouTube has used similar tools and live streaming technologies in the past to give our users access to information on major world news events, such as the Haiti earthquake and the protests in Iran. We hope this footage provides a unique window into the events unfolding in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and many other cities across Egypt.
YouTube news manager Olivia Ma went to bat for corporate sibling Google TV with a post on the Google TV Blo (detailing the various news options available via the service. She wrote:
Television is still the main source for the daily news in the home, according to Pew research. Until lately, print and Web news content have been absent from the big screen. We’ve been working with developers to enhance your TV news experience, optimizing both traditional and innovative news sources for Google TV
The New York Times offers daily TimesCast video-news updates alongside video blogs and featurettes.
USA Today has improved reading for the big screen: You can browse through the day in photos, stay up to date on sports news, and track the world of business.
The CNBC News App lets you watch the latest Web videos in business news. Follow the markets as they happen and track your personal, customized stock portfolio.
The Huffington Post brings together the best of traditional news, the blogosphere, and opinion reporting in its sleek News Glide Web app.
The Onion covers “the important stories lesser outlets fail to report” through its comedic style.
Just two days after delivering the State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama will deliver answers to select questions from YouTube users, with questions due midnight ET Wednesday, Jan. 26, and the answers to be presented Thursday, Jan. 27, at 2:30 p.m.
The State of the Union Address is slated for Tuesday, Jan. 25, at 9 p.m.
Olivia Ma of YouTube News and Politics posted on the YouTube Blog:
Health care. Education. Foreign policy. What would you like to ask the president about the most important issues our country faces? Go to youtube.com/askobama to submit your question now, or watch the speech Tuesday night with your webcam or video camera nearby so that you can record and submit your question as soon as it strikes you. This year, you’ll also be able to ask your question via Twitter: Just include the hashtag #askobama in your Tweet. And be sure to have your say in what should be asked by voting on questions submitted by others, too.
A few suggestions before submitting your questions:
Video questions are highly preferred (though we also accept text). Videos should be about 20 seconds long and be sure to ask the question directly.
Speak clearly and try to film in a place with minimal background noise. Keep the camera as still as possible.
Feel free to be creative (use props, charts, etc.) to help your question stand out. If you have time, find an interesting backdrop that may help reinforce your message.
Submit your question early. The final deadline is Wednesday, Jan. 26, at midnight ET.
In what could become yet another fractionalization of where people get their TV news, YouTube has launched a page that brings the top Google News stories in video form to YouTube.
Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser talked about it with Olivia Ma, News Manager at YouTube. Ma was a panelist at BeetTV’s Online Video Roundtable in San Francisco earlier this week.
YouTube was founded in 2005 and bought by Google in November, 2006.
