If YouTube were a stand-alone search engine, it would be the second largest search engine behind Google. That’s incredible when you think of it. It shows the saturation of Web video and illustrates how much video demand is exploding.
Video production is an art and a craft, and there’s no substitute for the proper training, equipment and execution, especially for broadcast quality work. But Web video is different. The demand requires fast turnaround. Writers and Web content contributors need to be able to capture audio and video. Journalism students are being trained to script, shoot, read and edit their own material, reflecting the requirement of multitasking and lean staffs in the traditional media. We have to be the same as Web communicators, otherwise we risk connecting with a significant segment of our audience.
So Flip cameras (and similar simple devices) are gaining popularity. Many departments around campus are using these devices. One might assume that the quality and value of video shot with these devices will suffer. In many cases, that happens as users new to video struggle with the medium. But quality doesn’t have to suffer. If shot properly, you might not even be able to tell the difference between video captured with an expensive camera and a Flip:
Here’s another tip on interviewing from Kirk Mastin:
And some pointers on capturing sound using a Flip:
Since the Web first came out (in my world that happened when I bought my first copy of Adobe Pagemill in 1996), the field of communications has been in a continuous state of upheval. Now add the current economic crunch and anything can happen.
And anything is happening. Newspapers, magazines and other media outlets are tightening their belts (and cutting a number of good people in the process, including my favorite interviewer, Alex Chadwick). The Detroit Free Press is giving up its daily circulation.
I firmly believe that newspapers (and NPR) will survive and continue to be important media resources. But the field is changing. Because in this time of tribulation, one media outlet is still growing. YouTube now accounts for 25% of all Google searches. Note the following from TechCrunch:
Video search on YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google search queries in the U.S., according to the latest search engine numbers from comScore. Its monthly qSearch report, which was released on Thursday night, breaks out the number of searches conducted on YouTube. If it were a standalone site, YouTube would be the second largest search engine after Google. More searches are done through YouTube than through Yahoo, which has been the case for the past few months.
All of this this means that YouTube better factor into your communications strategy. We’ve only started to scratch the surface of how to work on this medium here at OSU, but the Web Communications office is ready to help you plan how to use this forum to reach your audience.
Even though NPR is cutting the venerable Alex Chadwick, they’ve also announced another departure: they’ve launched their own official YouTube channel. While this might seem like criminal behavior, when you note that YouTube accounts for a quarter of all Google searches, it also just makes sense. (But I’ll also suggest that NPR move Chadwick to YouTube…his 50 Cent Interviews are some pretty engaging Web video content.) NPR isn’t alone in moving to YouTube. Newspapers have been moving into the Web video space for a long time. At the same time that writers and radio folks are being laid off, there is an insatiable demand for video content. What that means for us is that we have to learn to work in a new medium as well.
iTunes U allows users to download audio and video to the device of their choice
We’ve quietly gone live as the first public institution in Oregon to have a presence on iTunes U. But I won’t go too far in claiming that we are way ahead of the curve on this one. Other institutions have been up and running for years. Still, it’s an important part of an overall move to expanding our overall Web presence.
iTunes U has a specific function that is different from other online video sharing sites. It is designed to allow users to download audio and video files to a hard drive or device. It’s a different style of video use and programming. For example, a standard iPod comes with an output for television, so files can be played on a large screen. Or some users will take their mp3 player in their car and listen to files during a morning commute or while jogging. Portability is the main difference between this and other video sharing sites.
Another main difference is that iTunes plays in its own client rather than a standard Web browser. While this may be seen as a limitation, the advantage lies in the fact that there are many users who are already using the iTunes client to download their audio. I’ve been using it for years to gather audio for road trips.
One great advantage for iTunes is that it ingests RSS. The upcoming Media Manager tool that CWS is building for collecting and deploying video on our campus Web sites (including Drupal sites) produces RSS that can feed right into iTunes. So you could create an iTunes course and feed it directly by uploading video into the Media Manager tool for your OSU site…you just have one place to upload files.
iTunes U is currently designed for public access. It’s just part of a suite of online video delivery that includes YouTube and the campus Media Manager. But it has paid dividends for other institutions using iTunes. I’ve heard anecdotes about students screening their instructors on iTunes, looking for lecturers that engage them, and thus courses publishing content on iTunes filled up faster. In one case, a generous donor who had been downloading psychology lectures gifted seven figures to the department so that they could put all of their courses online. He was neither an alum or parent, but just someone who was listening to the lectures for his own benefit.
ITunes U is primarily designed for outreach and marketing, a venue for gaining exposure for your content. It can serve a very functional role in allowing you to deliver content effectively to your audience via subscription and an automated download process enabled by the iTunes client. Whatever you need, this service can help you use the Web to make an end-run around traditional media outlets for audio and video, and I’m glad we’re now a player in this space.
Posted November 17th, 2008 by celene.carillo@oregonstate.edu
This weekend I went to the second-ever Cre8Camp at souk in downtown Portland. The setup: a BarCamp-like unconference attended by about 50 or so creative professionals, mostly from the Portland area. Attendees suggested and led topics for the day, some of which included trend tracking, sustainable marketing, youth marketing, and generally how to keep creative in a stressful and competitive profession.
Although higher ed wasn’t the focus, there were plenty of tips to pick up on. I went to the youth marketing session, and picked up a tip which I’d long suspected: that kids are so jaded from being advertised to all the time that they’re really looking for authentic information. They want the freedom to access your messages on their own time, and more and more they’re looking to feel involved and included in your message.
Later in the day, a session on leadership evolved into a discussion on how to call the most effective meetings (tip: not on Monday mornings). A way to help people develop a pride of ownership in your meetings could be to decipher their want or need to be there…drawing those wants/needs out will foster a sense of inclusiveness. Also, if you’re calling a meeting, be able to say in one sentence what the desired outcome or action item is!
And for a note on trends, people are coming up with more and more ways to manage their social networking sites in such a way that they no longer have to visit separate Flickr, Facebook, or Digg pages to update their profiles. They can use a browser like Flock or tools like friendfeed to aggregate and manage them. Amber Case, Cyborg Anthroplogist from Portland, recommended these tools - she’s got a great list of 2009 creative conferences on her blog.
According to Google Analytics, every Monday over 20,000 visitors arrive at the OSU Web, stay two minutes and 14 seconds, view one and three-quarters pages, then move on. The number decreases each day of the week until Saturday, when we’re down to less than 12,000 visitors. What are those 12,000 people looking for on a Saturday? It intrigues me!
But what would be even more intriguing would be to watch their movement across the entire OSU site - to have our tracking code on every page. That would provide us with a clear picture of where we would be wise to invest in further development and also where we can minimize our efforts. Anyone wanting data for their site should let us know so we can assist you in placing the appropriate tracking information and creating a unique profile for you. The more sub-sites of OSU that sign-up, the greater detail we will have of how visitors are using our Web resources. Oh, did I mention that it’s free?
The Web Communications team is seeking a Social Media Specialist to help us organize our expansion of the OSU Web presence into the social arena. This is a growing and dynamic space, and we feel that a dedicated full-time position is not so much progressive as it is necessary to what we are doing on the Web.
There are already some innovative social media efforts happening around campus, and we plan to make Web Communications a resource to help enhance these projects, and also plan new ways of using innovations in online communications.
The Office of Web Communications is pleased to have a hand in the following projects. It’s been quite a fall and we’ve seen our team stretched in new directions to good results.
We’ve also expanded our numbers through the addition of a graduate assistant focusing on video and multimedia for the Web. Our first project is a profile of longtime OSU communicator and intrepid bluesman, Jeff Hino. We’re glad the new term has started and we’re happy to have new students on our team, reminding us of how valuable they are to the work we do.
