A brief history of online video and elections, 2004-2010

December 16, 2010December 16, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This week, YouTube announced their top videos of 2010. In a post over at Pundit League, I followed up with my Top Five Political Videos of 2010.

My top five is far less scientific than YouTube’s, and for good reason: while YouTube’s list is a Casey Kasem-style countdown of the videos that had earned the most views, my list ranks videos based on significance. In other words, I’m wasn’t trying to measure videos based on their impact on the campaign, but rather use the videos as a barometer of what went on in 2010.

In fact, online video offers a glimpse into the big story of every election cycle since 2004:

2004: This Land – Pre-YouTube, JibJab’sWoody Guthrie send-up featured President Bush and John Kerry neatly summarizing campaign themes. Bush claimed Kerry looked like Frankenstein, Kerry said Bush was a right-wing nutjob. That the close election turned as it did was evidence that Bush’s accusations rang truer with the electorate.

2006: Macaca – George Allen could very well have been the Republican candidate for President in 2008 if he hadn’t slipped up and unwittingly used a word that may or may not be an ethnic slur. As it was, Allen became the symbol of a Republican establishment so cloistered and out of touch they could point to the one guy at a rally who was holding a video camera and say something offensive.

2008: Yes We Can – Between this independent video and Shepherd Fairey’s “Hope” illustration, the 2008 Obama was smart enough to seize on creative elements produced outside the campaign structure. From early in the primary season, the Yes We Can video established the Obama candidacy as more than a simple election effort, but as a once-in a generation opportunity to change politics as usual. More than any online network or social media outreach, the core theme of a new and different kind of politics growing up added excitement and motivation to Obama’s support.

2010: A Generational Choice / Rep. Bob Etheridge covers the Who – Marco Rubio captured the themes of tea party movement in his impassioned web commercial for his successful Senate bid. And Bob Etheridge’s hilarious confrontation of an investigative student underscored the Democrats’ arrogance, comfort with power, and lack of connection with voters.

Notably, all videos on this list save Senator-elect Rubio’s “A Generational Choice” were produced outside of the “official” campaigns, coming from interested and passionate citizens; in fact, two captured politicians in moments when they let their guard down. Yet intentionally or not, each video captured an important element of the election cycle. Elections aren’t (usually) won or lost based on a two-minute internet video; but video can act as a signpost and give some indication of how a campaign is going.

Viacom, YouTube, and what it means for innovation

June 24, 2010June 24, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

YouTube’s victory in Viacom’s piracy lawsuit will be, in the long term, a good thing for online innovation.

Almost a decade ago, Napster was dismantled because its users shared songs. The technology it was based on was neutral – and could have been used to share legal sound files just as easily as illegal files. But the technology became the target of content creators – musicians – concerned about people using the technology for piracy.

Blaming Napster because people used it to do something illegal is like blaming a hotel because someone turned a room into a meth lab. The same analogy can be used for YouTube’s situation: they built the rails for video sharing. People could use that to share a bootleg copy of Shrek 8, thus cheating Mike Myers out of his cut of the domestic gross or DVD sales. They could also use it to share a video of a cat falling off the bed, or to create a video blog, or to jump start a comedy career, or to reveal a Congressman roughing up a college kid, or a Senator uttering something that sounds like a racial slur and changing the course of the 2008 Presidential election.

To be clear, YouTube should be held accountable for helping police piracy when concerns are brought to their attention, just as a hotel owner should cooperate with warrant-bearing law enforcement officials investigating meth distribution that seems to be coming from their hotel. The people dealing meth should be punished. If the hotel stonewalls and knowingly protects said meth dealers, they should be punished. But otherwise, the hotel owner is just someone providing a product for private use, and can’t be held liable for its mis-use.

There are, of course, legitimate questions about how important Google feels it is to do right by the people it makes money off of – and the dicey question of how much knowledge a site can have of the activity before it makes a move. But the result of the Google/Viacom case has less to do with a clash of the corporate titans than with shielding future start ups from liability (and excessive damages) for honest efforts to build online social networks. If start up sites are held liable for their members’ illegal activities, it could crush innovation and entrepreneurship. Under the Napster rules, some poor schmuck who isn’t as big as Google could lose his shirt for building a website in his basement because of the actions of the users. The YouTube rules are simply more fair.

Helen Thomas gets Macaca-ed

June 7, 2010June 7, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Helen Thomas’s resignation from the White House press corps came not because of offensive comments, but because the media landscape has passed her by.

Reporters are, rightfully, under more scrutiny now than ever. Back when Thomas started, America’s romanticized view of “the media” was something like a mix of Lois Lane, Carl Bernstein, and Bob Woodward – dogged reporters turning over stones, acting as the clear pane of glass through which normal, everyday people could see the world.

But gradually, reporters (including Woodward and Bernstein) became a part of the equation. Suddenly, people realized that the reporters weren’t just a clear pane of glass, but the entire window, limited in what they showed by their own frame. Sometimes, to see what was really going on outside, you had to look out of several different windows.

News consumers began to understand that the person telling the story affects the story. And news consumers care about that.

This isn’t to say that reporters should be completely without bias – but most folks feel they ought to try to keep an open mind. Thomas’s anti-Israel diatribe was anything but open minded.

That the grand dame of the White House press room was taken down by a citizen journalist – and that it was her own words, rather than any auxiliary commentary, that did her in – speaks to another truth about modern media. The stalwarts like Thomas are less relevant than ever before.

Maybe we shouldn’t be better than this?

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The internet’s favorite candidate for public office right now isn’t Rand Paul, Joe Sestak, or Bill Halter. He isn’t running for Congress, governor, the Senate, or even President. But he is anti-establishment, railing against the “thugs and criminals” in power. His name is Dale Peterson, and he’s running for the Alabama Agricultural Commission:

Peterson’s over-the-top honesty and evident frustration with politics as usual might be attracting tongue-in-cheek derision from some bloggers and pundits, but he isn’t running to be on the National Press Club’s Agricultural Commission. Lost in the yuks is the fact that Peterson, likely for very little money, now has an advertisement getting attention from all sorts of media outlets. And though the white cowboy hat and the gun may seem over the top, his message really isn’t. Did you know that the Alabama Agricultural Commission has $5 million to play with? Heck, I don’t even know how much Virginia’s Agricultural Commission has to play with.

The exposure puts Peterson in front of in-state voters – and potentially out-of-state donors – who identify with his message, and who kind of like his style.

At least there’s no demon sheep.

5 Truths of the YouTube Age

May 17, 2010May 17, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

YouTube is celebrating not only turning five, but reaching 2 billion views per day. In the decade before YouTube, internet publishing and blogging had become commonplace. But though the internet had long been a place where anyone could put their work out there (as long as they didn’t mind not getting paid for it), YouTube’s video sharing platform – along with technology that made quality video devices cheaper – turned everyone into a video producer. Anyone could be Cecil B. DeMille.

That said, not everyone can effectively communicate on YouTube.

1. Video is now essential to message delivery.

Political communication has always been a matter of telling stories, and no medium can tell a story like video. In 1960, the story of the cool, collected, and telegenic JFK as the harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by his now-famous debate performance; in 2008, the story of Barack Obama as the idealistic, optimistic harbinger of a new political generation was cemented by a music video adapted from one of his speeches that seized upon the phrase, “Yes We Can.”

Politicians can try to position themselves with stump speeches and media appearances, and their surrogates can attempt to provide “objective” support. People believe what they see. That makes effective online video a must-have.

The reality of modern politics is that if you can’t make your case in a YouTube video, you have no chance of winning the hearts and minds of the public.

2. Brevity is art.

Part of the “effectiveness” factor is being able to boil an argument down to the point where it fits in a two-to-five-minute video clip. Case in point: one citizen activist was able, in 1:38, to sum up just how insignificant a 2009 federal budget cut proposal was:

3. The best ideas come from others.

The best part about YouTube is the opportunity for participation from the initiated, regardless of their “official” role. Obama’s nascent 2008 campaign had a lot of energy, yet it was tough for people to discern exactly what kind of change he offered. All Democrats were, in fact, plugging away at that theme after eight years of a Republican administration. But one Obama supporter – whose involvement in the campaign was tangential, though his enthusiasm wasn’t – summed it up by repurposing a famous 1984 Macintosh commercial:

The Obama campaign could not have cut this ad – it’s too direct, and it uses images and clips which are most likely protected by copyright. By supporting user generated content like this, YouTube invited a new level of citizen participation.

4. Compelling content is the most important factor in attracting an audience.

Never has publishing content been easier. Yet because of this, never has it been more important to create quality content: media consumers have plenty of choices.

And don’t let the lists of the most-viewed YouTube videos that tend to focus on music videos fool you: quality viewers are more important than total viewers. If New York voters see George Allen call an opponent’s campaign volunteer a word that sounds like an ethnic slur, they may be offended. If Virginia voters see it, they can actually take action and vote against him (which they did).

5. Online video is a social experience

It’s counter-intuitive: We think of the internet as this highly personalized frontier, where each user has the utmost control over the news he or she reads or the entertainment he or she consumes. Humans are social beings, and the internet augments that.

YouTube’s comments, video responses, subscriptions, and other site tools make it more than a place to post and share media; YouTube is a social network built on user connections.

But more that, YouTube success is based on the ability of an idea to pass from one person to another. High-ranked YouTube videos don’t amass viewers from independent searches, they come from recommendations. It’s the most obvious viral medium.

Just make sure you don’t say anything stupid.

Hulu learns content is still king

March 3, 2010March 3, 2010 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The decision by Viacom to pull its content from Hulu – while still keeping that content online – shows exactly why Hulu is the #2 site for online video.

As Tech Crunch reported, a key factor was the share of the ad revenue – Viacom makes more money by selling ads for video content on its own websites because it doesn’t have to split that money. At the same time, Viacom can still make clips of its shows sharable and embeddable.

It brings to light a significant problem for Hulu: what value do they really add as a third party service?

Hulu was born because founding parents Fox and NBC were rightly worried about their content being ripped off and posted on YouTube – and because they realized that online video was an entertainment medium that they needed to embrace in some way. The Simpsons, SNL, Heroes, Family Guy, and other shows from those networks made it on the site, along with content from their cable and feature film properties. Other media companies, like ABC/Disney and Viacom, signed on as well.

The reason Hulu has always played second fiddle to YouTube is in a distinct difference in their business model. While Hulu has always been about the content, YouTube has served as the infrastructure for the advent of web video. In the days before YouTube, putting video online meant thinking about managing huge files and possible paying exorbitant hosting fees. YouTube’s value to the content provider was allowing people who otherwise could not have done so to share video – whether that meant a cat falling off a bed or an independent short film.

Hulu’s value proposition to its content provider partners appears to be the ability to give them space on a high-traffic website. But like YouTube and any other online video site, traffic comes because of content. In reality, high traffic numbers are content providers’ value to Hulu, rather than the other way around.

This doesn’t mean the end of Hulu, of course – after all, the site was started by content providers. But it may mean that, eventually, NBC/Universal and Fox find that they are the only ones left on the playground.

The Decade of YouTube

December 28, 2009December 27, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The last week of 2009 is a time to reflect not only on the last year, but the last decade as well. The internet may not have been invented in the 2000s, but it certainly became more integral to our daily lives. Among the internet innovations that have transformed not only the web but how we communicate, YouTube stands out.

The social web revolution of the last half of the decade made the internet more accessible. Instead of acting as a one-way flow of information, everyday people could have their own corner of the web and interact with their friends digitally with ease. But Mashable makes the case that, above Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other services, YouTube is the top social media innovation of the decade because it not only offers users a way to display content they have created, but also offers other users a way to easily share content that they like.

But the 2000s became the Decade of YouTube not because of technology, but because of cultural political impact. In 2006, YouTube had a profound impact on politics, famously changing the course of the Virginia U.S. Senate race (and, likely, the course of the 2008 Presidential nomination). In 2008, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency in a YouTube video.

But more important than that, activists have used YouTube to make their case on a number of issues through short videos that have been passed from one person to another. Activists have taken down ACORN with a YouTube video. Both sides of the health care debate have made their cases with short online videos.

In fact, the current political climate almost necessitates thinking in terms of short, catchy videos, and not just to defend against a “Macaca Moment.” If you and your side can’t make your case with a funny or poignant two-to-four-minute video, you simply cannot win. Sound bites were important for media coverage in 1999, but now campaigns must actively create sound bites – for the media, for their volunteers, for their donors, and for the voters they hope to win over.

Some might say this dumbs down the political process. But focusing a message into a short video – or into a 140-character Twitter update – doesn’t need to leave out salient points. It does require a fundamental understanding of an issue. As Mark Twain said, “With a hundred words to do it with, the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and reduce it to a cabbage, but the artist does it with twenty, and the result is a flower.” Or more succinctly, brevity is the soul of wit.

There have been many ways the Internet has changed politics in the last decade, but YouTube’s impact goes beyond the internet.

But the 2000s are the Decade of YouTube not because of technology, but because of cultural impact. In 2006, YouTube had a profound impact on politics, famously changing the course of the Virginia U.S. Senate race (and, likely, the course of the 2008 Presidential nomination). In 2008, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the Presidency in a YouTube video.

In fact, the current political climate almost necessitates thinking in terms of short, catchy videos. If you can’t make your case with a funny or poignant two-to-four-minutevideo, you simply cannot win.

It extends to entertainment, too – from Susan Boyle to Saturday Night Live, the availability of short video has served to help turn rank-and-file viewers into unwitting advertisers with the click of a forwarded email.

Twitter, YouTube look back on 2009

December 17, 2009 ~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

This week, both Twitter and YouTube released their 2009 trends list, much as Google did a few weeks back. Unlike Google, though, these trend lists say more about the way each site is used rather than social trends.

Twitter Trends: The Iranian election was not the top story of the year in American media, but it did top Twitter’s news trends list – largely because Twitter itself was such an important tool in organizing street demonstrations. In Entertainment, movies Paranormal Activity and District 9 ranked highly. Both became early examples of what is being called the “Twitter effect.” Real-time fan reviews on social networks gave both films an instant box-office boost. (The same effect may have sapped the excitement around other top-Twitter-trenders GI Joe and Watchmen, both of which did worse than expected.

Predictably, there were other trends that lend credence to the “I’m-sitting-on-the-porch” pointlessness of Twitter when misused. However, these examples also speak to the potential advantage of Twitter as an organizing tool – whether the goal is overthrowing an unpopular regime or flocking to a better-than-expected movie.

YouTube Trends: YouTube is interesting in that it can report two trends: the most-watched videos and the search terms.

The top viewership trends on YouTube centered around you-gotta-see-this viral sensations such as Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent and the famous wedding party entrance to the tune of Chris Brown’s “Forever.”

Top search trends, which were broken out by month, centered around news and entertainment events but weren’t always directly related. For instance, the death of Michael Jackson led to an increase in searches for the Thriller music video. What does this mean? Probably that a generation that doesn’t remember the dawn of the music video era was looking for a famous short film that was frequently discussed but seldom seen. YouTube’s slogan is “Broadcast Yourself,” but it may as well be “Catch what you missed.”

Year in review lists are a chance to look back at the big stories of 2009, but those are common knowledge. Digging into the trends can, however, show how people are using the online tools – and give insight on how to reach them.