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The 789 YouTube Gathering was held from July 8th to July 11th, 2009 with the big event on the 11th! Tons of YouTubers attended, both creators and viewers.

I had tons of fun! I’m glad I got to meet all of you and can’t wait for the next gathering!

This 3-minute mockumentary features an “enlightened stupid marketer” who masks his lack of insight, ingenuity and initiative by using marketing buzzwords and pausing mid-sentence for (apparent) thought/deliberation.  My favorite line:

“I’m a voracious … book buyer.  I buy all the marketing classics.  I just wish that they sold the covers only. … See?  That’s a marketing insight.”

If you’re thinking this parody is so spot-on that the guy who did it must be in marketing, you’re absolutely right.  Kevin Nalts makes viral videos by night — he has his own channel on YouTube — but by day he’s a career marketer.   (Related to nothing, check out the video he did on the Bubble Gum Tree.)

I’d like to think that most of us in corporate marketing are competent, hard-working and reasonably bright.  Unfortunately,  it’s the guys like the one lampooned in his video who often get remembered.

The History and Truth About Father’s Day
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feels like…

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ciao bella, don’t look back

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not your boyfriend!

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Breaking the Bank
Party’s Over

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zefrank does time

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Iran
What if it turns out that the CIA is encouraging some radical or criminal elements in Iran and innocent people are getting hurt and killed because of our funded actions? Considering their nefarious history some participation by the CIA is a given.

I’ve got no dog in this fight. Iran is a sovereign nation and I respect borders.

Much like our own corporate cronies and politicians a number of their Mullahs are fat cats, yes, Iran has crooks too. Both want power and control over the people – either spiritually or economically, and seeing that money is the new religion in the US it doesn’t really matter what the item or soul is, the goal is control.

And there seems to be no stopping this feeding frenzy by the US Media, it’s on a Drunken Bender and a little gassy with minute by minute, second by second reports, most are unverified. But, the readers are lapping them up like the Running of the Bride at a Filene’s Basement Sale.

Iran has turned into Spring Break for the Media, keeping those viewer numbers up means ad-dollars next month and those numbers will definitely look better in the ‘journalism’ business than last.

And the hero of the day? Not a real journalist who is risking life and limb waking up the world with verifiable facts, nope, it’s Twitter!

Perhaps, we should make June WE (whatever) Official TD (Twitter Day)

In the end there’s only one thing I hope these protests will inspire… that the Americans People rise up and take back their OWN country from the Oligarchs who are destroying their lives right now even as theytwitter.

And I hope no one in our CIA is meddling in Iran, but I doubt it, better check twitter just in case.

As the good Reverend Cornelius Blow would say, Follow Me.

update – wasn’t hard to figure out, was it?
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
by Paul Craig Roberts

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Iran? Nope.
List of Journalists Arrested at the RNC

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Can We Start Over?
This time let’s divide the United States up according to Baseball Teams

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Too Big To Fail, Politically
What is the essence of the problem with our financial system – what brought us into deep crisis, what scared us most in September/October of last year, and what was the toughest problem in the early days of the Obama administration?

The issue was definitely not that banks and non-banks could fail in general. We’re good at handling some kinds of financial failure. The problem was: a relatively small number of troubled banks were so large that their failure could imperil both our financial system and the world economy. And – at least in the view of Treasury – these banks were so large that they couldn’t be taken over in a normal FDIC-type receivership. (The notion that the government lacked legal authority to act is smokescreen; please tell me which statute authorized the removal of Rick Waggoner from GM.)
more…

One huge concern that needs far more attention is that the people who failed our institutions within the system they created, the people who who caused the bubble, made poor choices, along with the scams and thieft, these people are STILL in charge – it’s like Max Keiser said, the American People must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome to allow these financial terrorists to continue to hold our financial system and our security hostage.

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yes, we have no bananas

Consider the banana. All iconic yellow peel and soft, sweet inside — you can find it at the nearest Trader Joe’s for as little as 19 cents apiece.

But how much have you really thought about how it got there? Now the ubiquitous and perishable fruit finds itself the focus of appreciation in two new exhibitions opening this week from Los Angeles-based collective Fallen Fruit.

The first, “United Fruit,” opened Tuesday at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. On Saturday, a concurrent exhibit, “Fresh ‘n Easy,” opens at Highland Park art gallery Another Year in L.A. Together, the two present a portrait of the human beings behind the cultivation and production of bananas, and also how fruit itself becomes an element of popular culture and the global economy.

“Our goal is, and has always been, to change the way you look at fruit as an object,” says David Burns, who formed Fallen Fruit in 2004 with Matias Viegener and Austin Young.

“Buying a banana in a grocery store is not an intimate process, but the work that goes into banana harvesting is very personal. It’s all done by hand, as opposed to a mechanized assembly line.”
more bananas

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Fury as AIG pays $450m to staff who nearly broke firm
The crisis-stricken insurer AIG has infuriated the Obama administration by paying “retention” bonuses of $450m (£322m) to staff at the London-run financial products division that crippled the company with vast losses on toxic derivatives.

Senior White House officials yesterday condemned the payments by the struggling company which has received more than $150bn of US government aid.

Newly released figures revealed that billions of dollars of public money used to prop up AIG have flowed to European banks which were trading partners with the insurer – including Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland.

AIG’s problems are largely down to disastrous contracts to protect banks against bad losses which were written by AIG Financial Products – a business largely run from offices in Mayfair.
AIG is handing out money to 400 ­executives from this unit under a loyalty programme drawn up before the scale of its difficulties became clear.
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Trust No One
~sh
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very cool
re zefrank

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The food maker Nestle today voluntarily recalled its refrigerated Toll House cookie dough products and warned consumers not to eat raw Toll House cookie dough as fears about possible E. coli contamination spread to more than two dozen states.
N E S T L E S

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City requires Facebook passwords from job applicants
If you’re planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, prepare to clean up your Facebook page.

As part of routine background checks, the city asks job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords for their social-networking sites. And it has been doing it for years, city officials said.

“Please list any and all, current personal or business Web sites, Web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.,” states a city waiver form applicants are asked to sign. Three lines are provided for applicants to list log-in information for each site.

City officials maintain the policy is necessary to ensure employees’ integrity and protect the public’s trust, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana says they may be crossing the line.
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President George W Obama?
President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama’s legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush’s: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.

“It’s putting up a veritable wall around the White House, and it’s so at odds with Obama’s campaign commitment to more open government,” said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog group.
more…

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Here Comes The Sun

pinget
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it’s all right

life on a shoestring!
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Six Corporate Bullies Beat Up Mother of Four
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Weaker Copyright Benefits Everyone

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Suitcase With $134 Billion Puts Dollar on Edge
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Two Japanese men are detained in Italy after allegedly attempting to take $134 billion worth of U.S. bonds over the border into Switzerland. Details are maddeningly sketchy, so naturally the global rumor mill is kicking into high gear.

Are these would-be smugglers agents of Kim Jong Il stashing North Korea’s cash in a Swiss vault? Bagmen for Nigerian Internet scammers? Was the money meant for terrorists looking to buy nuclear warheads? Is Japan dumping its dollars secretly? Are the bonds real or counterfeit?

The implications of the securities being legitimate would be bigger than investors may realize. At a minimum, it would suggest that the U.S. risks losing control over its monetary supply on a massive scale.

The trillions of dollars of debt the U.S. will issue in the next couple of years needs buyers. Attracting them will require making sure that existing ones aren’t losing faith in the U.S.’s ability to control the dollar.
this story is so good, read more…

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From The Financial Times
Mafia blamed for $134bn fake Treasury bills
Few details have been revealed beyond a June 4 statement by the Italian finance police announcing the seizure of 249 US Treasury bills, each of $500m, and 10 “Kennedy” bonds, used as intergovernment payments, of $1bn each. The men were apparently tailed by the Italian authorities.

The mystery deepened on Thursday as an Italian blog quoted Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Como provincial finance police as saying the two men had been released. The colonel and police headquarters in Rome both declined to respond to questions from the Financial Times.

Wait, What?!
“the two men had been released.”

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Japan To Abolish Cash?
-sh

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Daschle Has ties to Private Health Care Industry While Urging Obama to Drop Public Health Care Plan
The firm that houses two of the three former Senate majority leaders who proposed a comprehensive health care compromise bill on Wednesday has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of key players in the health care industry. In addition, the company that presented those findings, the Bipartisan Policy Center, counts as a major fundraiser one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

The firm that houses two of the three former Senate majority leaders who proposed a comprehensive health care compromise bill on Wednesday has been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of key players in the health care industry. In addition, the company that presented those findings, the Bipartisan Policy Center, counts as a major fundraiser one of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Former Sens. Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and Howard Baker joined forces this week to put out a health care plan 15 months in the making. The three political gray beards, who co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center, called for an approach to reform that included state-operated public insurance options as well as individual and employer mandates for coverage. Their proposal was pitched as a bi-partisan effort at solving one of the most complex legislative issue facing the nation.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Alston + Bird filed 60 lobbying reports in 2008 on issues pertaining to Medicare and Medicaid. An additional eight were filed on matters relating to “health issues” and three on pharmaceutical matters. That same year, the firm lobbied Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 35 times, and the Department of Health and Human Services ten

The clients it represented included the American Hospital Association (which paid the firm $80,000), Bayer AG ($120,000), Fresenius Medical Care ($160,000), Generic Pharmaceutical Association ($190,000), the Health Management Association ($120,000), HealthSouth Corp ($440,000), the National Association for Home Care ($210,000) and Roche Group ($120,000), a company that is “systematically pursuing personalized medicine.”file pos

yes, there’s more…

Don’t like Single Payer? Demand what Tax Payers offer and give to each Member of Congress and their families. Unless, you think some people are more equal than others?

Tom Daschle Still Receives These Benefits
Don’t Forget the Pension

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OBAMA’S A Bad Boyfriend
Not Your Boyfriend!

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Obama’s Doctor Knocks ObamaCare
Dr. David Scheiner: “He doesn’t see all the pain, it’s so tragic out here,” he says. “Obama’s wonderful, but on this one I’m not sure if he’s getting the right input.”

What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be “Medicare for all,” a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. “A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won’t starve,” Scheiner says.

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More Traitorous Democrats - Over the past few days, we reported on how the White House and Democratic Congressional Leadership waged a dirty campaign to scare up votes to support another $106 billion in funds for their wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, several of the so-called anti-war Democrats who left their principles at the House coat check on their way in to vote Tuesday are trying to explain away their hypocritical votes.

New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, who voted against the war funding in May—when it didn’t matter—only to vote Tuesday with the pro-war Dems, sounded like an imbecile when he made this statement after the vote: “We are in the process of wrapping up the wars. The president needed our support.” What planet is Weiner living on? “Wrapping up the wars?” Last time I checked, there are 21,000 more US troops heading to Afghanistan alongside a surge in contractors there, including a 29% increase in armed contractors. Does Weiner think the $106 billion in war funding he voted for is going to pay for one way tickets home for the troops? What he voted for was certainly not the “Demolition of the 80 Football-field-size US Embassy in Baghdad Act of 2009.” To cap off this idiocy, Weiner basically admitted he is a fraud when he said the bill he voted in favor of “still sucks.”
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one brave lone little Democrat
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product placement

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txting ripoff

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Oh, Canada

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Power Tripping

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oh, the irAny

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On Obama’s Soul

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Last Poets

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QOTD: “Somebody told me once that the grail is right in front of you when your back is turned.” ~Ken Nordine

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thanks evie for the weekend dress-up

Found this video through Church of the Customer Blog. Brilliant writing and delivery. Though slightly uncomfortable. The sign of great comedy.

Kevin Nalty, a guy who makes YouTube videos for fun and was an early star and partner on the site (currently No. 92 most-subscribed of all time), never hid his real identity. On the contrary, he treated his wife and young kids like a sketch comedy troupe. But by going by “Nalts” and avoiding mention of his job marketing Propecia at Merck, he thought he could keep the viral video world and the day job separate.

However, a recent MediaWeek story about product placement on YouTube mentioned Nalty’s employer, and that garnered some attention in the pharma blogging world. So this morning, he quit his job and became a full-time online video marketer.

Asked whether Merck pressured him to leave, Nalty told us via email “Merck actually handled the exposure and my departure with class.” But he said it was the public exposure that made it clear the situation was too tenuous.

“Merck knew about Nalts before they hired me. But as Nalts grew, it became harder to keep ‘low profile.’ I went to great lengths to keep them separate because I didn’t want my goofball antics to reflect poorly on a company focused on health and medication…The fact that Merck was recently being unfairly linked to me and fart videos was the ’straw that broke the camel’s back.’”

Nalty said that between a combination of growing YouTube partner revenue; sponsored videos for MTV, MSN, and Fox that were brokered by Hitviews; and paid consulting work; he’s “beginning to make more off hours than during [my] day job.”

It’s that consulting business — not the fart videos — where Nalty thinks he can make a real impact, by uniting the two sides of his life that he’d worked hard to separate. By being “a seasoned marketer who also knows online video from an inside-out perspective as an online ‘weblebrity,’” Nalty wants to help brands adapt to a new evolution of marketing that’s driven by social media, especially video.

YouTube (s GOOG) has notified some of its content creators that independent brand-integration deals in their videos could violate YouTube’s terms of service, reports MediaWeek.

The move comes at a time when YouTube is working overtime to convert its massive viewing audience into money. The site has made a number of moves in the past month to make itself more advertiser-friendly, including changes to its community guidelines and courting more professional content. Kevin Nalty (a.k.a. “nalts”) received a letter from YouTube about his brand-integrated videos, but told MediaWeek, “It’s not unreasonable…They are paying these high bandwidth fees, and they don’t want to be seen just as a dumb pipe.”

Aside from dumb pipe issues, these integrations could muck up YouTube’s own efforts to sell advertising as some brands may not want to run an overlay ad on a video that already has a sponsor.

A number of YouTube celebs have worked independent sponsorship deals into their online video work. One of the best known is Lucas Cruikshank (a.k.a. “Fred”) who has parlayed his high-pitched fame into sponsorship deals with Zipit Wireless and 20th Century Fox.

According to MediaWeek, YouTube will soon be announcing a new formalized process for brand-integration videos.

It’s no secret that I absolutely suck now. I have no fan base, my videos are absolutely horrible, and I am not nearly as consistent as I used to be. In fact, nobody is even reading this. But, in short, everything I’ve worked for over the last 2 and a half years has sort of fizzled away because of that. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that my goddamn 9 year old computer doesn’t allow me to make videos anymore unless I am willing to spend days and days and days of trial and error in an effort to make them suitable for Youtube, as I did with the most recent leprechaun video, the new subscribe to Reubnick retropsective crap one, and the 1880’s politicians one.  As we all know, I’m waiting still on that new computer, but if you know my family, procrastination is one thing that makes us up. What could take 1 week takes months and months, and in the case of purchasing a new computer that we’ve desperately needed for years, it takes YEARS AND YEARS (and counting) to get a new one. Enough about that, though. Aside from the computer, I’m going to admit that I’m just not as good as I used to be at this stuff. Possibly it’s my overflowing ammounts of discouragement and dissappointment due to having to work around this computer, but it’s probably also because I’m just not that inspired any more. I’ve sort of given up lately, and my ideas just aren’t flowing like they used to. My subscriber count has been stuck at around 500 for the last 2 and a half months, and my twitter followers count keeps staying where it is, even if I get 3 new followers every day, I lose them at about the same rate.

Now, I had just assume that I sucked at doing videos now. I figured that with an absolutely depressing year filled with dealing with SAD and everything else, my spark had been extinguished. But I’ve noticed something in recent days. Not only have I been stuck in a seemingly endless rut…but so has the rest of the internet!

Think about it, think about the big names like Nalts, MattandCory, Smosh, Charlieissocoollike, Daxflame, CharlesTrippy (even though I’ll admit his videos are never very good), the clipcritics, ShayCarl, Zackscott and even Renetto! Plus a lot more! It’s not like they aren’t entertaining any more, but the ideas and the posts and the videos and everything just doesn’t seem to be flowing and flourishing like they did in Summer 08′! Probably since this Winter started, I’ve noticed that things have been slowing down, and I see I seem to be in the same boat as them! I suppose I take some consolation in that.

• Lets look at Nalts, probably one of the best youtubers and online video producing personalities there is! Do you guys remember the days last summer when Nalts would make easily a video a day? Usually completely different and original and better than the last? He made a video “everytime you pooped.” He would usually fill up the section of 9 new videos in his channel in less than no time. But now, his 9th newest video is 3 weeks old, and it barely makes any sense. That’s not Nalts like! Now, let’s look at his site “Willvideoforfood” (not to brag…but…well, I don’t know how to put this. Let’s just say I’m a regular there. Uh…people know me). 3 posts a day he used to have. He’d fill up the front page with new original conversation starting posts in less than no time. Yes sir, there were a lot of them. Almost too many good ones to keep up with. Easily on average 1 each day, too.  Now, in 2 weeks, he’s only filled up the homepage once. What I’m getting at here is that although Nalts is still one of the best, he’s not around as much as he used to be. He’s not that persistent lately, and you’d be kind of hardpressed to find many new collabs he’s been in, as well as “As one Gathering videos” or all that.
• What about the Clipcritics? They barely do anything any more! They were taking the Web by storm, and now I barely see them any more!
• LisaNova? I don’t even know what happened to her. Now all she seems to do is payed promotional content.
• CharlesTrippy nowadays sucks more than usual.
• ShayCarl, although he still has great videos, has noticably slowed down and seems to have lost some momentum lately, too.
• TheTriangleChannel. Take them for example. You might think that “Hey! Ever since Reubnick DESTROYED MattandCory, they have rebuilt and are now stronger than ever with their 2,000+ subscribers and good videos and all of that. What’s not known, however, is that they still can’t make it into the partner program (A feeling I’m too used to). Here is some evidence they have been feeling the same way I have been, too. Plus, I don’t know any more funnier, hardworking youtubers out there besides MattandCory. I don’t!
• Smosh have been on a steady downfall since they acchieved #1 most subscribed-hood. Now their videos seem rushed and impersonal.
• DaxFlame has basically completely totally disappeared. He is not in the front of anybody’s mind any more, and even if he was fake or real, he seems to have stopped caring.
• Charlieissocoollike’s videos just suck now. There is no beating around the bush there, his video suck. Plus, he barely makes any, either.
• Lastly, what about Renetto? Does he even do ANYTHING anymore? I mean, thankfully I barely see his chubby little mug any more, but all I know is that he used to be THE guy on the internet. Lil’ Renetto has fallen off of his pedestal. Perhaps Vloggerheads did him in.

Do we see what I’m saying here? Is it just me? I myself have a theory that with youtube turning into a heartless corporation slowely but surely since Summer, a lot of us are tired of it, and aggravated, too. Youtube pretty much makes me sick now, and that the feeling might be mutual amongst the youtubers that people actually care about.

I’m sitting back right now and watching a new generation of Youtubers sprout up too and gain their notoriety in steady leaps and bounds. PeterCoffin, is a good example. That guy is going to rule youtube someday. But yet there is also MattG124, and MissAlissa16, and the obvious Fred. WhatTheBuck has been around a while, but he’s become an unstoppable force. DaveDays is firmly planted on the most subscribed list, which he wasn’t last year, as is MakeMeBad35, the talentless Wastetimechasingcars, and even the diabolical ShaneDawson. I don’t even know who SuperMac18 is, but he seems to be new and doing pretty well.

Not that I’m saying that the youtubers of yesteryear are all going to vanish, but it seems that they have perhaps stepped aside, possibly unkowingly, possibly reluctantly, possibly gracefully, for what looks to be like a new generation, which all seem to be pretty popular on BlogTV too. I’m going to call it the BlogTube generation, because it sounds cool.

Am I alone with this, or have others been seeing this? I’m not claiming to be a weblebrity, or to even have fans, but I am pretty sure I know a little bit about youtube, seeing as looking at the videos is basically all I do.

Anyway, that’s all from me. If I’m lucky, once I get that new computer, maybe, JUST MAYBE, I can jump on the BlogTube generation train before it’s left the station and gone too far. A guy can have hopes, still.

Guys like Renetto = All but done with.

Yet, I will not understand how SMPFilms seems to survive whatever happens on Youtube…

After watching laughing through Nalts’ latest video, I couldn’t help but admire him.  Kevin Nalty, online persona known as Nalts, is my hero.  He’s a true family guy.  He always has time for his beautiful wife and precious kids.  He is a successful business man in a Fortune 100 company and a active member of the Web 2.0 community.  He not only makes hilarious YouTube videos but is also an ambassandor for the online community; combining old and new media to show the power of the future.

I want to be like Nalts.

Mimo is having a secret Valentine’s day party that was announced on Planet Cazmo’s Blog but there are certain steps you have to do to get in the party’s secret location. To read more about this post click here.This is the picture represented on the post of Planet Cazmo’s Blog:

The new year doesn’t promise to bring much in the way of good tidings for most startups, much less those with the shaky business models found in digital media. But, at the same time, online video consumption is a strengthening reality that won’t be suppressed by tough economic times. So, if you’re involved in a video venture looking out at the spread for 2009, where do you stand?

First of all, let’s talk about where things ended up last year. The big news items for video startups (and young, internal ventures at big companies) in 2008 were acquisitions, layoffs and shut-downs — and of course fundings. Many of the companies we cover raised funding last year, though the pace of new investments slowed along with the economy. (As for including a category for IPOs…yeah right.) To recap some of the highlights (and lowlights):

Acquisitions: There were no blockbuster acquisitions in 2008 — at this point it seems impossible that anyone will ever match 2006’s Google-YouTube. At $160 million, Yahoo-Maven was probably the biggest deal that’s directly relevant to our space, but that deal has faded, along with the products involved. Other than a couple biggies on this list, you’ll be forgiven if you hardly recognize any of the names.

Vidmeter by Visible Measures, NBCU buys LX.TV, Maven Networks by Yahoo, Revver by LiveUniverse, Weblistic by Spot Runner, Bebo (the social network has significant investment in original video) by AOL, MediaXstream by Secure Media Solutions, Kontiki by MK Capital, FanLib by Disney, CNET (which has many video assets) by CBS Interactive, Navic by Microsoft, Omnisio by Google/YouTube, Radiance Technologies by Comcast Media Center, Visual Connection by KIT Digital, Illumenix by TubeMogul, ClearStory by The FeedRoom, SportVU by STATS, TIOTI by Vizimo

Layoffs: These stories sped up considerably as the year went on. Most, if not all, failed to put an end to tough times for the companies involved.

Digeo, Crackle, MeeVee, Akimbo, SuperDeluxe, Vudu, Seesmic (twice), Heavy, PermissionTV, ManiaTV, Break, Revision3, Smashface, 60Frames, Vuze, Spot Runner (twice), Veoh (twice), BitTorrent (twice), Current Media, Qik, Strands, Brightcove and DivX. (Not to mention public companies like TiVo, Netflix, Akamai, Viacom, NBCU, Adobe and AT&T.)

Shut down: This category was actually smaller than we might have expected, given how tough it is to succeed in this business. Last year, when we asked a panel of online video experts — from video makers to professors to VCs and media execs — what would happen in 2008, one of the most common answers was that me-too video sites would shut down. Here’s what they told us:

• “If you are running an online video company that features non-premium, commodity content and you missed the Internet ‘network effect’ enjoyed by YouTube and a few others, it might be time to cash out.”
• “Sadly, the second-tier video sites this year will sell to larger companies or fade away.”
• “Any of the companies who have raised $15 million or more and are running out of funds now are in serious danger.”

Well, it turns out doomsday wasn’t quite nigh… But it’s a good bet that many of the startups on the layoffs list will be forced to make even deeper cuts in 2009.

Stage6 (DivX’s video portal), Akimbo, Firebrand, AllPeers, Peerflix, Streamcast Networks, Pickle (after being acquired by Scripps), Red Swoosh (after being acquired by Akamai), SanDisk’s Fanfare and TakeTV, Starz Entertainment’s online service Vongo, Skyrider, ClickStar, Moblogic (after CBS acquired Wallstrip), Mobuzz, Jumpcut (after being acquired by Yahoo), Eyespot (though the assets were acquired by PixelFish),

But people are watching more and more online video, from user-generated video to TV episodes to a growing portion of web video originals. Here are the consumption stats:

Unfortunately, global video stats are hard to come by, but here’s one impressive measure of how much video has infiltrated our lives: comScore says U.S. online video watchers watched 273.1 minutes of online video in the month of November 2008, up from 195 minutes in November 2007. And the number was only 151 minutes in January 2007. A 40 percent increase in consumption in a single year is massive, and there’s no reason to think it will go away.

And what about the money? Here’s what we’re looking at for market size:

eMarketer has been looking at video advertising revenue closely. First it said 2008 would net $1.3 billion in U.S. video ad revenue, but then halfway through the year it revised that estimate to $505 million. By the end of the year, that number was bumped up to $587 million. Notwithstanding the whole “track record” thing, here’s this year’s eMarketer forecast: $850 million in U.S. online video ads 2009.

As for paid video, it’s the red-headed step-child of video business models — but it’s also being opened up in new ways by services like Netflix, which includes unlimited online streaming with most of its physical DVD rental plans, and sports services like the exemplary MLB.tv. ABI Research forecasts $2.49 billion in worldwide — N.B. worldwide, not just U.S.! — revenue for paid video over broadband, more than double the $1.16 billion it estimated for 2008.

So what’s next on the agenda? I am generally uncomfortable with predictions, given how self-serving they are (plus I hate to be obvious or wrong). But here are some of the most provocative and specific video-related predictions I’ve seen from people who take an active interest in the space.

• Rise of video use by marketers for SEO — “a short cut to the top of Google” (Kevin Nalty)
• Growing market for cheap video stock footage (Robin Good)
• Influence of video on politics deepens with President Elect Barack Obama’s fireside chats (Alex Castro)
• Closure of most of the startups on this list: Revision3, ON Networks, NextNewNetworks, 23/6, Funny or Die — “Normal people have no idea what any of these things are.” (Rex Sorgatz)
• “The biggest trend in online video is where and on what people will watch” (Hulu CEO Jason Kilar). Is this a smoke signal given the source? Hulu was the break-out story of 2008, but it’s only available on the web right now. Meanwhile, the push to bring web content to the TV, driven by Netflix, is gearing up to be a prominent storyline in 2009.

So, there you have it, a cornucopia of data points and pointers. Of course, when it all comes down to it, silly things like founder dynamics, funders’ indulgence, and luck will likely have as much a part in your success or failure as the market. What’s sad is that we may not see a lot of new startups this year, just at a time when some of the best ideas about online video are being crystallized into shows, products and services that people actually want and enjoy. But if you’re lucky enough to have a little runway left, we hope to see you out there.

Photo by Flickr user dierken.

Two whole posts into this venture and we give up! We must win the award for the most lackadaisical bloggers ever. But at least we know when to cut and run. We had great plans, I’ll have you know. I was going to blow the whole Runaway Box ring wide open. Not really–I’m just a big fan.

It wasn’t lack of interest, and it’s not that we don’t care about you, gentle readers. It’s just that Abbie and I are slackers, with occasional valid excuses. Abbie moved. I’m moving. And we got really excited about other artistic outlets. Abbie’s making waves with her photography and I started drawring.

So, as a kind of apology, here’s a meager list of cool videos made by folks much more ambitious than us. Please note that these are in no particular order, other than that in which they popped into my head.

1. First in this list (and my heart) is the Runaway Box consortium. I heartily endorse this site. The Man in the Box show is brilliant, and I’m a big fan of the Elevator Show. There are so many individual videos I’d like to link here. Can I link that many videos? Sure. Why not.

2. One of my more recent finds (meaning sometime between our last post and this…which is actually a long while, so it might not even be that recent) involves the creator of the Elevator Show and SEVERAL YOUTUBE CELEBRITIES. As you might recall from our first blog, we love seeing familiar YouTube faces collaborate. Anyway, it’s a show called Hooking Up. If I’m being honest, the show wasn’t the best I’ve seen, but the star power left me dazzled. Simply dazzled, I say. It featured: Phil DeFranco, Lonelygirl15, Kev Jumba, Michael Buckley, NALTS, and Woody from the Elevator Show. For some reason, I’d seen videos from each of these tubers at one point or another, and when I stumbled on this gem, it was the ultimate YouTube experience.

3. If you know me in real life (and you probably don’t), you know that I’m a Christmas addict. It’s a very unhealthy time of year for me. So of course, I found and loved a series of 12 Christmas songs put out by a student of Berklee College of Music. He does a brilliant job and that’s pretty much all I can say about thatOHMYGODILOVECHRISTMAS.

4. One particularly heart-wrenching story I always meant to tell was my experience with Nobody’s Watching. The idea was that two friends put out a series of videos and got noticed by an exec at NBC. They created a couple of webisodes as a pilot for a show that never got picked up. It was a testament to the power of YouTube. Not only could the site launch the likes of Chris Crocker all the way to the Jimmy Kimmel show, but it could make things happen for anyone with enough creativity and wit. Make things happen, people! Then it turned out that the two scoundrels were just actors and all the videos were written by some Scrubs writers. Not as fun. But still funny, so you should check it out. You might spot some shreds of my dashed dreams in the videos.

5. Drunk History. I can’t even begin to explain the…just watch the videos.

OK–that’s five. Five seems like a good number. It’s more than the number of blog posts we published. I hope this manages to leave a good taste in your mouth. That was a weird thing to say, but what I meant was that I want to go out on  a good note. A good, tasty note. I hope you enjoy the videos, and I’m sorry we won’t be seeing as much of each other.

Please check out our Flickrs.

XOXOX

Kate

But I jest.

I got home this evening excited to tune into the first ever live stream off YouTube. And while I was very impressed with the interface, beyond that, the event was just “blah” to me. Some stuff (like the MythBusters – the main reason I was watching) had been waaay too short. Other parts seemed to drag on forever and ever. A lot of the popular Tubers I really would have liked to see (Nalts, thewinekone, etc.) Didn’t get more than an occasional cameo on the backstage cam.

From a technical end, I think the event was absolutely amazing. If they can offer that sort of streaming to the rest of us, it will far surpass the popularity of blogTV or Stickam (though i doubt we regular folk will get that anythime soon!). While I heard some complaints on twitter about losing the feed, I never lost it on my end.

My other gripe is that the event seemed to cater to two crowds: 14 year olds, and people who last logged into YouTube in 2006. It seemed to flip back and forth between the first featured viral videos on the site and acts like Fred. It wasn’t “bad” per say, I just felt like anyone 25 and over was sort of out of place.

Bottom line. It was a neat event, but the performance itself was a little lacking.

I don’t know if I am the only one that is so excited about the Youtube Live event, but I haven’t heard from any one else about it.
The event will be hosted in San Francisco at the 22nd of this month, it will be also available to watch live on youtube.

Akon, Will.i.Am, Katy Perry, Joe Satriani, Jon M Chu, ESMEE, Mike Relm, Julia Nunes and many other stars and celebrities from the show bizz, will show up perform and take part in the event among many other famous youtubers.

My favorites singers at this event are Akon and Will.i.Am, least favorite is Katy Perry, I just find her song very very stupid.
Favorite from show bizz are Myth Busters and Will it blend?.
Favorite youtubers are Fred, Lisa Nova, Daxflame, Smosh, SMPfilms and Nalts, least favorite is Hotforwords, I don’t want to be mean or anything but to me she is just like a slut with a webcam and a dictionary. :/

The event will start 2:00 after midnight this Saturday, this means that I will probably not miss it, even if I go out that night I will be back and will manage to watch a good portion of the live event.

The only thing that can stop me from watching the event might be this:

Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe’s Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

I have tried everything possible to fix this problem, from installing the latest flash player, active X controller, java plugins to trying ALL the different internet browsers including, disabling the firewall, disabling the anti-virus, restarting router settings and downloading and installing the latest windows updates.

Nothing fixed it! I can watch most of the videos on youtube without a problems, it just seems to be the latest videos with the highest quality that are not working yet I can watch them when they are embeded in another webpage, so it seems to be a java problem.

If anybody has the same problem or has a solution to this problem please let me know!

AP Newswire – Self-proclaimed viral video genius Kevin “Nalts” Nalty was reported missing earlier this morning by a group of friends referring to themselves only as “his tribe”. Upon investigation, police have leads, but are asking the public for their assistance in locating this iconoclast of sophomoric online videos.

“It’s possible that Mr. Nalty could be seriously injured and nowhere near an Internet connection.” stated Captain Darrian Glass of the police’s missing person’s unit. “The other option, the one that we’re not ready to think about yet, is that we’ll find him, but that he’ll turn up to be boring. We do see this a lot, especially near the holiday season. The rule of thumb is ‘the bigger the ego, the harder they fall’.”

If Nalts were to turn up boring, countless lives would be affected. Among those lives is a woman who would not give us her name, but kept referring to herself as Wife of Nalts. “I don’t know what to make of it. I mean, you think that someone is funny, but the next morning you wake up and find him staring at that damn coffee cup, completely silent with a tear in his eye. It makes you wonder if he’s going to wind up boring”.

Even The Wine Kone is now Boring

 William Dahlback, professor of psychology at Sanford University says that boring doesn’t discriminate, and strikes even the most entertaining online personalities.

“We see that online that even the most talented content creators are mildly amusing at best. Because of this, it’s easy for an online personality to suddenly vanish and turn up some weeks later as boring as the guy next to you.”

Dahlback continues, “A perfect example is The Wine Kone. Several months ago he was considered one of the most amusing content creators on YouTube. Then about two months ago he vanished without a trace, only to turn up three weeks later as that guy from accounting everyone hates. This is real, and it could be happening to Kevin Nalty, even as we speak.”

Police are still conducting their investigation and refuse to release any potential leads, but some of the regular contributors to his site have teamed up and started a campaign to find Nalty as quickly as possible.

“We just want him back,” stated one website visitor who wished to remain anonymous, “but not because we’re worried about his well being. We’re just bored with posting to his most recent blog over and over until he wakes up and gets his butt in gear. It’s a real drag.”

Though not all of his site visitors share this feeling. According to another regular who goes by the name Maryland “It’s sort of refreshing with [Nalty] being gone. He has the spelling ability of a fourth grader, and sometimes I wonder if he does it just to upset me. Who doesn’t know the difference between ‘common’ and ‘come on’ anyway? Wait a second – how did you just spell my name?”

If anyone has knowledge on Nalty’s whereabouts, police are encouraging them to contact YouTube staff and inform them of the situation. “It’s not as though we actually want citizens to get involved,” Glass stated, “which is why we’re asking them to get in touch with the only humans on earth harder to find than Nalts himself.”

Hark! It’s friggin’ Christmas time already! That means that it’s time for all of the millions of Christmas Colabs to start flooding Youtube and pissing everybody off.

Did you know it’s been over a year since I started working on my infamous Christmas Colab last year? The one that sucked even though it had a crapload of famous people on Youtube in it? You might have noticed that I deleted it. There were two reasons for that.

1) I was really embarrassed about how it turned out (Especially how angry Mark Day looked during his parts and how I heard him mutter to himself “I can’t believe I’m f***in’ doin’ this”), and the entire experience makes me want to punch my self in the face

2) Royalty free music, which really isn’t much of a reason. This whole “Project: Reubnick Removal” thing was BARELY about Royalty free music. It was just a chance for me to get rid of videos that embarrass me and re-edit them.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m going to give “Christmas on You-ooh-tube” another crack. Sure, the damage from last year was done (Markdaycomedy probably doesn’t like me, and thinks I’m a stupid freak, CharlesTrippy probably thinks I’m an attention starved loser, and most of all, Paperlilies probably hates me”), but so many people gave me footage that it’s just too good to throw away. So, I’m older now. I’ve changed a lot in this year. Plus, I know much more about editing. I am definitely going to give this thing another crack. I have to. I hope to utilize green-screen, layers of sound, transitions, and originally written background music. I’m giving myself a lot of time for this, also, so I won’t have to rush so much at the end.

But on Christmas day, I hope to make Nalts, CharlesTrippy, Markdaycomedy, Zacksmovies, Jawharp1992 (Even though he hates me now for some reason), and everybody else included proud. ALL OF THEM ARE PARTNERS! And who knows? Maybe there will be some new people in it. So I am praying that this year, it doesn’t suck so much. I’m even hoping that this one doesn’t get lost in the abyss of Christmas Colabs, and people actually remember it. Seriously, I have so much good footage that if I try hard enough, it will be GREAT!

If anybody wants to see the original “Christmas on You-ooh-Tube”, you are out of luck. It’s dead.

In today’s age of fast progress and in a generation with smart and savvy individuals who want to make sure they accomplish as much in their time by multitasking, newspapers are competing against time and machine communications such as with computers and the internet. Much of the extra time in the general demographics of newspaper article readers is now spent online. What the major threat here is that newspapers have to compete against time spent online versus time spent with a traditional newspaper and what value the consumer places against both. In other words, people need to be attracted more to one or the other to choose which one they will use for their source of information and news events. At first my thoughts were on the fact that computers are the new wave of the future and it might be a trend for people to just go online but then I thought about the workforce and companies that hire employees, then thought about schools and their teachers and students, most of them use computers as part of their daily routine and not because they like to but because they have to, so when certain information is needed in regards to current events they can easily click on a browser and log on to a newspaper website instead of trying to drive around and find a stand or wait for the next volume of the paper to arrive at their doorstep.

Although perception of the internet gives the user a certain degree of openness and the right to free information, the internet evolution and its progress has been built upon by corporations that rely on advertising dollars to keep them “afloat”. From the very start of newspapers along with others have had part of their company structure and growth to thank from advertising revenues. Advertisers can now see that newspapers can have big visitor numbers towards their websites just as in the decades before the internet they had true subscribers. This helps the newspapers survive by transitioning their advertising revenues that were typically made from the newspaper classifieds, marketing and the such to transition into the new media format and keep people reading. People still feel conformable on relying these newspapers for bringing them news because they are established entities that have been around from generation to generation so there is a certain degree in which newspapers can count on in regards to customer loyalty and readership for generations to come. I, personally would rather read the news about an event from The Los Angeles Times then some Joe blows blog in the middle of the internet ocean (like me) . Although perception has it that newspapers are bias, intelligent people can count on the fact that reliable newspapers either on the internet or in print will more than likely not have any propaganda attached to their editorials. So part of it is the easy transition from print to digital as far as sales and bringing in revenues and from trust that people still have in newspapers.

I believe that the users-gratification approach should be taken into consideration when trying to identify your market reach and penetration with a film product in order to make it successful. What does this mean? It means that you must take into account all the things that make human curiosity and apply it to your movie when producing/developing it.

The uses-gratification approach is most of the time based upon a four-category human need system that is part into a cognition, diversion, social utility and withdrawal account when the evaluation of an individual approach is carried out.  The first category is the act of the person to simply start knowing something and clearly identify parallels to that knowing or for their own using such as updating on political events that will influence their lives or understanding what is going on and or simple just want to learn and satisfy their human curiosity. Second, diversion which can take on a diversity of forms for an individual such as stimulation activities to that contrast of everyday life or just for relaxation. It could also be an emotional release function which is more complex such as watching a dramatic movie that the person can relate to his or her own life experiences.  Social utility is basically tools or currency communication to initiation an addressing of a certain subject or even. Such as when a person asks you “Did you see that blockbuster movie last opening weekend?” In most cases the initial message is secondary to that of the importance of actual social gathering. The last of the categories is withdrawal which can be a mass media to create a barrier or excuse between other people or activities. Television, radio a book can be used to draw a line between wanted and unwanted communication such as not disturbing someone while watching a favorites show versus someone commenting on a show and the other person agreeing but not continuing the conversation.

Take for example “chick flixs” or love stories, even though they are the same kind of story over and over again most of the time, the demographics are known to attend because of what’s playing in front of your screen and who is next to you eating popcorn…

This basically gives a category to try to simplify some of the drive in which someone might go and see your movie or rent it. That is of course once you have it distributed!

Minorities in television, film and commercials… Well this fall more onto film and television series. As you know the media portrays many minorities in a bad light, you never see them as heros or mixed into scripted shows as the lead as much. This is due to something beyond what we understand as far as research and data analysis approaches that are applied to media communcations because everything in entertainment is a communication, they are trying to tell us something or at least that is what the purpose of watching a film or producing a film product is to make it attract as many people to make as much money. Let us look at the main approaches that most market researchers for the entertainment use…

The “functional” approach bases its data on audience observation and experiences of these individuals such as a questionnaire while critical/cultural research uses a more of broad mass communicative study of culture within the audience. Both approaches may or may not come to the same conclusion based on the communication that is trying to be delivered because the major critical/cultural differences may have an impact on the outcome. The diversity in society and the account of examination of different concepts, ideology, politics and social structure vary greatly when taken on macrolytically and much of the research is aimed at describing these depictions within the society. Many views can be drawn when using a critical/cultural approach such as a something produced with certain characteristics such as a Mexican or a Black man playing a criminal in the entertainment industry, the entertainment industry from data gathered sees this in a functional approach by data gathered from society versus how the audience might see it as insulting and degrading society. Both approaches from either side have viable application in understanding how mass communication effects audience and the society.

You see, it’s not really the filmmakers fault that they CHOOSE to make a mexican, latino actor into a criminal, the research department are the ones that TELL us who the majority and minorities are in a perfect and unperfect world.