Official Blog
Yo! Megan Fox and Vin Diesel! You think you're better than us?
Friday, July 31, 2009
OK,
Ashton
might have more followers on
Twitter
than we do, but we're not going quietly into the night. Let's take a friendly celebrity tussle to Facebook, shall we? where we've got
the 12th most popular Product/Celebrity fan page
(thankyouverymuch). With 3.1 million fans, we're hovering above Mr. Demi Moore, Rihanna and, er, potato chips (Pringles). That's not too bad, but our sights are on you, Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam Sandler and Vin Diesel. You stand in our way of leaderboard glory so it's time for a good old fashioned Internet showdown.
You heard it here: we're going to pass these celebs in the next 60 days and if we don't, we'll eat humble pie
and
spotlight video(s) on our homepage for the nonprofit or non-commercial cause of their choosing. It's a stretch goal, to be sure, as we'd have to gain approximately the following numbers of fans to beat...
Adam Sandler
: 150K
Lady Gaga
: 290K
Will Smith
: 965K
Megan Fox
: 1.4M
Vin Diesel
: 2.2M
Think we can do it? Help us get there by
joining our Facebook group
now. Because we so want to be able to say that we're stronger than Vin Diesel, cooler than Will Smith and hotter than Megan Fox.
Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently favorited
"J.J. Abrams: The mystery box."
Eye-popping X Games action
Thursday, July 30, 2009
The world's premiere action sports event, X Games 15, starts today in Los Angeles with a slew of competitions, including street park and vert ramp skateboarding, BMX, motocross, rally car and more — and we'll have all the jaw-dropping, mind-exploding moments on YouTube, courtesy of
ESPN
.
Bonafide legends and legends-in-the-making will be competing, with big air masters like skateboarder Danny Way, BMX rider Dave Mirra and Moto X rider Todd Potter putting it all on the line. What's at stake for these athletes? A lot more than prize money and titles...
While the Mega Ramp and vertical events always draw the oohs and aahs, many skateboarding industry watchers are hotly anticipating the skate park and street events, thanks to a field stacked with YouTube heroes Mike Mo Capaldi, Paul Rodriguez, Andrew Reynolds, Ryan Sheckler and (Wallenberg and Maloof Cup winner) Chris Cole. The women's field is also highly competitive this year, with young stars Leticia Bufoni and Marisa Del Santo slated to skate.
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of X Games and to whet your appetite for the event, ESPN put together a
greatest hits playlist
with the best moments from each year, including Travis Pastrana's gravity-defying motocross double-backflip in 2006 and Tony Hawk's epic 900-degree spin ("The 900") from 1999.
ESPN will be uploading daily highlights, interviews, features and behind-the-scenes video to their channel and to a
XG15 playlist
. Subscribe to make sure you don't miss a beat.
Andrew Bangs, YouTube Sports, recently watched
"Real Madrid vs Universidad de Quito."
Who Would Win in a Fight?
Monday, July 27, 2009
Update (7/29):
Thanks to everyone who voted. Here are the final results of the poll.
+++
Among other things, YouTube is a place for healthy and vigorous debate. In that spirit, we're introducing a monthly blog entry embracing a popular question that never fails to elicit a colorful response: Who would win in a fight? Each installment, we'll be pitting two characters from YouTube Shows and Movies against each other in a no-holds-barred, free-for-all battle royale. To kick things off, we've got Juggernaut vs. Incredible Hulk.
vs.
For a truly expert opinion, we defer to
mrtennessen
, who has already mapped out what a possible deathmatch between the two titans might look like.
More importantly, what's your opinion? Vote in the poll at the top of the blog, or post video responses or comments to the X-Men and Hulk shows and movies to express a more in-depth point of view. If you can think of a good battle between characters from the YouTube
Shows
and
Movies
pages, post it in the comments below - the best idea will be featured in the next edition of "Who Would Win in a Fight?"
Nate Weinstein, YouTube Film, recently watched
"Gowanus, Brooklyn."
Can You "Express Yourself" Without Showing Your Face?
Monday, July 27, 2009
YouTube offers many different routes to self-expression, with countless individuals sharing their lives on our site every day. While creativity can be its own reward, it never hurts to receive a little recognition for your efforts. HP's
You on You
project challenges YouTube users to tell your stories in a rather unusual way, in a minute or less, without showing your face (a theme of HP's most recent ad campaign). The best entries will be voted on by the community over a five-week period, and there are substantial cash prizes to be won, in addition to the opportunity to showcase your talents in an online video gallery.
Does the idea of making a face-free video sound daunting? To get your creative juices flowing, HP invited some YouTube personalities to create sample videos. From the
digital animation
of filmmaker mdotstrange to AmazingPhil's
stuffed toys and clay stop-motion
, these are compelling examples to get you thinking about the challenge.
You don't need to be a painter like
BrittaniLouiseTaylor
or
ValsArtDiary
to strut your stuff. Catch
ndtitanlady
putting her sewing skills in the spotlight or
italktosnakes
simply talking about her passions. Check out
this playlist
to see all the samples. With these diverse storytelling styles to spark your thinking, we hope you'll be inspired to show us something new, via HP You on You.
Posted by Mark Day, YouTube People & Blogs
ComicCon Gets Collected
Saturday, July 25, 2009
If you're a fan of superheroes, blockbuster movies and eye-popping sci-fi costumes, San Diego's ComicCon is something of a big deal -- big enough that YouTube users
Charlieissocoollike
and
communitychannel
traveled all the way from England and Australia, respectively, to see the annual pop culture extravaganza for themselves. For cash-strapped fanboys and fangirls, the good news is that with today's homepage spotlight collection, you can join them.
ComicCon gets bigger every year, and our coverage of the show doesn't stop with fan-on-the-event-floor reports. We've got the showbiz mavens of
EW
(that's
Entertainment Weekly
) checking in, gaming-oriented coverage from
Machinima
, and some
classic ComicCon footage
from the vaults of
Current
and the
official ComicCon channel
. You can find all things ComicCon by clicking "view all" on the Spotlight module on today's homepage. If you like what you see, why not favorite or playlist a few clips, and add them to your own collection?
Mark Day, Comedy Manager, recently watched
Wired's
roving ComicCon report
.
Adopt a Feature v2: Who Will Be the New Champ?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Recently,
we announced
that a new set of features was in need of your loving care. Over 50 of you heeded round 1 champion
thecomputernerd01's call to help
-- that is, to make a video explaining to the YouTube community how
annotations
,
tags
,
Quicklist
,
mobile uploads
and/or the
customized homepage
work. Almost 50% of the group chose to "adopt" annotations, and tags
and Quicklist
also received a decent amount of attention. You even made videos about a few features not on the list, like
captions
,
the new channel design
and
widescreen viewing
. So far, the videos submitted for this round have been viewed over 34K times and already there are some choice tutorials out there, such as...
...MikeandToneRP
's explanation of tags, starring Megan Fox (um, not):
...
LaughingLeaf
's video on Quicklist, complete with a blooper reel:
...
AJCShow
's fast n' easy overview of sending a video from your phone to YouTube:
We'll be showcasing some of the best submissions on the homepage on Thursday, July 30, beginning at 6am PT, so it's not too late for your moment in the sun. Simply make a video about any or all of the features listed at the start of this blog post, and include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags. Share your video far and wide --
our autoshare feature
will help a lot with that -- and try to build views for it. It's one of the factors we'll use to decide who makes it to the homepage and who takes the crown for this edition of the program.
Anyway, it's almost the weekend, so go forth and adopt (a feature)!
Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently watched
"
Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend."
Who Goes to the Hollywood Film Festival? You Decide.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
In May,
we asked you
to participate in our first-ever Video for Change program,
the Enough Project's Come Clean 4 Congo contest
, by making short videos that illustrate the tie between the minerals in cell phones and the ongoing war in the Congo.
You responded by submitting many excellent videos that increased public awareness of this important, but under-exposed, issue. In the end, our panel of judges (actor Ryan Gosling, director Wim Wenders, and
Lost
actress Sonia Walger) narrowed the entries down to three semi-finalists. Now, as Walger notes, it's up to you to choose the final winner:
The winner will receive a trip to Los Angeles where his/her video will be shown at the
Hollywood Film Festival's
first Human Rights Symposium. Please take a look at the semi-finalist entries below and vote for your favorite at
www.youtube.com/enoughproject
.
Posted by Ramya Raghavan, YouTube Nonprofits & Activism
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