YouTube continues to push itself  in offering new tools and features to their site. The latest is a site-wide accessibility to the new 3D tool, a feature which allows users a simple, “one-click-solution” to convert 2D videos to 3D. When this feature was first offered last September, as it was in beta testing, it was available to only YouTube creators. Now it’s available to creators and viewers – any user can now, should they choose, convert short-form videos uploaded in 1080p to 3D.

Rather than relying on the creators to offer 3D, viewers can take matters into their own hands. Viewers access the 3D options in the video’s ‘Quality’ settings, and with a simple click, can enjoy the content in 3D – well, at least a form of 3D. This 3D option is not traditional 3D – YouTube’s system does not use two simultaneously captured videos. Instead, this 3D takes its form from a software hack that utilizes various techniques in order to convert regular 2D content to 3D. While not of the same quality as true 3D, it is certainly advanced enough to work.

These various techniques are far from simplistic – to run this project requires a daunting amount of work, including cloud computing scalability, making the feature a highly-impressive one indeed. On its blog, YouTube fleshes out some of the technology employed to make this a viable feature.  ‘Various techniques’ of the technology include using a combination of video characteristics – colour, motion, spatial layout – to create estimations of depth. These depth estimations are then improved upon by  machine learning processes – processes activated as YouTube receives more and more 3D videos.

So what sparked such a massive project? Behind all this work is the hope that 3D will become the next video trend in casual video viewing. While one can certainly see the benefits and enhanced experience of watching certain videos with this 3D option, we all know the many videos on YouTube where 3D might seem a tad unnecessary, if not absolutely absurd. However, who knows exactly what the future will bring? Perhaps soon enough, we won’t even give it a second though, and watch all videos, no matter the content, in 3D.

YouTube has recently unveiled a new change-up to its algorithm of suggested videos; namely, the video-sharing website has adjusted the algorithm to give precedence to “engaging content”. This decision is part of efforts to improve the YouTube experience: prior to this, the video algorithm was  a source of frustration to as it  presented misleading thumbnails that when clicked, did not deliver the anticipated content. The change-up to the algorithm is meant to address this. Let’s take a closer look at this decision of YouTube’s

Engaged Content:

The main question this change asks is: what exactly determines “engaged content”? A YouTube help article provides this clue: “the viewer’s total watch time is what matters for the algorithm.” In other words, videos that are longer, for example, 3 minutes in length, would be considered more ‘engaging content’ than shorter videos, say those that are 30 seconds long; YouTube’s comment indicates that longer videos would therefore receive greater emphasis within the new algorithm.

Potential Problems:

This move is certainly a step in the right direction, offering a much welcome alternative to the previous practice that provided related videos according to the number of views – problematic as a ‘view’ can be 10-15 seconds. However, the move is problematic if this total watch-time is the only determining factor for the algorithm. What should also be considered in the process is the percentage of time viewed.

When creating content, it is understood that the video should engage the audience for the majority of the video; even if users do not watch until the very end, the video would (read: before these new practices) be considered a success if the audience was engaged for about 90% of the time. A 40-second video that users watch 36-seconds of should be considered ‘engaged content’, no? However, if this algorithm is indeed based only on watch-time, a longer video where the majority of users only watch 50% – say 2 minutes of a three minute video – would be emphasized more than our 90% example, and thus have a higher likelihood of coming up in the users’ suggested videos.

Other Factors

However, even if YouTube’s new algorithm is based solely on overall time viewed, there are other social factors built into YouTube that will also affect the ‘engaged’ factor, and have the ability to elevate videos in the recommended video section. These social factors include video likes, video comments, and, of course, social-sharing across networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusion:

YouTube is clearly making efforts to improve its service, and this change to its suggested video algorithm is more progressive than problematic. As it stands, the only major flaw is that the percentage of time viewed is not considered alongside overall time viewed; should this be tweaked, then the algorithm would prove to be a definite improvement.

What before was only rumour has finally been confirmed: Google has officially declared that their new focus is blog networks; they did and will continue to conduct target mass de-indexing of blog networks, a move that causes significant drops and losses in site rankings.
Blogging networks affected by this targeting so far include SEO Link Monster, Authority Link Network (ALN), and, on Mar.19^th, BuildMyRank. Rumours are also circulating that SEONitro, BacklinkBuddy and SEOLinkvine Elite may also be under focus.

Let’s examine this controversial move by breaking it down into the two main questions bloggers around the world are asking themselves: how and why did Google do this?

Unfortunately, the nitty-gritty details on exactly how Google achieved this remain unclear; as they are the superpower on the internet, they definitely have know-how and resources to accomplish tasks that the rest of us internet-savvy individuals are still in the dark about. Considering this, here are the most probable methods that Google may have employed.

Warning Messages

Using Google Webmaster Tools, the search engine giant may have sent out warning messages, stating that they identified “artificial” or “unnatural” links on various sites. If users responded in the affirmative to this allegation, that they have indeed used artificial links, then Google de-indexed either all blogs within the link profile, or de-indexed the appropriate sites according to a manual review.

Manual Review of Networks

Google may have also performed manual review of blogs hosted on SEO hosting accounts without the accompanying warning emails. This suggestion operates on the assumption that the networks targeted accessed various IPs through these accounts.

Both of these suggestions, due to the wealth of knowledge and resources that Google has, are essentially well-educated guesses; more detailed facts on how efficient, targeted de-indexing occurred have yet to come to light. But what is neither so mysterious nor complex is the reason behind the action, the why of the equation. Google’s decision to de-index was motivated by the desire to fight and limit spam. Spam is, as we all are well aware, rampant on the targeted networks, as well as on those similar to them. What’s more, Google’s Terms of Service are very clear on their definition of spam and networks with artificial links violate these terms. Accordingly, Google’s WebSpam team has put their collective foot down – networks created for the intention of creating and sharing links that contain content of little value found themselves kicked to the curb: de-indexed and without ranking.

If Google is waging a more focused war on spam, it follows that they will no doubt pursue other tactics.  However, considering these latest developments, it does not seem unlikely that Google might soon target over-optimized sites. Whether this will happen, or rather, how soon it will happen, remains unknown: however, we suggest that you take a look at what tactics you are using, and how you might be affected.

If you are the type of person who is inspired by visuals more than text, enjoys interacting with others through images, learns best when provided with clear, visual instructions, or who is interested in new ways of advertising, then Pinterest is the site for you.

Pinterest has over 10 million monthly visitors, making it one of the fastest growing social media sites since social media took the world by storm. What makes it stand out from all the other social media sites?  Its use of visuals: visuals clarify communication and make the message that much more direct and to the point. A visually-driven form of communication is incredibly effective because receivers of this communication can, and do, insert themselves into a highly targeted communication process.

What’s more, Pinterest is the easiest social media site to browse: it provides an instant gratification not found on other sites. While Facebook and Twitter require you to friend others and compose posts and tweets in order to participate and use the sites to your advantage, Pinterest arguably requires nothing more than a healthy dose of curiosity. You can have more anonymity, should you so choose, and can peek around and select what best defines you.

The Pleasures of Pinterest:

What exactly is it about Pinterest that makes it at once so successful, and so delightful? For starters, Pinterest is perhaps the most user-friendly and easiest to browse of all the social media sites. After a few pokes around on your first visit, the site provides you with recommendations of people you may find interesting. In browsing the collections of these individuals, you are sure to find interesting ideas, inspiring thoughts, and/or useful products. Pinterest allows you to have control while simultaneously providing some helpful guidance and direction to your wanders. Through Pinterest’s use of visuals, the user is able to find, quickly and easily, processes and products that may have been long-sought for or even find new processes and products that may have been previously unknown to them. Arguably, what makes Pinterest so popular is that its image-driven focus provides possibilities and realities: suddenly, ideas not pursued before, perhaps due to lack of time, knowledge or clear instruction, can easily be accomplished.

Pinterest is also a great way to feed your creativity, brainstorm, get inspired, and discover new interests: if you’re unsure of what you want to pin or share, you can explore other people’s interests and find within them what best reflects you. Pinterest allows you the freedom for you to express your individuality and uniqueness, to select what you really like.

The Power of Pinterest:

Pinterest’s users join for a variety of reasons: curiosity, a search for identity, for organization, for finding out the newest trends, or seeking out new delights. No matter the reason, however, what draws all users is the use of visuals, which create a clear, precise, and therefore appealing, form of communication.

Consequently, Pinterest is having more success than Google+ for driving traffic to retailers’ websites. It singlehandedly provides:

-          A platform to link brands with consumer personalities

-          Redistribution of brand power in a way that makes advertising and brand image obsolete

-          A testing ground for newly-developed products and services.

Pinterest is thus a unique platform for both the community-oriented and the business-minded user; it makes social media interaction at once more enjoyable and effective.

Edit

As Facebook Timeline creeps up on us, it’s helpful to consider how your social media profile may be newly perceived: by taking a look at how renovations to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace profiles were visually received, you may have new information to work into your social media strategy.

At the request of Mashable, EyeTrackShop, the research startup, compared visual statistics for the profiles of these sites before and after major site redesigns; 30 people were observed looking at profiles, with their eye movements tracked.

The conclusion? In all cases, the new designs made more of an impact than their respective older profile designs.  In comparison to old profile design, Facebook’s Timeline wins out for attracting notice; Twitter’s recent design change brings attention to profile; and the new MySpace leaps ahead of the old version in featuring music.

Let’s take a closer look:

Facebook:

• Timeline cover photos claim first attention, over older profile design.

• Facebook Timeline profile photos, however, still claim more observation time than the Timeline cover photo, so don’t forget to put the same thoughtful effort into choosing your profile picture as you do your cover photo

• Ads in Timeline draw more attention: 63% of participants took notice of ads in Timeline format, compared to the 43% which noticed the older format of “sponsored stories”. This is good news for business and services; your visibility has increased dramaticall

• No matter the format, ads claimed the same amount of observation time from participants.

• Timeline draws more attention to personal information – including employer and location: In the old format, this profile section only got about 1.6 seconds of view time. In the new format, however, an average 2.2 seconds was spent on the section. This may be aided by the fact that the new format features photos in the section- again, be sure to display appealing and relevant photos.

Twitter:

• The new Twitter design gives more attention to profile over tweets: This is a reversal from the older version where tweets were more noticeable than profile. This new change allows YOU – and how you choose to brand yourself – to stand out a bit more.

MySpace:

• In the new MySpace, soundtracks are more noticeable – much more noticeable: In the old version, 53% noticed the selection of songs, compared to an overwhelming 97% which noticed the selection of songs in the new format

• Photos win out over text, no matter the format:  New or old, it didn’t matter – top photos claimed attention first and for a longer time than any text. In light of this, consider how the pictures you choose should best reflect you and your message.

Related posts:

• Facebook Privacy : How to Turn Off Instant Personalization and Protect Yourself
• 8 Best Practices for Writing Facebook Ads
• How to benefit for using twitter?

If you are loosing subscribers on YouTube YT Then do not panic.
YouTube is cleaning from your YT subscribers list all inactive accounts and all account that have been closed.
Your Present Subscriber list My shrink by 30% but that is all good news, because you are left with a list that contains Active members who will read, view ,like and comment on your videos.

Related Posts:

• Social Media Strategies: what Social Network Should I use
• VIDEO: Social Media Strategies

Video sharing site YouTube is an important component of a successful social media strategy, and a recent makeover to the Browse Page, Video Editor, and Video Manager, have made it even more user-friendly, even if they are only surface changes. Below, we list those changes now in place, and those we’d still like to see.

Updates to Browse Page:

The new design aims to make easier to find and subscribe to channels, and as such has put measures in place to enhance the efficiency and relevancy of your browsing results:

• Channels you subscribe to are now added to your personalized home page
• You can now browse content by category

While these changes are not particularly dramatic, they do create a more flexible browsing experience, and allow the user that much more control for tailoring their searches and finding exactly what they want more quickly.

Updates to Video Editor:

Now that browsing is easier for users, be sure to take advantage of the new features with Video Editor to make your videos that much more appealing. Sporting a modern, polished look, the new Video Editor now provides features that are both snazzy and necessary:

• Easier clip-trimming
• A new timeline

Again, these features are more tweaks than striking changes; however, these tweaks should make the video editing process smoother, which means you can provide better looking content at a much faster rate than before.

Updates to Video Manager:

With updates to Video Editor comes updates to Video Manager, whose modern look boasts new features and revival of old favourites. New features include:

• Search history
• Claimed videos

Old favourites have been revisited to become better than ever, and include:

• Display of scheduled uploads
• Likes and Dislikes – now as video statistics
• Video sorting by popularity

The changes to Video Manager in particular reflect YouTube’s concentrated effort to improve the overall quality of the site; users don’t just want new features, they often want back reliable former features that were lost in earlier site transformation.

But what about…?

These tweaks to YouTube have definitely enhanced the site and ensured that it will remain a top choice for social media. However, these changes are surface changes only; YouTube still offers only limited access to data controls. This prevents you from monitoring an important part of your social media strategies, namely, trends. The user should be able to spot and track trends, but time options for browsing restrict this. At present, there are four time windows: ‘Today’, ‘This Week’, ‘This Month’ and ‘All Time’. Though user searches often include most-viewed or most-subscribed, these are the only browse options in the time windows. What if a user would like to access the most-viewed videos for any given month of any given year? To compare October 2010’s most-viewed with that of results for a year later, October 2011? Or what if the user would like to access the data for videos viewed for a longer period of time than for four weeks?

The browse options now provided block helpful interpretations of data; random browses do not allow trends to stand out as they would were more control options offered. To put it in perspective, this desired custom filter is provided by other social media services, such as Analytics. This makes it even more frustrating for users; while their new look and features are well-received and do improve the user experience, YouTube could have easily gone one step further and improved their site more substantially.

Related Topis:

• Social Media Strategies: what Social Network Should I use
• Financial Social Media: How Financial Advisors can Reap the Benefits of Social Media
• Why Social Media Strategies

what Social Network Should I use

what social media network should I use: Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn?
The reality is that there are four major networks — there is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube. Which one should you decide to use? If you are the type of person who likes to make friends, and wants to communicate fast online, within 140 characters — that means that you don’t like to write too much — then Twitter is the social network that you should use. watch the video to get the answer.

In this video, Fadi Semaan of Financial Social Media by Solution416 discusses the need for your business to have strong social media strategies. As he outlines, being active on social media creates wide business opportunities: you can dominate the search engine result page, achieve better ranking for your website, and establish yourself as the expert in your field. Social media is the space where you connect, converse, convince and convert people into loyal clients – and Financial Social Media by Solution416 can show you how.

As a professional, you know your social media— Facebook, Twitter – you’ve got it covered. But aren’t you forgetting LinkedIn? Or are you like many other businesses and professionals: unsure how to use LinkedIn, unable to build your presence to its full potential – and perhaps subscribing to common misconceptions surrounding the site? To truly be social-media savvy, each platform requires personal exploration to determine how best to apply it to your own situation.  Fallacies amass around any and every type of social media out there. Let’s take a hard look at some similar misconceptions about LinkedIn: with a little reconsideration, you might be surprised at what LinkedIn can do for you.

1. LinkedIn:  Only a Job-Seeking Site

A widespread belief about LinkedIn is that it belongs to the “job-seeking” category of websites.  This is not entirely untrue, as there are jobseekers out there and business to be found.  To see it only as job-searching site, however, is to misread the concept behind the site– LinkedIn began as, and remains, a professional networking site.   By virtue of this networking, this communication, business relationships and offers are forged. If you see LinkedIn as a site only for job-seekers, you’ll miss out on valuable conversation, and consequently, business.

2. It’s Intimidating!

In comparison to Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn’s environment can seem “stuffy” and less dynamic: it does not have a Facebook-like chat function, nor will other users respond to you with the quickness of Twitter. Even more off-putting to some is the large professional demographic on LinkedIn; initiating or even participating in a discussion can, understandably, be daunting.  But LinkedIn, though its interface might be less casual than Facebook or Twitter, attracts many of the same users – if you can engage them on Facebook or Twitter, you can surely engage them here.

3.  Email Overload!

Like all other social media sites, LinkedIn sends a barrage of emails when you first sign up. But YOU can take control! By going to Settings – Email notifications – Receiving Notifications, you can easily determine what email s and notifications you receive. As an example, check out these default settings below.

A helpful tip about Groups:  if daily digests seem irrelevant to you, move on to weekly digests or disable the function altogether. Whether you receive digests or not, the Groups will always be there, full of discussions for you to partake in!

4. So I Signed Up and…Nothing Happened

Fundamentally, LinkedIn just is a huge database of profiles with some additional functionality and applications; the real bonus is that key decision makers from any industry or company are on it. Just as at networking events you can’t be a wallflower, the same is true of LinkedIn – you must go out and engage with other professionals.  Not sure where to begin? Try joining relevant Groups and participating in discussions that interest you or that you would like to contribute to. Having trouble finding appropriate groups? For some tips, check out my post: Which LinkedIn Groups Are Right For You?

5. Social Media Marketing: Facebook Only

For the B2B company in particular, LinkedIn can be a much more useful tool for social media marketing than Facebook or even Twitter. Moreover, even if you are a B2C company, your company has B2B components (distributors, vendors, etc.) that would be best marketed on LinkedIn.