YouTube

YouTube is making the logical push into mainstream citizen journalism with YouTube Direct, a tool that enables media organizations to request, review and rebroadcast YouTube clips directly from users.

It works like this: A news outlet embeds a customized version of YouTube's upload platform onto its own site, and can request from users any footage it likes, giving them "broader exposure and editorial validation for the videos they create," according to Google's release. The Chronicle, ABC News, the Huffington Post, NPR, Politico and the Washington Post have already signed on.

What this really does is give news outlets access to free reportage from whatever arena they specify. It made news in May when an NBC Bay Area reporter utilized a cell phone to file video from a Prop 8 protest march, freeing him from the tether of the TV truck. This version puts cell phones (and video cameras) into everyone's hands, not just the reporter on the scene.

The New York Times reports that NPR will solicit YouTube videos for WonderScope, "a new, occasional scientific series on NPR.org." The measurement of time will be the series' first topic.

The content itself will also be accessible via YouTube proper, a double-win for the site in terms of traffic.

The function can also be used by non-news organizations (ie: businesses) to collect and collate users' video submissions.

Then again, writes Daily Finance, "the huge majority of user video posted on YouTube is junk, and it's questionable that news organizations would take the time to sift through citizen journalists' clips, even if one of them did have an interesting perspective on an event that the news agency couldn't cover itself. Most 'citizen journalists' aren't journalists at all. They're camcorder hobbyists out for a good time who couldn't create a video with high enough quality for a TV station to use if their lives depended on it."

In one of its "most comprehensive partnerships for full-length programming to date," YouTube has signed a deal to bring Univision content to the video site.

The Spanish-language network will make both short- and long-form shows from its Univision, TeleFutura and Galavision channels available on YouTube. The two will share advertising revenue. The network will also use YouTube's Content ID system to identify Univision content uploaded by YouTube users and sell ads against it as well.

YouTube says their Spanish-language audience grew 80% in the past year, to about 6.5 million users a month. Reuters notes that the deal is the latest in a series that YouTube has made with companies like Disney and Time Warner as it tries to start folding more professional content into its offerings.

The latest outfit to emerge with a YouTube channel: Will Farrel's comedy site Funny or Die, which, of course, already had its own channel, on its own Web site.

Transitioning to YouTube, of course, gives Funny or Die access to a much broader audience; as reported by Peter Kafka on Media Memo, it's keeping a measure of homepage exclusivity by premiering videos there first, before uploading them to YouTube.

What it also does is spur Ferrell to make an explanatory video (with some help, at the end, from Mark Wahlberg).

Did you catch the U2 concert on YouTube last night? The one that was streamed live from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena?

There was admittedly something awe-inspiring knowing that people all over the world were watching it at the same time. A Twitter widget embedded on the U2 YouTube page streamed tweets tagged with #U2webcast: Peru, Philippines, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico....

The show was only supposed to be broadcast to 16 countries, including the US, but we saw countries named in the tweets that weren't in the official list.

In any case, if this was any indicator, maybe live concerts—pay-per-view-style—will prove to be a revenue generator for the business-model-struggling YouTube.

And in the meantime, if you missed it, YouTube promises the concert will be available for viewing on the official U2 channel.

YouTube users can already publicize their videos within the site through the Promoted Videos system that allows them to have a link to their material pop up in an ad unit when YouTube users search for certain keywords.

Now YouTube is extending that program to AdSense, so that YouTube users can promote their videos on external Web sites as well. As with other AdSense users, YouTube video owners can bid on keywords, and they only pay when a viewer clicks on the link.

For video owners—especially those trying to gain publicity, like musicians or businesses trying to raise awareness about their products and services—the program makes sense. It's one more way to reach pre-qualified eyeballs. It helps YouTube solidify its space by increasing the value it brings to users.

Google is famous for the advertising strategies it uses to monetize content on its sites. But that could be changing with this latest deal between Google property YouTube and Warner Music Group.

Warner pulled its content, including music from artists like Madonna, off YouTube in December because it wasn't happy with the ad revenues. At the time, Warner said, "We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide," according to Billboard.

Now Warner is returning to YouTube in a deal that allows it to sell its own ads on the site—and to keep most of the revenue.

Which seems to move YouTube more toward a platform than a publisher. But apparently it's a platform the big boys of entertainment like. The deal allows YouTube users to "gain access to an enhanced user experience on YouTube with a feature-rich, high-quality premium player and enhanced channels," Warner Music said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Remember how whenever something outrageous happened on TV (Sacha Baron Cohen dropping into Eminem's lap, for example?), you could count on being able to track it down on YouTube the next day?

Not anymore.

You've probably heard about the whole Kanye West grabbing Taylor Swift's microphone thing at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. But try finding a clip of it on YouTube. No such luck. Viacom has used YouTube's ContentID system to get all such clips pulled from the site, presumably to ensure that eyeballs looking for the incident ended up on MTV's site (where, by the way, you'll have to watch a very un-VMA-seeming Cotton "The Fabric of Our Lives" ad before getting to the clip).

The latest estimates are out about YouTube's costs for hosting the incredible amount of video that's uploaded each day to the site -- and according to Credit Suisse, the company is paying too much to turn a profit in 2009.

Credit Suisse analysts pegged the San Bruno-based company's bandwidth costs at $300 million for 2009, a revision downward from the analysts' April report, which had the number at $360 million. Credit Suisse pegged YouTube's annual revenues at $240 million, a 20-percent increase over last year.

Still, according to MultiChannel News, YouTube -- in concert with other sites from parent company Google -- accounted for 42 percent of all videos viewed online in July.

Can't make this weekend's Outside Lands Festival in Golden Gate Park? YouTube, in its latest effort at live streaming, has you covered.

The San Bruno-based Web site will be broadcasting a number of bands from a docket that includes the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Black Eyed Peas, Thievery Corporation and Jason Mraz. Not every band will be broadcast and the video lineup is not yet set, pending rights agreements with individual bands.

YouTube has begun monetizing the ever elusive viral videos on its site -- those clips that get passed back and forth across the Internet more than any others -- by tracking which videos are growing the fastest and how much attention they're getting. At that point, after confirming that the uploader owns all the rights to the video and approves ad insertion, YouTube will treat it as it does videos from its partners. That's to say, it will post ads and offer a revenue split.

For an example, CNBC directs us to "The Battle at Kruger" video (showing a remarkable wildlife confrontation over a baby water buffalo), which has been viewed more than 45 million times since being posted two years ago. YouTube has paired it with ads fro Africa Safari Experts and an online game.

Conversely, the "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" that's recently taken the Web by storm does not qualify, as the Chris Brown song playing in the background is owned by Sony Music (which has itself embedded an ad in the video).