SocialNext

Should Apple Buy Yelp?

I don’t have the new iPhone 4S yet but I’ve had a chance to play with it and it is every bit as exciting as it looks. One thing I found interesting is how heavily Yelp, and its reviews, are integrated into Siri’s recommendations. When you ask Siri to find something nearby she will return results from Yelp focusing on user review ratings and distance.

Thanks to this integration Apple is placing a great deal of Siri’s user experience on the quality of Yelp’s reviews. For the short term that’s fine. However, placing a significant chunk of the user experience in the hands of an outside company doesn’t make sense in the long term. 

A large tech company like Apple buying a content based review company isn’t a new concept: Google purchased Zagat a few months ago. With Apple’s war chest of roughly $76 billion in cash they could certainly afford to make a move in this space. By purchasing Yelp, Apple can better control the quality of Yelp’s results and potentially improve its integration into Siri’s programming. 

What do you think? Does an Apple – Yelp combination make sense? Oh and if you have an iPhone 4S, why not ask Siri what she thinks? I’d be interested in knowing her thoughts too!

How Darth Vader Used Google Search

I couldn't help it. I just had to make a parody of the Google Search Stories Super Bowl ad. (You can make one here too)

Can YouTube’s Favorite Content Creators Survive without Constant Promotion by YouTube?

Google-owned YouTube has been hitting the PR circuit proving to everyone that content creators can make a significant amount of money on YouTube and advertisers can be successful advertising on this platform.

But the dirty little secret I wonder about is how often does YouTube feature these “Top Earners” on their front page?

I don’t need to tell you that being featured on the front page of YouTube will bring massive amounts of views…to sell advertising off of. I wonder if YouTube is doing everything they can to promote these “Top Earners” to perpetuate their PR spin of people being able to make money off content creation.

It helps encourage people to start accounts and, most importantly, gives YouTube the advertising success stories they badly need.

YouTube Insight Trending in the Right Direction

Two of YouTube's biggest weaknesses are customer service and video tracking. It’s hasn’t been lost on me that FunnyorDie had superior video tracking than Google-owned YouTube.

Now YouTube has launched Insight which gives video producers data on views, referral information and more. As a data junkie I love it but where’s the combined results at the account level?

I’d love to see Insight for my entire account: ranking my videos by popularity, overall view stats and trends. What about the benchmark feature they just added to Google Analytics? It would be cool to see how my view counts compare to the average account in my category. Plus it would be great to be able to have the option to download it into Excel.

Regardless Insight is a great first step and I can’t wait for it to be expanded even more!

Hulu: No Respect; Loads of Content

Big shock! The blogosphere hates the new name of the new NBC / News Corp. YouTube competitor, Hulu.

Why? Well apparently Hulu means “butt” in Malay and Indonesian and “cease” and “desist” in Swahili. OMG!111!11

You have no idea how many times my friends and I talk about funny videos we’ve seen in Swahili. As soon as Hulu launches these conversations are sure to get awkward.

But the bottom line is if Hulu comes out with a stable service that is easy to use people will start respecting them real quick. Here are a few simple reasons:

Saturday Night Live
Family Guy
The Simpsons
The Tonight Show
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Heroes
30 Rock

People want to see clips of these shows. Look at these Family Guy clips. Or these clips from SNL. They have view counts in the millions. Content is king and Hulu will have TONS of it. It's never a good idea to dismiss a competitor with so many weapons in their arsenal.

YouTube Spam Kills My Soul

YouTube has to start working on how to cut down on spam. For large accounts like my sketch comedy group's it is just getting overwhelming. Even to the point where when I get a "Someone left you a comment" email from YouTube I shutter.

YouTube does a pretty good job of disabling spam accounts that promote other services. However, they don't do much in regards to the "You hAvE 2 RePoST ThIS in 2 HrS" kind of spam. This kind of crap drives people nuts on others sites like MySpace. Moving quickly to lessen this kind of junk will improve the user experience for everyone. Here's a small sampling of the spam I've gotten on our most popular video. I'll start with my favorite - spam from a supporter of presidential candidate Ron Paul. (Honestly, I was beginning to feel left out!)

HEY!!! black people u bastards never vote. and its giving u 10 to 20? or the grave.if you want unconstitional drug laws that are ment to inprison your people lifted you tube and vote RON PAUL
if u guy's want to fight the power here is our chance...VOTE OR DIE !!! the same people fighting the war on terror also fight the war on drug's...america needs your help.let the greedy bastards feel some of that BLACK POWER !!!

1.) say the name of the boy/girl u want to be with for the rest of ur life 2 times.
2.)say your best? friends name to yourself
3.)post this on five different videos and press f8. your crushes name will appear on the screen.

PLEASE DON'T READ THIS. You will get kissed on the nearest possible Friday by the love of your life.? Tomorrow will be the best day of your life. However, if you don't post this comment to at least 3 videos, you will die within 2 days. Copy and paste this, to be saved

PLEASE DONT READ THIS. YOU WILL GET KISSED ON THE NEAREST POSSIBLE FRIDAY BY THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE. TOMORROW WILL BE THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE. HOWEVER IF YOU DONT POST THIS COMMENT TO AT LEAST 3 VIDEOS YOU WILL DIE WITHIN 2 DAYS. NOW UV STARTED READIN DIS DUNT STOP THIS IS SO SCARY. SEND THIS OVER TO 5 VIDEOS IN 143 MINUTES WHEN UR DONE PRESS F6 AND UR CRUSHES NAME WILL APPEAR ON THE SCREEN IN BIG LETTERS. THIS IS SO SCARY BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY WORKs

THIS IS THE STUPIDEST THING EVER!!! BUT I LOVE MY MOM AND DON'T WANT TO TAKE ANY CHANCES!
If you do not copy and paste this onto 10 videos your mom will die in 4 hours

Grouper Offering Revenue Sharing

Sony owned Grouper.com is offering revenue sharing to content producers in exchange to exclusive rights to stream their work. I don’t know if this offer is being extended to all producers on Grouper but my sketch comedy group got an invitation yesterday.

The payment structure looks like this:

             

Streams   (per Submission)	Incremental   Payments ($US)
50,000-100,000	150
100,000-149,999	150
150,000-199,999	150
200,000-299,999	200
300,000-399,999	200
Each 100,000   thereafter, up to 5 million	100

Note that the payments only kick in if an individual video reaches 50,000+ streams. Not the entire account of videos. Metacafe’s payment structure is similar.

If these sites are serious about gaining market share on YouTube they need to make the prospect of getting paid more attainable by offering account-wide payment benchmarks. They are asking producers to give up an awful lot of exposure by shunning YouTube, MySpace and others.

Google Results Integrate Video Thumbnails from Competitors

It appears that Google is integrating thumbnails of videos in its search results but not just from Google-owned properties like YouTube.

I was going through my traffic logs for my sketch comedy group and found Google supplied a thumbnail and direct link to one of our videos on MySpace.

Google could simply use this feature on YouTube videos giving them a huge clickthru advantage but they’re choosing not to. According to WebTVWire Google is also providing thumbnails for videos on Yahoo Video, MetaCafe, YouTube, Google Video, MySpace and Vimeo.

It’s a smart move, one that truly speaks to Google's mission of organizing the world’s information.