Videocasts

=YouTube=

What Is YouTube?
It is a popular free [|video sharing] Web site which lets users upload, view, and share [|video clips]. It was founded in February 2005 by three employees of PayPal (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim). [|YouTube] uses [|Adobe Flash] technology to display video. Site content includes [|movie] and [|TV] clips and [|music videos], as well as amateur content like [|videoblogging]. In 2006 the small (under 70 employees) company's innovative technology, was named //TIME// magazine's "Invention of the Year". In October 2006, everyone, especially Wall Street and the IRS, learned YouTube's name when Google bought it for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock. Over 100 million clips are viewed daily. The 12 to 17-year-old group is the largest groupd of viewers.

The use of FlashPlayer7 is one key component to YouTube's success. Most computers already have Flash Player installed so users can just click and play the video without installing any special software.
 * What makes it special?**

View the movie that NISC has created about this year's Internet topic. Student-created movies TO BE ADDED
 * Let's Go To The Movies**

> >
 * Uses**
 * Entertainment
 * Education
 * Business ad, training, information - see Wall Street Journal article at bottom of page
 * VideoJournalism
 * Promotion of bands, singers, other video programs - Example: NBC originally was suing YouTube for copyright violation for showing some NBC footage. They have since partnered with YouTube to show video clips of NBC programs.

You can submit your video (no longer than 10 minutes) to YouTube in any of several formats (.mpeg, .mov, .avi for example) and YouTube converts them to Flash Video format. To submit, go to YouTube.com, click on the video tab, and click on Upload Videos. Fill out the form to create an account and then upload your video clip. [|Want more details?]
 * Put Your Video on YouTube**

YouTube doesn't make it easy for you to download and save videos because of copyright concerns But, of course, there are sites that offer applications to help you download and save like [|SaveTube.com], [|VideoDL.org], [|Keepvid.com]
 * Saving YouTube Videos**

NISC wiki [|YouTube links]
 * Links**

Wall Street Journal Aritcle About Businesses Adopting YouTube video technology January 2, 2007 Firms Take a Cue From YouTube Companies Use Online Video to Reduce Costs, Communicate With StaffBy **BOBBY WHITE** January 2, 2007;PageB3 Last year, [|Monsanto] Co. wanted to raise the visibility of some projects and go beyond statistics to make a case for bioengineered crops. So the St. Louis agricultural-products company took a page from YouTube's playbook. Tom McDermott, a Monsanto public-relations manager, sent camera crews to the Philippines, Australia and other countries to film testimonials from farmers using Monsanto products to grow genetically modified corn, soybeans and other crops, which are sometimes targeted for protests by environmentalists. IN SUMMARY •**What's New:** Companies are finding online video draws more attention to messages on corporate Web sites.

•**The Background:** YouTube and other consumer sites spurred use of video for more than entertainment.

•**Bottom line:** More firms specialize in video services for corporate sites. He then posted the clips on a Monsanto Web site, hoping to attract attention from customers, employees and policy makers. Today, the site attracts more than 15,000 visitors a month, and Monsanto is aiming to boost viewership to 200,000 a month by late next year. "When the people involved relate how their life has changed and you actually see it, it's far more compelling," Mr. McDermott says. The company, which hadn't used online video before, joined a growing crowd of large businesses taking advantage of the fast-evolving medium to tackle communications chores. While video has been commonplace on the Internet since the late 1990s, companies such as YouTube -- just bought by [|Google] Inc. for $1.65 billion -- have developed consumer services that make it much easier to post and view movie and video clips. Non-media companies, until recently, had been relative laggards in the video field. But that's changing rapidly, driven less by the desire to entertain than to deliver corporate messages more effectively via their Web sites. Computer maker [|Sun Microsystems] Inc. in 2003 revamped the press area of its site to resemble that of a broadcast news outlet, with stories, interviews and live international feeds. After posting online video to that portion of the Web site, traffic jumped to nearly 42,000 viewers in December 2003 from 12,000 visitors in August, says Diana Reihardt, who supervises news on Sun's site. [|Wal-Mart Stores] Inc.'s corporate Web site, for example, now has video integrated on most key pages, including shareholder presentations and messages from executives. [|General Motors] Corp. uses online video to communicate with dealership salespeople, while [|Coldwell Banker] Corp. delivers video messages to real-estate agents through its Web site. "Corporations are just beginning to see [online video] as a real option to help cut costs and communicate," says Colin Dixon, a research analyst for Diffusion Group, a research firm. "Just from last year to this year, there's been a significant jump." The rise partly reflects the work of small companies such as the FeedRoom Inc., Reflect Systems Inc. and [|VitalStream]Inc., which offer services and technology that make it easier for companies to hop on the online-video bandwagon. Some big guns are also jumping in. In September, computer-networking giant [|Cisco Systems] Inc. launched a corporate video tool, and cable company [|Comcast] Corp. also recently purchased the Platform Inc., another corporate-video company. ABI Research, a market-research firm, predicts the market for broadband video-service providers will swell to $1.87 billion in 2011 from $237 million in 2006. Video places special demands on users. Moving images create large data files, so an array of formats have been developed to compress, store and send video around the Internet. Specialized software is needed to convert video into a desired format and to let computer users play the images. YouTube, for example, converts videos into a format that helps users play clips in their Web browsers, rather than using specialized media-player software. To minimize delays when users click on a clip, some companies rely on content-delivery networks -- including [|Akamai Technologies] Inc. and Limelight Inc. -- that store copies of video files at data centers around the Internet. Other companies specialize in controlling user access to video and managing live broadcasts, notes Mike Wolf, an analyst with ABI Research. Monsanto initially attempted to build its own system to deliver videos, but abandoned the process in view of the complexities. It turned to FeedRoom, a New York-based company founded in 1999 by former TV production manager Bart Feder and Jonathan Klein, who is now president of U.S. operations for cable channel CNN. FeedRoom crafted a user interface for the video, hosted the content and worked with content-delivery networks. The company also provided Monsanto with data on how many people watched certain videos and for how long. Another FeedRoom client was Cisco, which in 2001 wanted to set up an in-house Internet video system for chores such as training its world-wide sales force, and distributing new-product information internally. FeedRoom produced and edited much of the content on Cisco's site, and provided software for a user interface. Cisco still uses FeedRoom for high-resolution video recording, though it stopped relying on FeedRoom for managing its video services in June 2005. Later Cisco decided to sell its own video software -- which handles video compression and a Web user interface -- to users with a price tag starting at $133,000. Thomas Wyatt, who oversees Cisco's video division, wouldn't say how many customers the company has signed up for its software package. But those that have expressed interest, he said, include the military, which is looking for ways to deliver information to troops in remote locations, government agencies interested in distributing cable-television programming to the desktop and educational institutions focused on offering classes on demand. "It's really wide open," Mr. Wyatt says of the market. "A number of organizations see video as a core tool that can get their message out." **Write to** Bobby White at
 * [[image:http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/MK-AH775_CORPVI_20070101184937.jpg width="400" height="210"]] ||
 * A page with **integrated video** on the Monsanto Web site delivers messages featuring individual farmers promoting genetically modified crops. ||