New Google+ Study Reveals Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement Fast Company summarizes a new study from RJMetrics that looks at public posts, +1s, replies and reshares on Google+. It concludes "the average post on Google+ has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-share." Google replies that public posts are a poor metric of user activity; Fast Company replies that "Google has refused to provide clear figures and metrics for its social network's active user base" and links to Danny Sullivan's "brilliant rundown of Google's lack of transparency on the subject" - If Google’s Really Proud Of Google+, It Should Share Some Real User Figures.
There was also Wil Wheaton's recent angry "Oh, go fuck yourself, Google" rant in response to a recent experiment replacing YouTube's "like" button with a Google+ button for a small number of users, thus requiring them to sign up for Google+ before they can 'like' a YouTube video. Is Google Forcing Google+ Down People’s Throats?
posted by mediareport on May 21, 2012 - 200 comments

Have online comment sections become 'a joke'?
posted by Artw on Mar 12, 2012 - 185 comments

Hannah Hart (previously) sings a love song, "Oh, Internet". (via)
posted by The Whelk on Feb 12, 2012 - 22 comments

On November 22, 2011, TEDxBrussels held an all day event whose theme was: "A Day in the Deep Future." Speakers were asked to try and contemplate what life will be like for mankind in 50 years. Overview. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Dec 28, 2011 - 29 comments

Videogum presents a retrospective of the best viral videos of 2011. See also: montages for 2010, 2009, and 2008
posted by rollick on Dec 21, 2011 - 48 comments

The Central Intelligence Agency launched several enhancements to CIA.gov, attempting to make a more public-friendly internet presence. Their outreach efforts also include Flickr and YouTube accounts, where you can watch CIA Director Panetta deliver his keynote address at a foreign language summit, if you have an hour to kill. Or marvel at a silver dollar that is actually a hollow container! They even have a few pictures of a dragonfly and a fake fish. Wait, what? That dragonfly is a tiny gas-powered machine that actually flew in the 1970s, and that fake fish is a functional Unmanned Underwater Vehicle. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Feb 9, 2011 - 37 comments

Life In A Day: Youtube's first Crowd-sourced feature film [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Jul 23, 2010 - 12 comments

185 singers, 12 countries, one conductor -- all online. Grammy-nominated composer and conductor Eric Whitacre put out a call for singers on his blog in July of 2009. He then posted the conductor track for his piece "Lux Aurumque" and gave instructions, including how to audition for the brief soprano solo. Recordings trickled in on YouTube over the next few months until the January 1 deadline; the results were posted on March 22. [more inside]
posted by Madamina on Mar 23, 2010 - 26 comments

The Pleasure of Flinching. "In the viral video realm, amateur Iraq war footage ranks just behind pornography, celebrities’ drunken exploits, and shark attacks. Do these videos represent what Sontag called our 'right to view,' or are they a porn medium made from leftovers of a world filming its self-destruction?" [Via]
posted by homunculus on Feb 27, 2010 - 40 comments

This is what the Internet is for (SLYT) A well executed virtual jam session. People from all over the world connecting in creativity. Kutiman, eat your heart out.
posted by monospace on Jan 29, 2010 - 34 comments

Corey Arcangel is perhaps the internet's most infamous hack, masher-upper, digi/net artist. His work stands for a growing culture of artists who run wildly through animated GIF landscapes populated with corrupted data-compressed bunny rabbits and tinny, MIDI renditions of Savage Garden ballads. As the Lisson Gallery, London, opens its archives to Arcangel's curatorial eye, could digi/net art be set to infect the real, fleshy world, like a rampant Conficker Worm? Has YouTube become the truest reflection of our anthropological selves? Are we destined to roam the int3erw£bs like the mythic beasts of yore, hoping, in time, that digi art can free us from the confines of this fleshy void? [...previously]
posted by 0bvious on Dec 8, 2009 - 20 comments

From the publisher's website: "The YouTube Reader is the first full-length book to explore YouTube as an industry, an archive and a cultural form." Features some seasoned commentators, among them film analyst Thomas Elsaesser, and an online exhibition. Looks interesting.
posted by Holly on Aug 26, 2009 - 11 comments

xkcd had an idea to counter YouTube comment stupidity, and apparently someone at YouTube was paying attention. Not everyone is convinced however. (And there's always Comment Snob).
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 9, 2008 - 31 comments

As a result of the Dutch film Fitna, Indonesia has blocked several websites including MySpace and YouTube. This follows hot on the heels of a new bill which could see people face six years of jail time or a 1 billion rupiah fine for being caught sending out porn, “false news” or racial or religious slurs on the Web. The Indonesian government will start censoring the Internet next month with specialised software. Very disappointing for a country which had a reasonably free press.
posted by BobsterLobster on Apr 8, 2008 - 43 comments

Live from her minivan, it’s The Jeannie Tate Show! Everyone’s favorite soccer mom runs errands around town with the help of special guests like Bill Hader (SNL), Rashida Jones (The Office), Lonny Ross (30 Rock), and Rob Riggle (The Daily Show). Of course, she’s willing to leave the van behind to visit her heroines, Hillary and Oprah. [more inside]
posted by the littlest brussels sprout on Mar 24, 2008 - 14 comments

I was going to share the many amazing videos that StSanders has uploaded to youtube featuring guitar gods like Van Halen and Santana shredding, since they have inexplicably only received scant mention on mefi so far. But StSanders' account has been suspended all all videos have been removed! [more inside]
posted by billtron on Feb 5, 2008 - 38 comments

Terry's Chop Shop. "Ever since I was a boy I have had a burning desire to chop."
posted by Soup on Dec 5, 2007 - 14 comments

Wael Abbas is an Egyptian blogger and anti-torture activist who recently won a journalism award for his documenting police brutality in Egypt, which led to the conviction of two police officers. In Egypt, blogging can get you arrested, and Abbas has taken enormous risks. But now YouTube has removed his videos and suspended his account after receiving complaints (possibly from the Egyptian government) about their graphic content, and Yahoo has disabled his email account. Evidently YouTube is not the ally human rights advocates had hoped it would be.
posted by homunculus on Nov 29, 2007 - 16 comments

In the same spirit as the Open Net Initiative and Committee to Protect Bloggers that both track global internet filtering, Sami ben Gharbia's Access Denied Map tries to track the blocking of sites like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and others by governments, as well as efforts by activists to keep them accessible or to challenge their blockage.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Nov 19, 2007 - 5 comments

Chime.TV -- it's a new video hyper-aggregator (like VodPod) by MeFite chime that I've been using since it was in development. It's Wii-compatible and tested and can turn your fave sites into channels (including but not limited to MeFi,Boing Boing, Digg, or Fark). You can automatically watch any YouTube channel as well, or just watch your favorites. I'm personally going to suggest you try out the Net100 channel, which is an aggregate of everbody's top 10 videos. Flash player required
posted by taumeson on Jun 12, 2007 - 26 comments

"Guantanamo Unclassified." Adel Hamad, a 48-year-old Sudanese elementary-school teacher, has been held at Guantanamo for five years without charge or evidence of a crime. His lawyers have been unable to convince a federal court to review his case, so they started started Project Hamad and posted a short movie about him online. This is an example of how human rights activists can use YouTube to bring their cases to the public.
posted by homunculus on Mar 29, 2007 - 40 comments

A beginner's guide to faking your death on the internet - a post without an omg is a post incomplete. (YouTube alert - via Borklog)
posted by madamjujujive on Feb 19, 2007 - 44 comments

"Police in Mexico are investigating claims that rival drug gangs are using the internet as a new battle ground."
posted by jason's_planet on Feb 14, 2007 - 30 comments

Time: Just as Vietnam had been America's first "living-room war," [...] so is the Iraq conflict emerging as the first YouTube war. Growing up in a world where they can swap MP3s as well as intimate details about their lives via MySpace or Facebook, American soldiers are swapping their Iraq experience as well. There's a byte-enabled intimacy to "The War Tapes," the film that bills itself as the first documentary about the war filmed by those fighting it.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jul 20, 2006 - 15 comments

Net faces 10-year Olympic shutout. Chairman of the IOC Internet working group says, "Unless and until you can guarantee your internet signal is only available within your territory, you cannot put video on your website. We're going to go forward with that and we're going to see how it evolves." Anyone have some portable transmission walls they can erect on international boundaries every two years?
posted by netbros on Dec 5, 2000 - 0 comments