Music Tuesday: Busta Rhymes, Fresh Faces and more

The good ship Wilco sailed into YouTube Music this week, with the premiere of their new video “Dawned on Me”, which believe it or not, is the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in 30 years. We also featured a curation from Black Bananas, a video from Cymbals Eat Guitars, and more...

Busta Rhymes with YouTube and Google Music

Back in November, Busta Rhymes offered you all a chance to appear in the music video for "Why Stop Now," his latest single. Hundreds of you took up his challenge, downloaded the song, learned the verse, and filmed yourselves spitting it. Busta watched the entries, selected his favorites, and had director Hype Williams splice them into the final cut. We're happy to debut the results. Take a look, and see which fans did the verse nice enough to earn Busta's seal of approval.

Chemical Brothers

For the first time in 20 years, electronica pioneers the Chemical Brothers have captured their audio-visual live show on film. The movie, titled “Don’t Think”, is directed by Adam Smith, and will be hitting theater screens around the world later this year. To celebrate, Adam and the Chemical Brothers collected some of their favorite YouTube music videos in a playlist:

 

January Fresh Faces

Every month, we feature a handful of newly-signed music partners on YouTube’s homepage. Amongst January’s picks, Jitta55 shows us his "Drink Face," and Shonsta performs an intense guitar solo:

 

Tim Partridge, YouTube Music Manager, recently watched Busta Rhymes “Why Stop Now ft. Chris Brown”

How to shape up your video marketing strategy in 2012

Did you vow to get in shape in 2012? Maybe you committed take your business to the next level this year, too. Keeping either resolution can be a challenge, so we wanted to call out a few YouTube fitness Channels doing great work both with their videos and their advertising—without breaking a sweat.

Mike Chang has a growing following on YouTube thanks to his easy-to-do workout videos, steady stream of new content and special seasonal discounts offers on his Six Pack Shortcuts program. This January he gave YouTube subscribers 70 percent off from his new Insane Home Fat Loss program. He also uses YouTube TrueView video ads to reach new viewers, and now has more than 370,000 Channel subscribers interested in rock solid abs.



The Flex Belt and TRX Channels use their YouTube Channels to host tons of video content for beginners and experts alike, many featuring celebrities like Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry for Flex Belt or NFL superstar Drew Brees on the TRX Channel. Talk about motivation. Through the power of video, Flex Belt and TRX can capture an audience’s attention, show how their products work, and then tell viewers how to buy the product with banner ads on their brand Channels or call-to-action overlays over their videos. TRX’s YouTube Channel banner ended up being responsible for 7 percent of all holiday sales through paid search Channels in December 2011.





If you’re a business owner, musician, filmmaker, fitness expert or all of the above, you can build an audience with YouTube video advertising tools by getting started with Google AdWords for video today.

Baljeet Singh, group product manager, recently watched “S*&t Silicon Valley Says.”

2012 global award winners RISE to the top

Our business at Google is rooted in STEM and CS, so we’re passionate about supporting organizations that are expanding access to these fields, especially for students who might not have the opportunity otherwise. The annual Google Roots in Science and Engineering (RISE) program supports organizations running innovative STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and CS (computer science) enrichment programs for K-12 and university students around the world.

This year, the Google in Education group received a record number of inspiring applications for RISE. We expanded the awards to include Sub-Saharan Africa, and in total, we’re awarding more than $340,000 in funding to 13 U.S., eight European and five African organizations.

Our recipients are diverse, ranging from girls robotics teams building high-tech machinery in Nairobi to after-school programs that have students configuring cluster computers in Salt Lake City. Below are just a few of the outstanding organizations receiving RISE awards this year for their efforts in advancing CS and STEM education:

United States

• Santa Clara Valley Society of Women Engineers, San Jose, California. GetSET is a program created for underrepresented ethnic minority girls in the San Francisco Bay Area to expose them to engineering while building self confidence through leadership workshops, tours of technology companies and participation in team-building exercises.
• Saturday Academy, Portland, Oregon. Saturday Academy serves 2nd-12th grade students from Oregon and SW Washington with high quality and creative learning opportunities taught by STEM experts, including hands-on, real world activities that create meaningful connections between academic content and practical application.

Europe

• Frauennetzwerk Informatik at Universität Passau, Passau, Germany. University students from Passau act as ambassadors for computer science, engineering and math by reaching out to juniors and seniors at their former high schools and running workshops on topics like robotics and mobile app development. Ambassadors go on to serve as mentors to the students throughout their high school and college careers.
• The Centre for Academic Achievement, Dublin, Ireland. This center runs free after school educational classes in a university setting for bright primary school students from disadvantaged areas. Each term, students from 32 local primary schools have the opportunity to study science, math and engineering subjects and are encouraged to pursue college degrees in the future.

Sub Saharan Africa

• Savana Signatures, Tamale, Ghana. Savana Signatures educates youth and women, building their capacity to access information for the benefit of Ghana’s social and economic development.
• Fundi Bots, Kampala, Uganda. Fundi Bots is a technology outreach program for students in high school and university that uses robotics to introduce young children to the endless possibilities of technology in both their day-to-day lives and potential careers.

Organizations interested in applying for 2013 funding can sign up for more information here. We look forward to hearing about all the great work being done in CS and STEM education.

Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K-12 Education Outreach

From the West Wing: Hanging out with President Obama on YouTube

You asked, and today President Obama will answer. This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 pm ET), President Obama will head to the Roosevelt Room of the White House to connect face-to-face with people across America over a live Google+ Hangout. This first-ever virtual interview will be streamed live on the White House YouTube Channel so you’ll have a front row seat.

In the past week, over 225,000 of you have asked a question or cast a vote on the White House YouTube channel, voicing your interest in everything from military benefits to online poker, outsourcing to the Occupy movement. During today’s post-State of the Union interview, a selection of the top-voted YouTube questions will be asked, and several participants will actually join the President in the live Google+ Hangout to pose their questions directly.

Tune in today to watch Your Interview with President Obama live at 2:30 p.m. PT on youtube.com/whitehouse and see how President Obama addresses the issues that you care about.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Ask Obama: Why Tuesday”

CaliforniaTravelTips is January’s rising YouTube partner

If you’ve been to the YouTube homepage today, you may have noticed CaliforniaTravelTips featured in the Spotlight. Veronica Hill, the woman behind CaliforniaTravelTips, is our featured “On The Rise” partner for January.

Born and raised in California, Veronica has 30+ years of travel experience that she’s translated into an informative YouTube series about all the Golden State has to offer. Ever wondered what the best strategy is for tackling Disneyland? Planning a trip to San Diego and want advice about must-do sites and activities? Think you want to visit Yosemite but want a preview of the best wilderness hiking trails? Answer any of these questions and more with Veronica’s detailed and digestible travel videos, with more than 150 video reviews to watch.



Here are a few words from Veronica:

California is one of the most diverse and wonderful places in the world! We have sandy beaches, snow-capped mountains, breathtaking national forests, and vast stretches of lonely desert. After 20 years as an editor and writer for magazines, books and newspapers, I decided to try something new. In 2007, Tim Carter of AsktheBuilder.com suggested that we start a YouTube channel. That weekend, my husband, Jason, and I went to the local camera store and bought a cheap digital video camera, tripod and Radio Shack mic. We began filming our favorite vacation spots and attractions throughout California... We want to thank the YouTube community and everyone who voted. You guys are awesome, and we couldn't have done it without your support!

If you’ve enjoyed this monthly On The Rise blog series and want to see more rising YouTube partners, check out our On The Rise Channel. Keep an eye out for next month’s blog post, as your channel may be the next one On The Rise!

Christine Wang and Devon Storbeck, YouTube partner support, recently watched “driving on mountain top ORIGINAL!”

YouTube Creator Playbook: Use analytics to build an audience

This is part of an ongoing series sharing tips from the YouTube Creator Playbook, a resource of best practices and tips you can start using on your Channel and videos right away.

There’s tons of data and information available about your Channel, videos and audience in YouTube Analytics, but the power of this information rests in how you use it. Here are tips for how to monitor the overall performance of your Channel and how to assess your videos based on the what the data is telling you.

Find the Story Behind the Data

• Learn what each metric means and how the different metrics correlate to one another to find the 'why' and 'how' of trends you're seeing. Don't just kick your feet up when you see a nice spike in views - dig deeper to learn more. Find what video is causing the increase or look at traffic sources to see where the new views are coming from.
• Hear FreddieW discuss how he uses tracking and measuring to assess the impact of all the strategies he tries on his Channel:

Peaks, Most, Biggest

• Use Analytics to investigate ‘peaks’ and ‘most’ of each metric. What videos are driving the most subscribers and why? What week did your Channel get the most views and what traffic source makes up the biggest portion of your views? Answers to these can help you plan your future videos based on where you’re seeing the most success.
• Gunnarolla uses Analytics to find out where his views come from for his Channel:

Videos Driving Subscribers

• Now you can not only track your daily subscriber gains and losses, but you can see what specific videos are driving your subscriptions. Find out which call-to-action are helping you get the most people to subscribe to your Channel.

Use Your Archive

• YouTube Analytics is a great way to keep an eye on how your archive is performing, beyond just new uploads. The 'Top 10' and video level metrics allow you to see which videos from your archive are still performing well or maybe even spiking in viewership. Use this information to prioritize what videos to optimize with annotations, new thumbnails or playlists.

To learn more about using YouTube Analytics to help your Channel succeed and many other tips, check out the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched “Echoes...”

This week's Trends: lights, wind, guitars

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we've come across this week:

• We took in some dazzling videos of the Northern Lights captured on camera.
  
  
• We collected video from Egypt's one-year anniversary of its revolution.
  
  
• We examined how a certain very popular trend of 2012 has gone local.
  
  
• We checked in on the ever-growing popularity of dubstep.
  
  
• We were blown away by crazy footage of a California wind storm.
  
  
• And we met an 8-year-old girl who might just be one of the best elementary school metal guitarist that we've seen:

Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Ignition."

A Billion Annoying Oranges Later....

Today, we’re excited to welcome long-time YouTube Partner Annoying Orange to the blog to celebrate an impressive milestone - one billion views on his channel. Now, for a fresh perspective:

Hey! Hey Youtubers! HEEEEEEY! Thanks for letting me borrow your blog! I promise not to chop it! HAHAHAHA!

Wow. You know I've never actually written a blog before. Or read one. I usually just stick to emoticons. Oh! Oh! Here's one of me going NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH:

(:^)

And this is me smiling with waffle fries in my mouth:

(:#)

And this is pear with a mustache:

(:{)



No, he doesn't actually have a mustache. It's just peach fuzz! HAHA!

And that one:

(:O)

That one means, "Thanks to all our fans for tubing in… ONE BILLION TIMES!" I've been using that one a LOT lately!

Oh! Oh! One more! One more!

Do you know what this means:

!!!!

Hey! Hey! Do you give up yet!? You give up!? How 'bout now?! Now?! OH! OH! NOW!?

Okay, I'll tell you! It means "Holy smokes, the Annoying Orange is celebrating his BILLIONTH VIEW with an EPIC new video up now! You saw the action, now see the REVENGE! Wall-to-wall jokes, all your favorite guest stars, and lots and lots of FIRE!!! Don't miss it!"

See, with an emoticon like that, what else do you really have to say? You know, besides (:^)

See you then!

A to the O!

Annoying Orange, Guest to the YouTube Blog, recently watched, “Annoying Orange Comedy Roast!.”

Bringing the creativity of the Sundance Film Festival to YouTube

The annual independent film extravaganza known as the Sundance Film Festival is underway in Park City, Utah. For film lovers who couldn’t make it this year to meet to-be-discovered filmmakers and rub shoulders with celebrities, we're bringing Sundance to you here on YouTube.

Last year, we showcased past and present short films in the YouTube Screening Room. This year, we’ve teamed up with Sundance Film Institute to premiere a collection of films that are available for the first time for digital stream.

Films include Obselidia (Independent Spirit Award Winner), Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007 Sundance Film Festival documentary on the arcade gamer competitions in the ‘80s), New York Times Critic’s Pick Lord Byron and 1994 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award Winner What Happened Was.

To mark the last weekend of the festival, we’ll premiere Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie tomorrow at the same time the shock humor duo showcase their world premiere at the 2012 festival. This star-studded comedy features Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and is already picking up buzz in Park City.

For the best of Sundance and thousands of other titles, get more into movies at YouTube.com/Movies.

Mildred Padilla, Movies Merchandising Manager, recently watched “Brick.”

Resources to support a new and open world for learning

Googlers are the types who never really leave the classroom. Guest speakers come to campus to give talks on subjects ranging from fiction to physics. Diverse groups of people work together to understand and solve big problems while groups of Googlers engage in passionate debate in our cafeterias. Given this environment, it’s no surprise how highly we value our external work in education. We have a growing number of successful education programs from primary school through to university, as well as a suite of free and open tools that reach families and classrooms around the world.

Recently, we decided to gather our resources and lessons learned into one place for educators everywhere. “Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning” highlights how people are using Google resources to enhance teaching and learning. This booklet isn’t your typical annual report; it’s a living document for educators to use year-round. We’ve also revamped our website, google.com/edu, to be a one-stop shop for teachers, students, parents and organizations to explore all of our offerings. We’ve launched a Google+ page, where everyone can stay updated on our educational tools, products and programs, and join the conversation.

To develop all of these new materials, we went straight to the source, relying on dozens of educators to provide stories and feedback. We hope these resources will inspire and enable teachers, while affirming our commitment to increasing access to an excellent education for all.

Thanks to educators, students and supporters everywhere for helping to extend our spirit of lifelong learning into classrooms around the globe.

For more information about Google in Education, visit www.google.com/edu/about, and to stay updated on the world of education at Google and connect with fellow educators, follow us on Google+.

Posted by Jordan Lloyd Bookey, Head of Global K-12 Education Outreach

Google Earth 6.2: It’s a beautiful world

We're taking bird's eye view to a whole new level with the latest version of Google Earth, released today. With Google Earth 6.2, we’re bringing you the most beautiful Google Earth yet, with more seamless imagery and a new search interface. Additionally, we’ve introduced a feature that enables you to share an image from within Google Earth, so you can now simply and easily share your virtual adventures with family and friends on Google+.

A seamless globe


The Google Earth globe is made from a mosaic of satellite and aerial photographs taken on different dates and under different lighting and weather conditions. Because of this variance, views of the Earth from high altitude can sometimes appear patchy.

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

Grand Canyon before and after

Sri Lanka before and after

Share your explorations with Google+
Google Earth is a great way to virtually explore the globe, whether revisiting old haunts or checking out a future vacation spot. With the Google Earth 6.2 update, we’ve added the option to share a screenshot of your current view in Google Earth through Google+. If you’ve already upgraded to Google+, you can share images of the places you’ve virtually traveled to with your Circles, such as family, friends or your local hiking club. To try this new feature, simply sign in to your Google Account in the upper right hand corner of Google Earth and click “Share.” Images of mountains, oceans, deserts, 3D cities, your favorite pizza shop on Street View—you can now experience all these amazing places around the world with people on Google+.


Search improvements
We’ve also made some updates to the search feature in Google Earth. Aside from streamlining the visual design of the search panel, we’ve enabled the same Autocomplete feature that’s available on Google Maps. We’ve also introduced search layers, which will show all the relevant search results (not just the top ten), so now, when looking for gelato in Milano, you can see all the tasty possibilities. Finally, we’ve added biking, transit and walking directions, so if you’re itching for a change of scenery or looking for a new route for your regular commute, you can now use Google Earth to generate and visualize all your options.

Biking directions in Google Earth

Download Google Earth 6.2 and start exploring and sharing today!

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)

YouTube Release Notes: Updates to Browse page, Video Editor and Video Manager

This week we’re kicking off our recurring Release Notes post for 2012, highlighting some of the most recent updates to YouTube. Our scrappy engineers have been hard at work to make your experience  even better, and here’s what’s new.

New look for Browse
Today we're giving the Browse page a fresh look-and-feel, to help you find even more great Channels on YouTube. Alongside the top lists like Most Viewed Today, you can now discover and subscribe to more YouTube Channels on browse pages, which will then regularly update on your homepage. You can also discover more content under categories including Entertainment, People & Blogs, Science & Technology and more. You’ll find it all on YouTube.com/browse.

Video Editor with new features
We first announced the YouTube Video Editor back in June of 2010 and since then we’ve added dozens of features that we hope you’ve enjoyed. With the recent YouTube homepage update we felt it was time to give the Video Editor a visual overhaul, as well as adding a cool new timeline, easier clip trimming and a moving playhead. Head over to YouTube.com/editor to see the changes. Here’s a shot of what it looks like:

Video Manager with oldies and new goodies
We’ve listened to your feedback from the Video Manager update in December, and have a bunch of new features and improvements. Along with a visual update, the Video Manager includes search history, and an improved display of scheduled uploads and claimed videos. You also wanted us to add back in the likes and dislikes statistics as well as sorting videos by popularity, so those features have returned. This will be rolling out over the next few days, and here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

David Wang, product specialist, recently watched “Somebody That I Used to Know - Walk off the Earth (Gotye - Cover),” Alan deLespinasse, software engineer, recently watched “Extreme Sheep LED Art [HQ],” and Jung Kim, User Experience Designer, recently watched “[M/V] ITAEWON FREEDOM (with J.Y. Park).”

Music Tuesday: Nada Surf, Sundance and more

This week on YouTube Music we’ve premiered Ryan Adam’s new video, enjoyed an exclusive playlist of Tiesto’s favorite tracks, and had, in the words of one YouTube commenter, our “brains tickled” by Matthew Dear’s In The Middle. Check back each day to discover more great music, including...

Nada Surf: live and playlisting!
Nada Surf are celebrating 20 years of work together, from the days of Popular, to the innovative covers, and even an early example of crowdsourcing music videos through a YouTube competition in 2008. They’ll be blowing the candles on their cake, and playing their new album live from the Bowery Ballroom this evening at 7pm PT. To get you in the mood, the guys have selected some of their favorite music videos, including tunes from The Wrens, Softback and Sea Wolf. Check out their playlist, then head over to the Nada Surf Channel to watch the show!



Sundance 2012
Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival has long been a major force in the world of independent cinema, and with the expansion of its music program has truly become the place to be in January. For our Sundance 2012 playlist, we combined videos from some of the artists performing live, with some of our favorite songs featured in the films on show. Strap on your snow boots and enjoy tracks from Public Enemy, Flying Lotus, The Charlatans and more.



Elizabeth Harper - Class Actress
Finally, earlier this month we featured Azari & iii’s video for “Reckless (With Your Love)”, which throws back to old school 90s house music. Tweaking sounds from the past has been a recurring theme with emerging talent and our pick for this week is Class Actress - “Bienvenue” - you’re sure to experience that 80’s feeling!



Tim Partridge, YouTube music manager, recently watched "Girls - 'Honey Bunny' Official Video."

Updating our privacy policies and terms of service

In just over a month we will make some changes to our privacy policies and Google Terms of Service. This stuff matters, so we wanted to explain what’s changing, why and what these changes mean for users.

First, our privacy policies. Despite trimming our policies in 2010, we still have more than 70 (yes, you read right … 70) privacy documents covering all of our different products. This approach is somewhat complicated. It’s also at odds with our efforts to integrate our different products more closely so that we can create a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google.

So we’re rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it, in a much more readable way. While we’ve had to keep a handful of separate privacy notices for legal and other reasons, we’re consolidating more than 60 into our main Privacy Policy.

Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies—and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the web.

These changes will take effect on March 1, and we’re starting to notify users today, including via email and a notice on our homepage.



What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

Our recently launched personal search feature is a good example of the cool things Google can do when we combine information across products. Our search box now gives you great answers not just from the web, but your personal stuff too. So if I search for restaurants in Munich, I might see Google+ posts or photos that people have shared with me, or that are in my albums. Today we can also do things like make it easy for you to read a memo from Google Docs right in your Gmail, or add someone from your Gmail contacts to a meeting in Google Calendar.

But there’s so much more that Google can do to help you by sharing more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better—figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink. We can provide more relevant ads too. For example, it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before. People still have to do way too much heavy lifting, and we want to do a better job of helping them out.

Second, the Google Terms of Service—terms you agree to when you use our products. As with our privacy policies, we’ve rewritten them so they’re easier to read. We’ve also cut down the total number, so many of our products are now covered by our new main Google Terms of Service. Visit the Google Terms of Service page to find the revised terms.

Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up.

We believe this new, simpler policy will make it easier for people to understand our privacy practices as well as enable Google to improve the services we offer. Whether you’re a new Google user or an old hand, please do take the time to read our new privacy policy and terms, learn more about the changes we’re making and understand the controls we offer.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

Are you the next online beauty guru?

L’Oreal Paris is kicking off a search across the U.S. to find the next beauty guru on YouTube. One aspiring expert will win a spotlight on the Destination Beauty YouTube Channel and have their beauty tutorial video shown among 10 of YouTube’s most popular tutorial stars. This lucky beauty aficionado will also enjoy a trip for two to New York City for some pampering at L’Oréal USA and a year’s supply of L’Oréal Paris cosmetic, hair care, hair color and skincare products to support their “how-to” video efforts.

If you think you have what it takes, sharpen your (eyeliner!) pencils and make sure your video is a cut above the rest. To get motivated, YouTube partner and beauty expert Kandee Johnson shares what you need to know about the contest.



How to enter and contest rules
To enter, submit a tutorial video here that shares your “how-to” tips and tricks behind your favorite red carpet-inspired hair and makeup look. You can submit as many videos as you’d like, so explore a variety of trends and styles. Video submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges measuring on the quality of instruction, production and end result, and full rules for the contest are here.

Good luck and can’t wait to see all of your glamorous videos!

Jamie Berkowitz, lifestyle program manager, recently watched "Make up look for the Office -Tuesday."

NBC Sports and YouTube bring the Super Bowl XLVI ads to you with YouTube Ad Blitz

Super Bowl XLVI will be one of the biggest moments of the year for advertisers, commanding the attention of millions of Americans tuned in to watch the game. After the big plays on the field, you can join in on the action online with YouTube Ad Blitz — where you decide the best commercial of the game.

As the premier online gallery of Super Bowl commercials, YouTube Ad Blitz puts all the commercials in your hands, letting you view and vote on the top ads of the Super Bowl, whether you’re on a computer, mobile phone or tablet. This year, NBC Sports is the official partner for YouTube Ad Blitz, adding online promotion to its Super Bowl coverage.

Troy Ewanchyna, Vice President, Business Development & Digital Strategies, NBC Sports Group, noted, “YouTube’s Ad Blitz is the perfect platform for us to extend our online promotion for our coverage of Super Bowl XLVI. The post-game Ad Blitz and the next-day Google+ Hangout allow us to extend our coverage and continue to serve viewers even when the game has concluded.”

The Ad Blitz gallery will be hosted on NBCSports.com and the YouTube Ad Blitz Channel, where you can watch your favorite commercials after they’ve aired on NBC. Voting begins after the final whistle and will continue until Midnight ET on February 13. We’ll also host a Google+ Hangout after the game where you can chat face-to-face with an NBC celebrity. Stay tuned to our blog for details.

Let the ad game begin!

Suzie Reider, head of industry development, global video team, Google, recently watched “6 tips for an awesome football party - Super Bowl XLVI.”

Your Interview with President Obama

If you could hang out with President Obama, what would you ask him? Would your question be about jobs or unemployment? The threat of nuclear weapons? Immigration reform? Whatever your question is, submit it on YouTube for the opportunity to ask the President directly in a special interview over a Google+ Hangout from the White House.

On Monday, January 30, a few days after delivering his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions you’ve submitted in a live-streamed interview. Starting today through January 28, you can visit the White House YouTube channel to submit your video and text questions and vote on your favorites. Your YouTube questions will drive the interview, and several participants with top-voted questions will be selected to join the President in the Google+ Hangout to take part in the conversation live.



So take out your camera, check your hair and go to youtube.com/whitehouse to submit your question now. Need ideas? Visit youtube.com/whitehouse on Tuesday night at 9:00pm ET to watch the President’s State of the Union address live. The address will be followed by the Republican response on Speaker Boehner’s YouTube channel.

Video questions are preferred (though we also accept text) and should be about 20 seconds long. In the video description, be sure to tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from.

Your Interview with President Obama will be streamed live at 5:30pm ET on on January 30 on youtube.com/whitehouse. You have until midnight ET on January 28 to submit your question and make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.

Posted by Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager

(Cross-posted from the YouTube blog)

Holy Nyans! 60 hours per minute and 4 billion views a day on YouTube

Update: Corrected percentage increases.

Since the dawn of YouTube, we’ve been sharing the hours of video you upload every minute. In 2007 we started at six hours, then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48, and now...60 hours of video every minute, an increase of more than 25 percent in the last eight months. In other words, you’re uploading one hour of video to YouTube every second. Tick, tock, tick, tock — that’s 4 hours right there!

In the past we’ve made charts and infographics to describe the kind of mind-boggling engagement you’re driving, and this time we let our dataheads run wild. They came back to us with onehourpersecond.com — an interactive collection of what happens in a YouTube second. Here’s a sample:



For all the hours of video you’re uploading—you’re watching more as well; we’ve now exceeded four billion video views globally every day. That’s up 30 percent in the last eight months and the equivalent of more than half the world’s population watching a video every day, the same number as there are US $1 bills in circulation, the same as number of years since there was water on Mars...it’s a big number, and you’re making it bigger every day.

With more original Channels rolling out this year, a new homepage to help you find and follow Channels you love, and new tools for creators always on the horizon, we’re excited to see how many times you’ll grow these numbers this year!

The YouTube Team recently watched “The Joy of Books.”

Your Interview with President Obama

If you could hang out with President Obama, what would you ask him? Would your question be about jobs or unemployment? The threat of nuclear weapons? Immigration reform? Whatever your question is, submit it on YouTube for the opportunity to ask the President directly in a special interview over a Google+ Hangout from the White House.

On Monday, January 30, a few days after delivering his State of the Union address to the nation, President Obama will answer a selection of top-voted questions you’ve submitted in a live-streamed interview. Starting today through January 28, you can visit the White House YouTube channel to submit your video and text questions and vote on your favorites. Your YouTube questions will drive the interview, and several participants with top-voted questions will be selected to join the President in the Google+ Hangout to take part in the conversation live.



So take out your camera, check your hair and go to youtube.com/whitehouse to submit your question now. Need ideas? Visit youtube.com/whitehouse on Tuesday night to watch the President’s State of the Union address live. The address will be followed by the Republican response on Speaker Boehner’s YouTube channel.

Video questions are preferred (though we also accept text) and should be about 20 seconds long. In the video description, be sure to tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you’re from.

Your Interview with President Obama will be streamed live at 5:30 p.m. ET on January 30 on youtube.com/whitehouse. You have until midnight ET on January 28 to submit your question and make your voice heard on the issues that matter to you.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched, “How to Buy a Car, Using Game Theory”

A Look Back as We Move Forward: YouTube Product Launches in 2011

We checked the calendar, and it looks like we’re just in time for the last acceptable moment for a 2011 re-cap post. From the zany to the educational, our engineering and product teams launched tons of features to make YouTube an even better place for both viewers and creators. Let’s look back at some of these:

We launched features to improve the viewing experience for the 800 million of you who visit YouTube each month, like:

• A New Homepage and Design: Launched in December to help you to get more into the great content you love, with a customizable YouTube Channels line-up and feed of the latest activity and videos from your subscriptions.
• YouTube Original Channels: Original Channels from well-known personalities from the TV, film, news, sports and other fields, to up-and-coming media companies, to some of YouTube’s existing partners. Full line-up here.
• YouTube Politics: As we’re now in an election year in the United States, this Channel is your one-stop-shop to follow the latest political stories, connect with the candidates and keep your finger on the political pulse of the nation.
• YouTube Rentals: From new releases to all-time classics, thousands of full-length films from major Hollywood studios are available to rent in the US, UK, Canada and Japan at youtube.com/movies.  
• YouTube Slam: Born on TestTube, this video discovery experiment was cooked up with folks from Google Research. Each week a new crop of videos battles head-to-head in Comedy, Cute, Music, Bizarre and Dance Slams, where your votes determine who wins the Slam and gets featured on the leaderboard.

Every minute, 48 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube, so we’re always working to help you make your videos the best they can be:

• YouTube Editor: The Editor team was busy in 2011, launching image stabilization for smoother videos, the Edit Video button for one-click video editing and enhancements, and including Creative Commons licenses building a library of millions of CC tagged videos.  
• YouTube Analytics: We love data, so we added even more features to help you examine and grow your audience through more detailed reporting.
• More opportunities to make money from videos: We're also helping more uploaders make money from their videos. You might have noticed a button saying "Make money on your videos" last time you logged in to your YouTube account, which you might see if your account is in good standing and you’ve been adhering to our Community Guidelines. If you opt in, ads might run on your videos and you could start earning revenue. We've made this feature available to many account holders in the U.S. already, and over the coming months we'll be making it available to more people around the world.
• YouTube.com/Create: No camera? No problem. With partners like Magisto, Vlix, GoAnimate and others, you can still create animated and personal videos to upload directly to YouTube.

With new features coming out every week, these examples are just a few of the launches in 2011. So, we also want to hear from you. What was your favorite YouTube product launch of 2011? Let us know by leaving a comment on the +YouTube page.

John Harding, Engineering Director, Recently Watched “Teahupoo from the Phantom HD Camera.”

Get in the DJ booth with Tiësto

Ever been among the thousands of screaming fans rocking out to Tiësto and wanted to see what life is like from the other side of the DJ booth? Check out “In the Booth,” a new series on YouTube that documents the world-traveling, beat-making life of Tiësto, aka Tijs Michiel Verwest. The first episode is available today:



If you add the Channel to your homepage guide you’ll regularly get exclusive commentary and personal insight into Tiësto’s life and work, venues around the world, festival life on and off-stage, and more clubbing than you could ever fit into just one night.

New episodes kickoff today on Tiësto’s YouTube Channel, with more coming every week. And remember you can get into even more great electronic and other music on YouTube Music, with new tunes every Tuesday.

Adam Relis, Content Partnerships manager, recently watched “Mission: Impossible - Theme (Tiësto Remix).”

Jagriti Yatra: a journey of entrepreneurship through India

As part of our ongoing commitment to entrepreneurship around the world, we recently took part in a worthy experiment crisscrossing India. Jagriti Yatra is an annual train journey that takes more than 400 of India's highly motivated youth (ages 20-26) on an 15-day trip to introduce them to India’s challenges, and to the individuals and institutions that are developing unique solutions to those challenges. The goal is to inspire these young people to develop and lead social and economic entrepreneurship in their own communities. Each year, around 50 experienced professionals also join the Yatra to serve as mentors, and this year, I—along with four other Googlers—went along for the ride.

This year’s “yatris” (participants) came from all four corners of the country—rich states and poor states, urban, semi-urban and rural. A large portion came from low-income rural families, and many of them (especially the women) had fought great odds to get a good education. Now, they wanted to give back to their communities.

The trip, which began in Mumbai on December 25 and returned on January 8, covered 8,500 kilometers and made 12 stops in a route that circumnavigated the entire country. Our days began at 5:30am and ended at 11:30pm, and the majority of time was spent pounding the pavement, from villages in Orissa and Uttar Pradesh to the suburbs of Madurai and Patna.

These visits brought us face-to-face with India’s major challenges. Confronted with the stark reality of youth abandoning their farming traditions, vast open-air garbage dumps in town centers, girls dropping out of school after eighth grade and unemployed undergraduates scrounging money to bribe their way into government jobs, the yatris were even more motivated to become agents of change in their country. The Yatra has led to a diverse range of startups, both planned and pre-existing—for example, I spoke with participants taking up organic farming in their villages, and to others who were inspired to establish career mentoring programs in their communities.

As first-time sponsors of this year's Yatra (which focused specifically on issues in healthcare, agribusiness, water and energy) we provided not only financial support, but also WiFi for the train journey and an SMS channel for Jagriti Yatra followers to get updates on the Yatra over SMS. We also helped set up the organization with a YouTube channel and a Google+ page so they could chronicle and share their journey with the wider world.

Throughout, the energy of the group was incredible; everyone was infused with the feeling that all things are possible if you persist. Jagriti Yatra has become the event for college students and would-be young entrepreneurs to participate in (this year, the organization received 3,200 applications for less than 500 spots). It was great to see so many young people focused on making a positive impact on society through entrepreneurship.



For more personal stories from the journey, visit the Jagriti Yatra Google+ page. To register for next year’s journey, visit Jagriti Yatra’s registration page.

Posted by Adhi Kesarla, Principal, New Business Development

Renewing old resolutions for the new year

As we head into 2012, we’ve been sticking to some old resolutions—the need to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to use every day. That means taking a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven’t achieved the promise we had hoped for or can’t be properly integrated into the overall Google experience.

Here’s an update on some products that will be merged, open-sourced, or phased out in the coming months:

• Google Message Continuity (GMC): In December 2010 we launched an email disaster recovery product for enterprise customers that use Google's cloud to back up emails originally sent or received in an on-premise, Microsoft Exchange system. In the time since we launched, we've seen hundreds of businesses sign up for it. By comparison, in that same time, we've seen millions of businesses move entirely to the cloud with Google Apps, benefitting from disaster recovery capabilities built directly into Apps. Going forward we've decided to focus our efforts on Google Apps and end support for GMC. Current GMC customers will be able to use GMC for the duration of their contract and are encouraged to consider using Google Apps as their primary messaging and collaboration platform.
• Google Sky Map: This app was created by half a dozen Googlers at the Pittsburgh office in their 20 percent time to show off the amazing capabilities of the sensors in the first-generation Android phones and offer a window into the sky. Since we launched the tool in 2009, we have managed to share our passion with more than 20 million Android users. We will be open-sourcing Sky Map and are collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University in a partnership that will see further development of Sky Map as a series of student projects.
• Needlebase: We are retiring this data management platform, which we acquired from ITA Software, on June 1, 2012. The technology is being evaluated for integration into Google's other data-related initiatives.
  
• Picnik: We acquired this online photo editor in 2010. We’re retiring the service on April 19, 2012 so the Picnik team can continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products. You can download a zip file of your creations through Picnik Takeout or copy them to Google+. As of now, the premium service is free to everyone. Premium members will receive a full refund in the coming weeks.
• Social Graph API: This API makes information about the public connections between people on the web available for developers. The API isn’t experiencing the kind of adoption we’d like, and is being deprecated as of today. It will be fully retired on April 20, 2012.
• Urchin: In 2005 we acquired Urchin, whose online web analytics product became the foundation for Google Analytics, helping businesses of all sizes measure their websites and online marketing. We’re fully committed to building an industry-leading online analytics product, so we’re saying goodbye to the client-hosted version, known as Urchin Software. New Urchin Software licenses will no longer be available after March 2012.

Resolutions can be hard, and changing products that people love is hard too. But we’re excited to focus on creating a beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google—an experience that will change the lives of millions of people.

Posted by Dave Girouard, VP of Product Management

Make the most of the NFL Playoffs with Ad Blitz Pre-Game

If you want to get even more excitement from the NFL Playoffs, check out YouTube's new Ad Blitz Pre-Game program, sharing news coverage, party tips and videos from YouTube partners and sponsor Dodge Durango. The Pre-Game program is the warm-up for our annual Super Bowl Ad Blitz advertising extravaganza, which kicks off February 5.

On Ad Blitz Pre-Game we’ve got fan-friendly recipes from food partners like FoodWishes and AverageBetty. You’ll also find football news, opinions and predictions from partners like ProFootBallWeekly, and JRSportBrief, as well as early predictions for the big game. To get started, check out this PB&J-flavored chicken wings recipe for a lip-smacking twist on a tailgating favorite:



If you’re looking for a place to call home over the NFL Playoffs, stop by Ad Blitz Pre-Game and enjoy the YouTube Channels getting you ready for kickoff!

Mark Day, program manager, recently watched "The Topic: NFL Playoff Predictions, Week Two."

Data Journalism Awards now accepting submissions

Last November, we announced our support for a new Data Journalism competition, organized by the Global Editors Network. The competition is now open to submissions and today we hosted an event at our offices in London to share details on how to compete and win a total of six prizes worth EUR 45,000. The European Journalism Centre is running the contest and Google is sponsoring.



Journalism is going through an exciting—if sometimes wrenching—transition from off to online. Google is keen to help. We see exciting possibilities of leveraging data to produce award-winning journalism. “Data journalism is a new, exciting part of the media industry, with at present only a small number of practitioners,” said Peter Barron, Google’s Director of External Relations. “We hope to see the number grow.”

In data journalism, reporters leverage numerical data and databases to gather, organize and produce news. Bertrand Pecquerie, the Global Editor Network’s CEO, believes the use of data will, in particular, revolutionize investigative reporting. “We are convinced that there is a bright future for journalism,” he said at the London event. “This is not just about developing new hardware like tablets. It is above all about producing exciting new content.”

The European Journalism Centre, a non-profit based in Maastricht, has been running data training workshops for several years. It is producing the Data Journalism Awards website and administering the prize. “This new initiative should help convince editors around the world that data journalism is not a crazy idea, but a viable part of the industry,” says Wilfried Ruetten, Director of the center.

Projects should be submitted to http://www.datajournalismawards.org. The deadline is April 10, 2012. Entries should have been published or aired between April 11, 2011 and April 10, 2012. Media companies, non-profit organisations, freelancers and individuals are eligible.

Submissions are welcomed in three categories: data-driven investigative journalism, data-driven applications and data visualisation and storytelling. National and international projects will be judged separately from local and regional ones. “We wanted to encourage not only the New York Times’s of the world to participate, but media outlets of all sizes,” says Pecquerie. “Journalism students are also invited to enter, provided their work has been published.”

An all-star jury has been assembled of journalists from prestigious international media companies including the New York Times, the Guardian and Les Echos. Paul Steiger, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal and founder of the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica, will serve as president.

Winners will be announced at the Global News Network’s World Summit in Paris on May 31, 2012.

Posted by William Echikson, External Relations

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)

Keeping our environmental management and workplace safety standards high

For the last year, our data center team has been working on a project to bring our facilities to even higher standards for environmental management and workforce safety. Recently we got the good news that our work paid off.

All of our U.S. owned and operated data centers have received ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification. We’re the first major Internet services company to gain external certification for those high standards at all of our U.S. data centers.



In a nutshell, both standards are built around a very simple concept: Say what you’re going to do, then do what you say—and then keep improving. The standards say what key elements are required, but not how to do it—that part’s up to us. So we set some challenging goals for ourselves, and we asked our auditors to confirm that we’ve followed through on them.

Here’s an example of the kind of improvements we’ve implemented: Like most data centers, ours have emergency backup generators on hand to keep things up and running in case of a power outage. To reduce the environmental impact of these generators, we’ve done two things: first, we minimized the amount of run time and need for maintenance of those generators. Second, we worked with the oil and generator manufacturers to extend the lifetime between oil changes. So far we’ve managed to reduce our oil consumption in those generators by 67 percent.

A second example: each of our servers in the data center has a battery on board to eliminate any interruptions to our power supply. To ensure the safety of the environment and our workers, we devised a system to make sure we handle, package, ship and recycle every single battery properly.

These are just two elements of what ultimately adds up to a comprehensive system of policies that our data center teams follow in their day-to-day operations. We do this because we want to be the gold standard in environmental and workforce safety, and because we care about the communities where we live and work. This is one more reason you can feel confident that when you're using our products, you're making an environmentally responsible choice.

Our data centers in the following U.S. locations have received this dual certification. We plan to pursue certification in our European data centers as well.

• The Dalles, Ore.
• Council Bluffs, Iowa
• Mayes County, Okla.
• Lenoir, N.C.
• Monck’s Corner, S.C.
• Douglas County, Ga.

Posted by Joe Kava, Senior Director, data center construction and operations

A global search for the world's best storytellers

One of the best parts of working at YouTube is helping connect creative voices from around the globe with the audiences they deserve. So, we've teamed up with Ridley Scott and Scott Free London, the Venice Film Festival, and Emirates to create Your Film Festival, a global competition that will provide one deserving entrant with a half million US dollars to work on their next great story. Here’s an overview:



Starting February 2, you can submit your short, story-driven videos (15 minutes or less) on Youtube.com/yourfilmfestival. Entry is free and open to people 18 years of age and above, and all genres and formats are welcome: live action short, animation, documentary, web-series episode, TV pilot — you name it. Your video must be story-driven, and cannot have been publicly shown or distributed prior to January 1, 2010. Full rules are available on the Your Film Festival Channel.

From there, the Scott Free team will select 50 semi-finalists from across the globe by June 2012. YouTube users will then vote for their favorites to select 10 finalists, whose videos will then be screened at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. A jury led by Ridley Scott will crown one grand prize winner, who will receive a $500,000 production grant to work with Scott’s team to create a new story for the world to see.



For more information, check out the Your Film Festival Channel, and get your entries in before March 31 at midnight ET.

We can't wait to see what you've got.

Nate Weinstein, entertainment marketing manager, recently watched “Panic Attack."

YouTube for nonprofits, reloaded with new tutorials and features

Nonprofits are an important part of the YouTube community, and their videos have educated and inspired audiences since the early days of the site. We launched the YouTube Nonprofit Program in 2007 to help organizations take their work to the next level, and since then, more than 16,000 nonprofits have joined the program. There are hundreds of nonprofit organizations with millions of views on YouTube, and dozens with more than ten million views, like Greenpeace, Khan Academy and UNICEF.

We’ve made a couple of updates to the program that we hope will help nonprofits use video in new and compelling ways.

• The Playbook Guide: YouTube for Good. This is a how-to resource specifically targeted at nonprofit organizations, with sections on how to create content, raise funds, connect with other community members and more.
• Improved features. As part of our new Channels design, we’ve made the donate button on nonprofit channels even more prominent, making it easier than ever to support the causes you care about.

If you’re a YouTube Nonprofit Program with other ideas about how we can make the program better, tell us your suggestions in the comments below! If you’re a nonprofit in the U.S., U.K., Canada or Australia and not yet a member, visit www.youtube.com/nonprofits to learn more and apply.

Valerie Streit, YouTube Next Lab, recently watched “Martin Luther King Jr. on NBC’s Meet the Press in 1965.”