Bringing German history online

Cross posted from European Public Policy Blog.

It’s a new way of writing history. Today, we are joining with Germany’s public TV broadcaster, ZDF, German weekly magazine "Stern", and other German marquee brands such as Bertelsmann, Robert Bosch, Daimler and Gruner+Jahr, to launch “Memory of the Nation” (“Gedächtnis der Nation”) - a video platform dedicated to presenting the “collective memories” of German people throughout the 20th and the beginning of the 21st Century.



The project takes inspiration from the Shoah Foundation in Jerusalem, which records the experiences of Holocaust survivors. Similarly, "Memory of the Nation" provides more than a traditional historical archive. Thousands of prominent and ordinary people are being interviewed, and their personal accounts turn abstract history into real, emotional experiences.

This project is special, not just because of its content, but also because it is universally accessible via the Internet. Viewers would be unable to peruse their personal histories via traditional media in their own time, and on their own terms. Here, viewers choose what they want to watch - and are able to add personal details and observations to the stories.

Both young and old are invited to contribute. A ZDF team criss-crossing Germany in a "century bus” already has recorded more than 8000 hours of video interviews with eyewitnesses of historical events. Viewers are encouraged to upload their own videos through a second YouTube channel “Our History” (“Unsere Geschichte”). This interactivity ensures the platform will become a living resource for disseminating and learning about German history.

Google Germany and YouTube are excited to support this unique project. We have created a special interface for this channel that allows users to view the videos on a timeline, as well as search by topic, eyewitness or personality as well as specific keywords.

A non-profit group called "The Memory of the Nation" is spearheading the project. Germany’s Federal President Christian Wulff is patron. The Board of Trustees includes personalities such as former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and literary critic icon Marcel Reich-Ranicki. We’re delighted that so many prominent players in German society have come together and embraced the Internet to increase understanding of German history and culture.

Kay Oberbeck, Director of Communications and Public Affairs Germany, Austria, Switzerland, recently watched "Gedächtnis der Nation Trailer."

YouTube.com/Politics: Tracking the 2012 election campaign through online video

From the infamous “Macaca” moment of 2006 to the recent Fox News/Google Debate, YouTube is a place where you can keep track of the latest political stories and connect with the candidates. As the 2012 election heats up on YouTube, we want to make it even easier for you to keep your finger on the political pulse, at youtube.com/politics.

The new YouTube Politics site will feature the latest campaign ads, parodies, gotchas, and speeches, offering you a 360-view of the election.



Wondering which candidate is surging and which candidate is falling flat on YouTube? The channel will also let you take a deep dive into each candidate’s YouTube stats, so you can see which one has the most video views, subscribers and shares, as well as how they stack up against each other. And from each candidate’s dashboard, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel to receive regular updates and videos from the campaign trail.

There’s a long way to run in the 2012 electoral race, but one thing’s for sure - there will be some unforgettable YouTube moments along the way. Youtube.com/politics will help you keep up with the story.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “Republican Debate: Books, Boos, Gay Soldier and Ron Paul.”

9/11 Memorial & Museum is looking for your tribute videos

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum has created the 9/11 Memorial YouTube channel, and they’re requesting your videos for an archive that will be part of the 9/11 Memorial Museum scheduled to open September 2012. The Memorial and Museum is the not-for-profit corporation created to oversee the design, fundraising, programming and operations of the Memorialand Museum at the World Trade Center.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani offers background about the project and a request for you to record a "silent video tribute" to create a living memorial for the Museum.



“Through this new YouTube channel, people around the world will have an opportunity to join our mission to document the history of 9/11 by sharing their personal experiences,” 9/11 Memorial President Joe Daniels said. “This channel is an example of the many ways the National September 11 Memorial Museum is ensuring the history we all lived through is never forgotten.”

This project was inspired by the 9/11 tribute album "Ten Years On." The album is a collection of songs compiled by Welsh recording artist Jem in remembrance of 9/11, from artists like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Alanis Morissette, Johnny Cash, and more. For more information on how to donate or to reserve a free visitor pass to the Memorial, go to 911memorial.org.

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched “9/11 Memorial: Request for Silent Tributes.”

Google Earth downloaded more than one billion times

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

How large is one billion? One billion hours ago modern humans were living in the Stone Age. One billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was flourishing. If you traveled from Earth to the Moon three times, your journey would measure one billion meters.

Today, we’ve reached our own one billion mark: Google Earth has been downloaded more than one billion times since it was first introduced in 2005. That’s more than one billion downloads of the Google Earth desktop client, mobile apps and the Google Earth plug-in—all enabling you to to explore the world in seconds, from Earth to Mars to the ocean floor.




We’re proud of our one billion milestone, but we’re even more amazed at the way people have used Google Earth to explore the world. When we founded Keyhole, Inc. back in 2001 (the company was acquired by Google in 2004), we never imagined our geospatial technology would be used by people in so many unexpected ways. At www.OneWorldManyStories.com, we’ve collected stories from people all over the world who use Google Earth to follow their dreams, discover new and distant places, or make the world a better place.





Visit www.OneWorldManyStories.com to learn about people like Professor David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, who’s used Google Earth to scan thousands of square kilometers in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Professor Kennedy has discovered ancient tombs and geoglyphs dating back at least 2,000 years, all without leaving his desk in Perth. Architect Barnaby Gunning, after the April 6, 2009 earthquake near L’Aquila Italy, encouraged his fellow citizens to start rebuilding the city virtually in 3D. Their online urban planning will aid city planners and architects. Retired English teacher Jerome Burg created Google Lit Trips, which uses Google Earth to match places in famous books to their geographical locations, encouraging students to create connections between the stories they read in school and the world they live in.

We hope you enjoy the site, and that it illustrates how some of those one billion downloads of Google Earth have been making a difference. You can explore these stories right in your browser with the Google Earth plug-in or download the KML files to view in Google Earth.

If you have a Google Earth story you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you. If you don’t have Google Earth, download it now and be part of the next billion stories. While it’s inspiring to see how Google Earth has touched the lives of so many, we know the best is yet to come.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps

Music Tuesday: Wilco, an introduction to juking, and more

What’s happening on youtube.com/music this week? We dig into two facets of Chicago’s music scene, starting with Wilco’s indie-Americana explorations and then exploring the future-forward sound of juke. And then we go even farther afield...come with us!


Wilco curation
The iconic Chicago band Wilco have just released one of the most acclaimed albums of their career -- and possibly of 2011 (time will tell) -- in The Whole Love. The hook-filled album also stretches at its sonic space, artfully scarring its easy beauty with shards of noise and the occasional extended guitar jam. And yes, they’ve made some pretty lovely videos to go along with it. We invited the band to take over the YouTube homepage today, and they flood it with music you might not ordinarily see there. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. The inimitable Bill Withers. They gravitate to music that endures...not unlike their own.





Chicago Juke
While Wilco reps one aspect of Chi-town (its indie-Americana side), we turned to a completely different set of musicians to explore another facet of the city’s music scene. Maybe you've heard about juking. It's a dance scene; it's a musical style. It was born in Chicago, and it takes house music and hip-hop and strips them down, cranking up the BPMs and muddying the production values so it feels as if it could have come out of any corner of the world. People get wild to it; the footwork style has become hugely inspirational to dancers around the country. Even overseas dubstep producers have been influenced by the scene in recent years. Check out our introduction to this vibrant musical subculture.





Dakha Brakha “Vesna” Speaking of going local, you can’t get much more local than Dakha Brakha -- it’s just that the locale is a bit farther afield. (The Ukraine, to be exact.) Dakha Brakha play Ukranian folk music, but they do it with such art-house panache that it feels avant-garde instead of old. In “Vesna,” the band’s most recent video, they emerge from Ukraine’s forests in full traditional garb, setting up and performing in modern-day Kiev. The video builds slowly, but by the time it ends, modern life feels as if it’s been briefly transformed.





Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched “Yo Yo Ma - Attaboy.”

Ads are just answers

When CafePress first started printing shirts in 1999, online retail was still a nascent industry and Google had yet to sell its first ad. Soon CafePress started selling products through search ads on Google, and their business took off. Today, CafePress hosts millions of shops online where customers can choose from more than 325 million products on nearly any topic, from wall art to phone cases.

Just as CafePress has broadened its offerings over time, we've also worked to improve and expand our search advertising products. What started as three lines of simple text has evolved into ads that are multimedia-rich, location-aware and socially-amplified.

Today CafePress uses Sitelinks to direct people to specific pages of their website, helping customers find what they’re looking for faster. On average, ads with three rows of links, or three-line Sitelinks, are more than 50 percent likely to get clicked on than ads without Sitelinks. More than 200,000 advertisers have joined CafePress in using Sitelinks in at least one campaign.

Monday at Advertising Week in New York City, I’ll be talking about how advertisers have been quick to adopt these new formats since we first began experimenting nearly two years ago. Businesses from the smallest retailer in Idaho to the largest Fortune 500 company in New York have seen how these innovations in search advertising can help grow successful businesses. In fact, roughly one-third of searches with ads show an enhanced ad format.

Here are a few ways these new ad formats are helping people find valuable information faster:

Visual. Not only can you find theater times for a new movie, you can watch the trailer directly in the ad. Media ads put the sight, sound and motion of video into search ads. With Product Ads, people can see an image, price and merchant name, providing a more visual shopping experience. Because this format is often so useful, people are twice as likely to click on a Product Ad as they are to click on a standard text ad in the same location, and today, hundreds of millions of products are available through Product Ads.

Local. More than 20 percent of desktop searches on Google are related to location. On mobile, this climbs to 40 percent. Location-aware search ads can help you find what you’re looking for more easily by putting thousands of local businesses on the map—literally. More than 270,000 of our advertisers use Location Extensions to attach a business address on at least one ad campaign, connecting more than 1.4 million locations in the U.S. via ads. And, with our mobile ad formats, not only can you call a restaurant directly from the ad, you can also find out how far away the restaurant is located and view a map with directions.

Social. With the +1 button people are able to find and recommend businesses with their friends. Since introducing the +1 button earlier this year, we now have more than 5 billion impressions on publisher sites a day. If you’re a business owner, the +1 button enables your customers to share your products and special offers easily with their network of friends, amplifying your existing marketing campaigns.

We're continuing to experiment with search ads to help businesses like CafePress grow by connecting with the right customers. Starting today, you can drop by our site to check out what’s new with search ads and learn about all the improvements we’ve been working on recently.



We’re developing ads that provide richer information to you because we believe that search ads should be both beautiful and informative, and as useful to you as an answer.

Posted by Nick Fox, Vice President of Product Management

YouTube Creator Playbook: Get the audience to subscribe

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.

If you’ve got great videos to share, help your channel grow by letting people know how they can subscribe and see them all. Subscribers can become your core audience for views, likes and comments, and especially your first wave of feedback on your videos. Here’s a few things to consider as your looking at your subscribers:

Provide great content on a regular schedule that viewers won’t want to miss. It gives your something to look forward to, and new fans can know what to expect.

Ask them! If your videos include a personality or someone who talks directly to the audience, just ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel. Don’t over do it, and have a good reason for why they should. Here’s a few ideas how to do it:



Use Annotations: Add annotations to your videos that link to subscribe buttons for your channel. This is a good way to encourage your viewers to subscribe if you aren’t on camera to ask them directly.

Make it easy to subscribe on your channel page. You already have one subscribe button on your channel page, but if you build it into your banner image and other parts of the channel design you give viewers more opportunities to subscribe. You can also share the subscription love with your fellow YouTubers and cross-promote other channels by enabling the ‘other channels’ module. Here’s an example from College Humor that shows related channels for their audience:



Try out some of the suggestions above and learn even more in the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Ryan Nugent, Audience Development Strategist, recently watched “Scared Scared Scared by Gavin Castleton.”