the Web Chef's e-Bytes

10 Facebook Facts from SeeWhy,Inc.

US Grocery Chain Social Media Followers - Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr

Here's an interesting infographic from Pace Communications of the social media followers for key grocery chains around the country.  Not too surprising is the commanding lead that Target and Walmart have in a couple of these rankings, with Walmart placing in all 4 Social Media groups.

Top 5 for Facebook Followers (thousands)

1. Target - 1,048
2. Walmart - 1,032
3. Whole Foods - 246
4. Costco - 117
5. Trader Joes - 100

Top 5 Twitter Followers (thousands)

1. Whole Foods - 1,756
2. Walmart - 27,673
3. Target 17,388
4. Sam's - 9,834
5. Wegman's - 6,478

Top 5 Flickr Followers (thousands)

1. Target - 1,182
2. Trader Joes - 733
3. Safeway - 656
4. Kroger - 538
5. Walmart - 305

Top 5 YouTube Followers (thousands)

1. Walmart - 17,231
2. Target - 120
3. Whole Foods - 41
4. Winco - 11
5. Pathmark - 2

Source: Pace Communications

Political Humor and effective use of the Internet - Palin Attacks

It has been interesting to see how the web is being used to create an alternative narrative or to support the accepted narrative about a candidate.  It also continues to have significant viral effect as these two anti-Palin items make their way around the Internet.  The first uses the power of online video, while the second is a great example of an interactive web site - PalinAsPresident,  that encourages viewers to play with the site while generating a message supporting the producers intent.

Web Tidbits - Web 2.0, Photo Sharing

I've been remiss in posting to this blog. 

Here are a couple of links to articles and resources that I thing you'll find interesting.

State of the Blogosphere - Technorati, Day 1 of their 5 part series on the status of blogs.  Today's report covers "Who are the Bloggers?", with the next 4 days expanding on the topic.  Among the findings are that North American bloggers are 57% male, 59% above 38 years old and 74% college graduates (yeah!  I fit in).

Beyond Blogs - Business Week writers and bloggers Heather Green and Stephen Baker refresh their popular 2005 cover story "Blogs Will Change Your Business" with "Beyond Blogs", a refreshing look at some of the many tools of social computing that are having an impact within the enterprise and among consumers.

Photo Sharing Sites - Looking for photo sharing sites beyond Flickr?  Check out this listing and evaluation on Photography Bay of 45 sites.

Web Tidbits - Advertising & Online Video

Ad Lab posted a link to AdSlogans and their advertising slogan hall of fame.  The top slogans were analyzed to see what characteristics made them work including "5 words; new brand mention; declarative; grammatically complete; contain alliteration, metaphor or rhyme".

Financial Times reports on the top 5 online video campaigns of 2007 (ranked by GoViral).   

I've embedded my favorite "WillitBlend".

Financial Times also had an interesting article discussing how online video is converging with television.  In the article they referenced a few video sites that might be of interest.  Unfortunately they don't provided links to the sites, something that I thought diministhed the online value of their story.  Among the sites referenced are the following:

• PurePlays - YouTube, VideoEgg, DailyMotion, Revver, Vimeo
• Video Verticals - FunnyorDie, DanceJam (coming soon), Jaman (world video)
• Media Companies - Hulu, Crackle, SyncTV
• Video Search Enginess - Dabble, Blinkx, Taboola (coming soon), Truveo, CastTv (invitation only beta)

For more on online video see my article "Lights, Camera, Action - the state of Online Video" on Wisconsin Technology Network.

New Video Advertising Technique

YouTube announced that they are going to begin selling ads within videos.  The new semi-transparent in-video ads, not to be confused with pre- or post roll ads that are attached before and after the video clip, will be sold only on videos that are provided by their content partners.  This should give advertisers some relief that their video ads won't be attached to questionable user generated content that could negatively impact their brand's perception. 

So what do consumers think of these ads?  According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, during testing of these ads in June and July, YouTube found that 75% of consumers watched the entire ad and that clickthrough rates for the ads were 5 - 10 times higher than typical banner ads.  eMarketer reports in a recent article that research from Piper Jaffray found that only 30% of viewers would be unwilling to watch a video ad, that 30% of ad viewers checked out the advertisers web site (Online Publishers Association data) and that spending on online advertising was projected to increase to $4.3 billion by 2011 (eMarketer research). 

For more information on some of the trends in online advertising watch for my upcoming column in Buzz Networks on Wisconsin Technology Network. 

To find out more about the advertising opportunities on YouTube submit your interest through their advertising form. 

Here's a sample video clip from YouTube that shows how these ads will work. 

Web Tidbits - Video, Music

It has been a big week in the web content world with announcements all week about new services and agreements impacting video, music, mobile content and other web areas.

Video - French YouTube competitor, Dailymotion has received $34 million in venture capital funding according to PC World. The Wall Street Journal reports that they have 37 million visitors a month.

Meanwhile YouTube has reached an agreement to license 10 million pieces of music for a flat fee from the UK-based MCPS-PRS Alliance according to Forbes.

Fox and NBC Universal announced the name for their new video sharing service - Hulu according to Digital Trends.  The site is scheduled to go into private Beta in October.

Music & Beyond - Not to be left behind, Nokia has launched a new web brand, Ovi (or door in Finnish) that will provide music downloading and other services in direct competition with Apple's iTune and other web service providers according to VNUNet.  The service is expected to go live in the fourth quarter of 2007 with music, games and maps according to the Nokia Press Release (PDF).

YouTube Video Embed in PowerPoint

My fellow blogger and Power Point expert Laura Bergells at Maniactive has a great posting summarizing and linking to 4 video tutorials on embedding YouTube video into PPT presentations using either PPT 2007 or 2003 with the videos linked and inserted in PowerPoint when you are presenting offline or online.  I know that this is a hot topic judging by traffic to my prior postings on PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques that covered this topic with a link to step-by-step instructions for converting and inserting video at tiara.org.

I've taken the liberty of embedding one of the video clip instructions that Laura references on how to add a YouTube video to PowerPoint when you are planning to be online when you make your presentation.

I also experimented with the conversion directions in the YouTube video for offline insertions of presentation of YouTube videos using Video Downloader and ErightSoft's Super and found that it worked fairly well.

Kudos to reponzo01, a 24 year old YouTuber for his simple and well done instructional videos.

For more tips on creating Powerful Presentations that sing and zing, see my blog PPT - Powerful Presentation Techniques.  I'd be happy to talk to you about my PPT - Powerful Presentatiojn Techniques Workshops and presentations.  Please give me a call at 608 266 4092 or e-mail if I can be of assistance.

Paul Gibler
the PPT and Web Chef   

Web Tidbits - Video Update

Real Player 11 Video Recorder - BusinessWeek author Stephen Wildstrom reports on how Real Networks soon to be launched RealPlayer 11 will offer a record feature to allow users to download YouTube and other video for later offline viewing.  This feature could be a very popular one for those seeking to view video clips and programs when they don't have ready Internet access.  The caveat is that the video must not be copy-protected to allow for the downloading and replaying of the video and you must be prepared to view the pre-roll or post-roll ads that are often being attached to the uploaded video.  The interface is such that a button labelled "Download this video" will show up in both Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers according to the article.  Another problem the author reports on is the file naming convention is not the best given that the tags and file names attached to the video online do not transfer with the download.

YouTube Global Launch - In other video news, YouTube announced the launch of nine global sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK according to CIO Today magazine.  The initial sites will offer translated content with future efforts designed to localize content and encourage local video uploads.  YouTube also entered into major content deals with content providers including broadcasters and football clubs to create some immediate local content.  There is some concern that YouTube could find the different standards of acceptable online content difficult to monitor given some of the experiences they've had with global content that has offended local sensibilities.

Thought you'd enjoy this cute and popular video of otters holding hands...

Video Growth - The amazing thing about the online video revolution is how quickly it has happened.  According to Business Week, fully one third of Internet traffic today is video, a jump start from almost nothing in 2000.  Among the winners has been Videoegg, a service that is provided to social networking sites that has grown to serve up over 15 million videos across 70 sites daily according to the article "Back from the Dead".  Video transmission takes up 1,000 as much bandwith as sound, a fact that has the telecommunications companies scrambling to add capacity and video players to add servers.

AT&T Video Share - The final video news was the launch of AT&T's new service Video Share that allows for video sharing between mobile phone subscribers.  The service will initially be available in Atlanta, San Antonio and Dallas according to CrunchGear and The Wall Street Journal with service expansions expected in July to other 3G (3rd Generation) mobile markets.

 

Web Tidbits - Clorox Microsite & UGC Contests

Clorox has a new microsite Mealstogether about families spending their meals together according to AdFreak.  Although I'm not in the target audience, I suspect that this one won't do much for the family of brands.  The site has a bunch of tips with little connection to the food-related Clorox brands it is designed to support.  I found the user interface of the smiling family a bit creepy.

YouTube has "packaged" User Generated Content contests in a community section of their site.  Right now they have Heinz, TLC and Samsung to name but a few.  Meanwhile the New York Times reports on the less than stellar results being experienced in these contests, accompanied by high costs for reviewing entries and the potential for brand attacks as companies open their doors to consumer generated content.  One campaign referenced in the article is Heinz's Top This TV challenge where the top 15 campaigns will be placed on the website for votes and winnowing down to 5 to generate one winning campaign.  Here's an example of one of the ads.