Longboarding around the world with YouTube

Today’s guest blogger is Scott Imbrie, CEO and Co-Founder of Original Skateboards. His passion is longboarding, a popular new form of skateboarding that also blends elements of surfing and snowboarding. Scott started Original with his brother, Brad, using YouTube to grow the business from scratch.


From the start, Brad and I wanted to design longboards and trucks that would allow descents of the steepest paved roads in the world. Since longboarding as a sport was relatively unknown in 2002, we saw an opportunity to grow both our sport and business through online video.

In 2005, we shot our first video, “Longboarding Cadillac Mountain,” on Cadillac Mountain in Maine. With just 12 subscribers to our channel, we uploaded the video and promoted it through our MySpace and Facebook communities. We had no idea what to expect. The next day, we came into the office and found more sales orders than we had received in the previous week, including many orders from Europe and Australia.

YouTube had provided us global reach, which drove more potential customers to the Original website. Our total sales increased roughly 40% from that night forward. Seeing the impact online video had on our sales, we began to build our business with YouTube at its core. We added Nick Patrick, the director of Cadillac Mountain, to our three-person staff to shoot, edit and produce YouTube content full time.

To stay connected with our viewers, we began to expand beyond a single video. Our next project was an episodic travel series we called “Western Sessions.” YouTube featured the first episode on its home page, and we reached over 150,000 views, which was a record for us at the time. Our sales again increased by approximately 40%. Last year’s sequel, “Puerto Rico Sessions,” received 8.9 million views, making up over 30% of our total video views in 2009.

Our strategy to achieve those viewership numbers and increase our subscriber base has been through a combination of online advertising (primarily Google AdWords and YouTube Promoted Videos), creative print advertising and word-of-mouth. We found when we produce relevant, high-quality content, one in four viewers will share that video with a friend. This viral word-of-mouth sharing greatly decreases our costs (when we pay for video advertising) and has enabled us to grow our business on a very limited budget. Additionally, we are developing YouTube-based applications to help us connect even more effectively with our viewers.

While Original has more than 105,000 subscribers around the world, it remains very much a family affair. Brad and I continue to work together every day, and our childhood best friends are key players in our business. Moreover, longboarding as a sport has grown exponentially. The sport now receives millions of views per week on YouTube and has grabbed the attention of major newspapers and television shows.

We are thankful that the YouTube community supports our artistic expression and sport. It has helped open many new opportunities for our business.

Our latest video, “Go Longboard 2010,” is our interpretation of what we feel makes longboarding different from other extreme sports out there. Our goal was to make the most visually stunning nature video on YouTube, and showcase longboarding while we were at it. We hope you like it!





Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, recently watched “Longboarding Boston.”

More about → Longboarding around the world with YouTube

Google Moderator on YouTube enables real-time feedback from your audience

YouTube is about starting a conversation. Every day, hundreds of millions of videos spark dialogues on everything from the future of the African continent, to what should be done about the oil spill, to the best slam dunk of all time.  But until now, it’s been difficult to harness those free-flowing discussions. 

That’s why, starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel. Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time. We previously used Google Moderator as part of our interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. 

Here’s how it works: You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog.

To get things started, we’ve invited 12 YouTube users, including Michael Buckley, the New York Times, Stanford and Howcast, to try out the feature and show us how it’s done:

Foodwishes wants you to submit and vote on your favorite recipes, and Chef John will make the top-rated dish and name it after the creator:





GreenForAll is asking for your ideas for how to help clean-up the Gulf Coast oil spill:






HotforWords is looking for your best examples of redundant acronyms: 





HouseholdHacker welcomes your questions in his series “Ask Household Hacker”:





HowtheWorldWorks invites you to make the case for why the YouTube community should listen to you when you vlog: 






Howcast wants your ideas for their next “how-to” video: 





Kina Grannis is looking for a poet to help write the lyrics for her next song: 





Michael Buckley wants to hear about your problems in love and life, because he thinks he can help:






Mystery Guitar Man is taking your ideas for what crazy instrument he should use in his next video:





Nick Kristof of the New York Times is open to your questions about his travels around the globe, and why a man like him so often writes about women’s rights issues: 






Stanford is offering up renowned cardiologist Dr. Euan Ashley to answer your questions about heart disease and other genetic-related disorders:






The Team Flight Brothers are looking for your nominations for the best (non-NBA) dunk ever: 





The Will of DC is turning over his entire “Winners and Losers” show to you this month - who do you think are YouTube’s biggest winners and losers? 






Have an idea for how you might use Moderator on your channel?  You can get started by going to your channel page and clicking on the "Modules" tab in the "Edit Channel" menu. 







For more details on how to set up your Moderator series, visit youtube.com/moderator.  And please note that in order to participate in a Moderator series, you'll need to be logged into a Google account that is linked to a YouTube account.



By Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager, and Ginny Hunt, Product Manager, Moderator, recently watched “Cowrite with Kina - Part 1.”

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Broadcast yourself with YouTube business cards from MOO

UPDATE (5/20/10): This offer has been extended to June 30, 2010.

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We want all video creators and curators to put their YouTube channel URL on their business card. In fact, we'd like to think your YouTube channel deserves a place right next to your email address and cell phone number as necessities in this modern world.

To help make this dream a reality, we're offering you a pack of snazzy YouTube business cards for next to nothing, thanks to a partnership with MOO.com. For just the price of shipping and handling (about $6/£3/€4/your local currency if you choose standard shipping), you can get 50 high-quality "Watch Me on YouTube" business cards that you can design yourself. On the image side, you can put different thumbnails from your videos, your channel profile icon or a variation on your channel's design -- it's totally up to you. On the details side, you can choose which information you'd like to include (in addition to your channel name or URL) and also add a graphic. Here's an example of what they could look like:

We've put together an FAQ which we recommend you read before starting your order. It also contains links to graphics and badges you can use on your cards and other helpful suggestions.

Once you're ready, click here to order your cards. 

Please note: only one pack per person, and this offer is only until supplies last or until May 21, whichever comes first. 

We also ask that if you order cards, please make a video showing us how they turned out, using the tag "ytmoo" so we can find it. We'd love to highlight some of the most creative cards in our Creator's Corner and on the MOO site, and brag about you generally. 

Feel free to leave a comment below with questions; otherwise, to order your pack, click here.

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "Glimpse of Horizon."

More about → Broadcast yourself with YouTube business cards from MOO

YouTube 101: Educational Series for New Users Launches

If you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you may have noticed a slew of new videos uploaded recently. They're part of an initiative called "YouTube 101," a series that explains basic features to new users. With hundreds of thousands of people creating new YouTube channels every day, there are a lot of folks out there who may not know that they can share a video privately, customize their channel or even how to upload a video -- in full HD, no less.

Each video has a unique flavor and you may even recognize some familiar faces helping us out (Happy Tree Friends, anyone?):



These tutorials will be embedded in our Help Center, the Creator's Corner, and other places where you're most likely to need quick, entertaining tutorials on how to use YouTube.

Let us know what you think in the comments below, particularly if there's a feature you find mysterious and think deserves the 101 treatment.

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "A Pluto Song."

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Countdown to Super Bowl XLIV

One of our most popular advertiser-supported programs is AdBlitz, which asks you to vote on the year's best Super Bowl commercial. For 2010, we've beefed up the channel with extensive NFL playoff coverage, travel videos for those going to Miami for the big game, Super Bowl party planning tips and recipes, and more. The AdBlitz Pre-Game channel, brought to you by Kia Motors, features videos from a diverse array of partners, including Fox Sports, Yardbarker, JR Sport Brief, Fitzy, The Dallas Cowboy Show, CowboyTD, The Travel Channel, Foodwishes and The Food Network.

Here are just a few examples of what you'll find:







Check back regularly for updated coverage and prediction videos. Once the Super Bowl begins on February 7, return to view and vote on all the ads, which are always a main topic of conversation in the days following the event.

Andrew Bangs, Sports Manager, recently watched "Griner Dunks Twice."

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Release Notes: Find Facebook Friends, Total Video Views & More

Here are a couple of things we launched recently:

Find your Facebook friends and Yahoo contacts on YouTube: In addition to finding your Gmail contacts on YouTube, now you can find and connect with the people you know on Facebook and Yahoo (that is, those who also have YouTube accounts and have connected their YouTube and Facebook accounts through AutoShare). Sign in and visit the homepage to be prompted with an invite (see screenshot below) to sync up your YouTube account to these platforms, and from there it should be easy to subscribe to the YouTube channels of people you know through these networks. Please note that this functionality is only available if your friends and contacts have allowed themselves to be found by their email address.

Total video views: Go to anyone's channel and now you can see how many views all of their uploads have received. This number can be added (or removed) from your own Profile by clicking "edit" on your channel's info module.

Cosmetic change to playlist display in search: When you search for playlists, we've changed the presentation of the results slightly, so that they are more strongly visually identified on the page. See how the thumbnails "cascade" here, indicating that this is actually a series of videos? In experiments, this layout didn't affect usage of playlists; we just like how it looks!

Recent Activity grouping/expansions: Turning on your activity feed means that anyone who's subscribed to you gets a notice in their feed when you favorite, comment on, rate videos and more (you can set up those preferences here). We've recently done some experimental upgrades focusing on grouping similar updates together. For example, now you can see when someone's favorited more than one video and what those videos are. Also, we'll now show things like "person A and five others favorited a video," which could be a strong signal to you that the video is getting circulated a lot among your friends and might be worth checking out.

New moderation options in Groups: Groups are a way for people with common interests to get together to talk about and post videos. Think Keyboard Cat fans or Nine Inch Nails enthusiasts -- whatever your interest, there's probably a group out there devoted to it. In an effort to improve group administration, we recently added a channel-style edit box at the top of Groups. Any group you are an owner of will have a full set of admin actions at the top of the page. From this interface, group owners can edit core settings of their group, like name and description, as well as set video and topic posting policies (see below). Both owners and moderators can use this interface to manage new topics and videos, streamlining the process of approving or rejecting group content.

We've also fixed a number of bugs, like removing owner approval requirements when replying to existing posts and preventing "ballot stuffing" for contest-oriented groups. Also, to encourage your friends to join and participate in groups that are important to you, your posts to public groups will soon find their way into your friends' homepage feeds, and the activity of other group members will also find their way into your homepage feed (all of the normal privacy options will apply, and we'll be adding new ones to allow more fine-grained control). We hope you find these new groups features useful and intuitive, and certainly let us know in the comments below what you think. Otherwise, why not create a group today?

The YouTube Team

More about → Release Notes: Find Facebook Friends, Total Video Views & More

Hub for parents launches

YouTube and Kodak have teamed up to launch For Mom, a robust resource for anyone raising children today. The videos housed on this channel cover everything from cooking and parenting tips, to the best toys and games for kids, to easy ways to maintain your own health and beauty routine. There are even responses to some of life’s most difficult questions, like how much to pay the tooth fairy:



Browse through For Mom (and come back often!) for more videos from YouTube partners who know a thing or two about parenting, including Better, Parents TV, Lifetime and popular mommy bloggers who expertly find humor in what's often called the hardest job on earth.

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched "Things My Kids Will Never Know."

More about → Hub for parents launches

"Holiday Solutions" channel debuts

It's getting to be that time of year again, when hosting dinners, attending parties, and finding the perfect gifts are top of mind. To help you navigate through it all, we're partnering with Target to bring you a channel full of videos from YouTube partners who know how to master every element of the holiday season. The channel is called Holiday Solutions and on it you'll find videos about seasonal cooking, party planning and creative gift ideas. For example, here are a few melt-in-your-mouth recipes:

In fact, Food Network chef Alton Brown is taking your questions now about Thanksgiving recipes and will answer a handful in a special video series next week. Submit your query in the comments portion of the Holiday Solutions channel and stay tuned for Brown's responses.

Sadia Harper, Howto & Style Manager, recently watched "Cooking the Perfect Turkey"

More about → "Holiday Solutions" channel debuts

How We Think About Social

Social features like commenting, rating, video responses and even just emailing or IMing a video's link have always been a part of the YouTube experience. So that's why we spend a lot of time here thinking about how to make the site an even more social place. We're especially focused on wanting to make it as easy as possible for you to find the people you know on YouTube and to follow their activity (what videos are they rating? favoriting? commenting on?) by subscribing to their channel; it's a great way to stay up on what they're into as well as discover new content yourself. As you consume these videos and start sharing your own, you in turn "feed" your friends a tasty helping of video goodness. It breaks into this virtuous distribution cycle:

As we've built these tools directly into YouTube itself, with things like friend suggestions based on your Gmail address book and connecting your YouTube account to social networks via our AutoShare feature, we've started to see people becoming even more social. Some of this activity is hard to quantify -- every day millions of YouTube links are sent via email, IM, Twitter and other communication methods -- but we can tell you that:

• Over one million people are AutoSharing videos to Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader
  
• Each AutoShared Tweet you send out from YouTube turns into an average of seven new sessions on YouTube.com
  
• Over a million people have found and subscribed to at least one friend on YouTube based on our Friend Suggest feature
  
• Most Tweeted video yesterday? Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"
• More than one million new subscriptions are created every day
  

We hope these numbers will only rise as we focus on giving you the tools you need to connect with the people who matter most to you. In the process, expect to be entertained and informed by the videos circulating amongst your most trusted friends, subscribers and networks. You can get started today by ensuring that you're discoverable on YouTube (click here and check off "Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address") and by connecting your account to your external networks via AutoShare (click here to set that up).

What do you think "social" on YouTube means, and where would you like to see it go? Leave a comment below.

Brian Glick, Product Manager, recently watched "Michael Jackson - Beat It," and James Phillips, Software Engineer, recently watched "New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less."

More about → How We Think About Social

Release Notes: 10/1/09

News and notes from our most recent push:

Personalized recommendations on the homepage: Recommendations for you aren't just for users with accounts anymore. Now everyone can visit the YouTube homepage to get an answer to the question, "What should I watch today?" We'll automatically generate some suggestions based on your past viewing history. Of course, you'll still get better, more specific and more consistent recommendations by creating a YouTube account.

Beginning the conversion of remaining old channels: We're starting the process today to convert all remaining channels still using the older platform to the new one. (This migration could take up to two weeks to complete.) Once again, your comments and feedback have been instrumental in helping the new version evolve and grow (you can see a list of items we addressed here). Now customizing and editing your channel is a lot easier, with plenty of options for organizing videos, and the channel refocuses attention on engaging with you and your videos, which, after all, is the centerpiece of any YouTube experience. And we've got a lot of great ideas and input from you on things you'd like to see next.

YouTube in Portuguese (the European kind): We've added Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal) to the list of languages in which you can experience YouTube. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, find "Current Language" and click on "Show languages." You'll see options there for both Português and Português (Brasil).

New discount in Creator's Corner: Logitech is offering YouTube users in the U.S. 15% off select Webcams. Click here for the coupon code and link.

Always, The YouTube Team

More about → Release Notes: 10/1/09

Update on New Channels

Update (9/16): The remaining items on our to-do list for new channels have been taken care of (with a few remaining bugs expected to be fixed in the next two weeks), so we're planning on switching all user channels still using the older version on September 30 and all partners on October 14. To read about the fixes and improvements that have been made, hop on over to the Channels Beta Blog.

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Update (7/11): We want to give you a heads up that we're changing the day on which we'll move all remaining channels over to the new version. Why? Well, July 15 is almost here, and we realized that we still have a few bugs and things left on the to-do list.

Specifically, here's what we plan to do before we roll the new version out to all remaining channels:

• Add transparency (now done)
  
• Fix some browser-specific layout bugs - in particular, IE6 has a few issues right now
• Allow you to default your channel to "grid" view
• Allow you to re-order your uploads & playlists
  
• Fixes for some of the other bugs you've helped find (such as grid view not always working in IE), and other small things
  

So when's the new date? That part's a little trickier, and rather than try to predict it, we'd rather focus our time on taking care of the above list. But we'll announce the new date no less than two weeks before it happens - and yes, it's still coming this summer. Keep an eye out here or on our beta blog. Thanks!

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It's been a week since we announced that a new version of channels is coming, and we wanted to give you an update on our progress. Well over a million of you have now opted in to the beta, and many of your channels are looking really good -- we were just admiring shotscience's and muzik4machines's designs.

Your feedback over the past two months has shaped -- and will continue to shape -- the evolution of this whole site and particularly your channels. We've been hard at work fixing some of the bugs you've pointed out, as well as taking care of some of your top requests. For instance, we're happy to announce that we'll be supporting transparency so that your backgrounds can indeed shine through -- this will be done prior to switching over to the new channel design. And some of the bugs we've taken care of now include reducing the occasional sluggishness that some users have reported, as well as fixing the scrollbar that broke for some when ads appear. (For a longer list of fixes and additions, go to our beta blog.) We'll share more of our progress later, too.

As always, you can learn more about how to switch to the new version of channels by visiting our Help Center, where we also have some tips on setting things up. We also encourage you to continue pointing out bugs in the beta and letting us know how we can improve. Best places to comment are below in this blog, in our beta blog or in the comment portion of our announcement video.

Posted by Brian Glick, Product Manager

More about → Update on New Channels

New Channels Coming Soon

Update (9/16): The remaining items on our to-do list for new channels have been taken care of (with a few remaining bugs expected to be fixed in the next two weeks), so we're planning on switching all user channels still using the older version on September 30 and all partners on October 14. To read about the fixes and improvements that have been made, hop on over to the Channels Beta Blog.

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Update (7/11): We want to give you a heads up that we're changing the day on which we'll move all remaining channels over to the new version. Why? Well, July 15 is almost here, and we realized that we still have a few bugs and things left on the to-do list.

Specifically, here's what we plan to do before we roll the new version out to all remaining channels:

• Add transparency (now done)
  
• Fix some browser-specific layout bugs - in particular, IE6 has a few issues right now
• Allow you to default your channel to "grid" view
• Allow you to re-order your uploads & playlists
  
• Fixes for some of the other bugs you've helped find (such as grid view not always working in IE), and other small things
  

So when's the new date? That part's a little trickier, and rather than try to predict it, we'd rather focus our time on taking care of the above list. But we'll announce the new date no less than two weeks before it happens - and yes, it's still coming this summer. Keep an eye out here or on our beta blog. Thanks!

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UPDATE (6/27): We've heard all your comments about the channel re-design these last few days. One reminder we'd like to throw out there is that we're still in development, and now is your chance to give feedback on things you'd like to see in the new version of channels. We're listening. You've already helped -- and will continue to help -- us shape and grow this product by commenting in this blog, in our beta blog and on our announcement video.

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A few months ago, we launched our YouTube channels redesign in beta (first via a secret opt-in URL that many of you discovered, then as a visible opt-in link). Hundreds of thousands of you are now using the new version, have contributed a lot of useful feedback, and have helped make the new channels beta stronger and faster. Here are a few cool examples of great new channel designs: IceflowStudios, Vlogbrothers, nalts, LisaNova, ThadewGrum, The White House, and University of Phoenix.


We're now ready to start rolling out the new channels design to more users. Starting today, all new accounts will automatically have the new version of channels. Here's a video introducing the new channels, the benefits, and how you can get started:







Finally, we'd like to give you advance warning that all existing channels will change over to the new design on July 15. (Partners, watch for separate communications about your changeover date.)


Want to try it out or start getting ready before July 15? Just click on the "Upgrade my channel!" link on your Channel Design page (and note that you can switch back anytime until July 15). Keep in mind that new channels are still in beta for now, so there may be a few elements missing here and there. If you have questions, please visit our Help Center. Also, we've been sharing our progress and gathering feedback from users on a dedicated channels beta blog. Join in if you're interested in learning more and want more frequent updates on our beta progress -- and let us know if there's anything that you'd like to see added to the new version of channels, too.

Thanks!

Brian Glick
Product Manager
The YouTube Team

More about → New Channels Coming Soon