Hasbro brings Trivial Pursuit to YouTube

This post is part of the “BizBlog Series,” which was formally its own blog. Check back each week to see articles about partners and advertisers on YouTube, or search under the label 'BizBlog'.

What do you figure the Numa Numa guy knows about arts and literature? What about Tay Zonday’s knowledge of world history? Would you be willing to bet on whether Michael Buckley knows his geography? This week, Hasbro brings the world ‘You vs. YouTube’ Trivial Pursuit experiment, which asks players to do just that.

Hasbro has upgraded the old version of Trivial Pursuit to their ‘Bet You Know It’ edition, adding an interactive element where you bet on whether or not your opponents know the answer. In the ‘You vs. YouTube’ experiment, they’ve pitted the public against YouTube stars like the Davies-Carr brothers (from ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’) in a giant online tournament.

We’re excited about this at YouTube because it gives our partners a chance to shine, it provides users a fun gaming experience, and it gives Hasbro a chance to get the word out about their new game. Hasbro's Group Executive, Jane Ritson-Parsons, said of the online competition, "We know our consumers are online and watching as many of today’s stars are discovered online -- and many through YouTube — that we felt that a partnership with the world’s most popular video site would be a natural fit. It provides us with great context and relevance for our game introduction". In our opinion, they’ve done a number of innovative things from a marketing perspective:

• They evolved their product. Hasbro listened to their customers when they said the game questions were too hard or obscure, and tweaked their product accordingly. Questions were re-written, and they made the game more interactive through the ‘betting’ element.

• They recognized the power of viral video. Hasbro knew that YouTube stars have built an audience that resembles their own. By teaming up with our partners, they’ve added unique voices to their campaign. For example, on Michael Buckley’s channel, he talks about his ‘Trivial Pursuit Story’. Tay Zonday wrote a special song for the game. Gary Brolsma dances in his living room with friends during their Trivial Pursuit night. And the Davies-Carr brothers warn you to challenge them, or they’ll bite your finger...

• They share the love with the YouTube community. On the Trivial Pursuit channel, Hasbro has uploads of other partner videos discussing the challenge. Of particular note is mediocrefilms’ ‘REJECTED Trivial Pursuit Commercial’ By allowing other content creators to participate, they get a lot more reach into audiences they might not have considered directly targeting.Brand advertisers are starting to recognize the power of the YouTube community and popular partners.

We look forward to providing more fun and entertaining brand integration in the future. In the meantime, try out the game! ‘The People’s’ chips are down!

Margaret Healy, Strategic Partner Manager, recently watched “You vs. YouTube-EDBASSMASTER-Skippy Calls Hasbro”

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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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2009: The Year in Spotlights

You might notice a periodic module on the homepage called Spotlight Videos (if you don't, add it to your homepage). These run a few times per week and showcase interesting and timely videos from our community and partners, all organized around an event or theme. We'll often give you advance notice of upcoming spotlights in the Creator's Corner, our hub for videographers. Subscribe to the Creator's Corner blog and look for posts titled "Creators Call-Outs" to find out about opportunities to appear on our homepage.

As we plan the spotlight calendar for 2010, feel free to drop a comment below with suggestions for themes, milestones, holidays, events, and community stories that need to be told. Though some of our most popular spotlights in '09 centered around newsy themes or celebrities that gripped the whole world (see list below), we are equally interested in highlighting the lesser-told stories of how individuals can use YouTube to catalyze movements, memes, and new forms of creativity.

And with that, 2009's most popular homepage spotlights were:

1. Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits
2. Michael Jackson Tribute
3. Reality TV (at the height of the Jon & Kate Plus 8 frenzy)
4. Susan Boyle / Britain's Got Talent
5. Iran Protests
6. Mythbusters: YouTube Edition
7. Hannah Montana Concert and Vlog
8. Twilight-Inspired Parodies and Rant
9. World Oceans Day
10. Before They Were Stars, featuring Adrian Grenier, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Catherine Zeta Jones in early roles

Surprised? What was your favorite spotlight? What should we do more or less of? Looking forward to hearing your feedback and ideas for 2010. Please leave a comment below.

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently favorited "PostSecret: Fifty People One Question."

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Adopt a Feature v2: Who Will Be the New Champ?

Recently, we announced that a new set of features was in need of your loving care. Over 50 of you heeded round 1 champion thecomputernerd01's call to help -- that is, to make a video explaining to the YouTube community how annotations, tags, Quicklist, mobile uploads and/or the customized homepage work. Almost 50% of the group chose to "adopt" annotations, and tags and Quicklist also received a decent amount of attention. You even made videos about a few features not on the list, like captions, the new channel design and widescreen viewing. So far, the videos submitted for this round have been viewed over 34K times and already there are some choice tutorials out there, such as...

...MikeandToneRP's explanation of tags, starring Megan Fox (um, not):

...LaughingLeaf's video on Quicklist, complete with a blooper reel:



...AJCShow's fast n' easy overview of sending a video from your phone to YouTube:



We'll be showcasing some of the best submissions on the homepage on Thursday, July 30, beginning at 6am PT, so it's not too late for your moment in the sun. Simply make a video about any or all of the features listed at the start of this blog post, and include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags. Share your video far and wide -- our autoshare feature will help a lot with that -- and try to build views for it. It's one of the factors we'll use to decide who makes it to the homepage and who takes the crown for this edition of the program.

Anyway, it's almost the weekend, so go forth and adopt (a feature)!

Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management, recently watched "Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend."

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Adopt a Feature v2

You may remember the inaugural edition of Adopt a Feature, for which you made videos about AudioSwap, Country Pulldown, Insight, Playlists, Quick Capture, and Subscriptions. These videos generated 818,698 views (they're all collected here) and a bunch of them even got featured on our homepage. At the end of the two month run, thecomputernerd01 was crowned the Adopt a Feature king, thanks to his zany explanation of how the country/language pulldown menus work -- a video that accounted for a third of all of the program's views. He also got this awesome T-shirt.

Josh took a break from ribbing his grandpa to tell you why you should get involved with Adopt a Feature v2.



In case you're still buzzing from Josh's high-energy onslaught, here's what you need to know: Make a video about any or all of the features on the list below (click on the name of the feature to get more information about it). Include the name of the feature and "adoptafeature" in the tags -- this is important; it's how we'll locate your video for inclusion on our channel and possibly on the YouTube homepage.

* Annotations
* Customize Your Homepage
* Tags
* Quicklist
* Mobile Upload

(By the way, for folks waiting to hear more about the roll-out of new channels, we should have an update in a few days.)

Posted by Hunter Walk, Director, Product Management

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