Your Ticket to Davos

Do you have the ultimate idea about how to close the poverty gap? Here’s your chance to tell the world. For the fourth year, through the Davos Debates program, one lucky YouTube user will get an all-access pass to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where global leaders gather to tackle the most important issues facing our world.

To enter the running, all you have to do is submit your one-minute video summarizing your ideas on the importance of inclusive growth - a key theme of this year’s event. Not sure what inclusive growth really means? Past Davos Debates winners break it down for you here:





The winner with the best video will be selected as an informal YouTube community representative to participate in the Annual Meeting and take part in a special panel during the event. You’ll not only have the opportunity to rub elbows with the most powerful leaders in the world, you’ll be given a platform to share your views with them.

The deadline to submit your ideas is January 14, so visit the Davos channel today to make your voice heard.


Ramya Raghavan, News and Politics Manager, recently watched "White House Tree Time-Lapse"

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Heating up the 2010 midterm elections with In-Stream Ads

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'. 


Getting elected to the House or Senate these days is no longer as easy as putting up some yard signs, holding babies and smiling at the local senior center. With 68% of U.S. voters heading online before they vote to do research on local ballot initiatives, being online is crucial to getting elected. For the last couple of election cycles, we have seen how important it is for politicians and issue advocacy groups to maintain channels on YouTube — but when it comes to advertising, most campaigns get their messages to constituents through online ads across search and the Google Display Network with tactics like Google Blasts.

This cycle, dozens of races in 15 battleground states are incorporating a different ad format into their campaigns: In-Stream Ads. Using In-Stream Ads, candidates and issue advocacy groups have reached millions of U.S. voters this primary season. The best part? It straddles that line between digital and TV advertising: most campaign managers and political agencies are taking their standard made-for-TV 30-second ads and simply re-purposing them to run on YouTube. Campaigns can target locations (like their state or district), as well as content categories on YouTube, allowing them to tailor their message to specific groups of constituents. For example, a candidate interested in reaching young moms might target nutrition, fitness, health and parenting categories.

Defeat the Debt, a non profit group driving issue awarenessof the national debt, has already reached over 1 million people by running In-Stream ads across the country. In some markets they have even opted to run In-Stream instead of TV ads due to their effectiveness. Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett has also run In-Stream Ads in conjunction with his television campaigns, reaching almost 500K potential voters in Wisconsin on YouTube. Senatorial candidates Marco Rubio (Florida) and Dino Rossi (Washington) have also implemented campaigns.

While we can’t predict how politicians will actually do once they’re elected, it’s clear that their campaigns are taking advantage of the latest ways to engage and inform voters on important issues in 2010.

Amy Barth, In-Stream Ads Specialist, Google Elections and Issue Advocacy, recently watched ”Guy Walks Across America”

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Bob Dudley, Chief Executive for BP Response, answers your questions about the oil spill

It’s been 71 days since the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Since then, we’ve used our platforms to make sure that people can watch and participate in real time, access all the latest information on the crisis and response and share concerns through various programs and initiatives.

Now we’re teaming up with PBS NewsHour to take you to BP headquarters in Houston for an exclusive interview with Bob Dudley, President and CEO of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. In a live session moderated by the PBS NewsHour’s Ray Suarez, Mr. Dudley will respond directly to your questions.



Now is your chance to ask BP questions on accountability, the clean-up plan, recovery efforts in the Gulf Region, environmental impact, the status of the relief well drilling, the role of the U.S. government, the future of offshore drilling and of BP as a company.

Using Google Moderator on youtube.com/citizentube, submit your questions and vote the best ones to the top. Then join us for the live interview tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, at 3:30 pm ET/12:30 pm PT on CitizenTube. Portions of the interview will also be aired Thursday evening on the PBS NewsHour and available on YouTube.

Early on, we partnered with NewsHour to bring you a live stream of the oil gushing into the waters of the Gulf. On June 15, we streamed President Obama’s Oval Office address on the oil spill crisis on CitizenTube. After the President’s speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answered questions submitted by YouTube users, who cast nearly 200,000 votes to select the top questions from 7,000+ submitted.

We hope that these various opportunities to engage and participate in a current event help you and fellow citizens stay more informed and have your voice heard.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager, and Ginny Hunt, Google Public Sector Manager

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Celebrating Internet Safety Month

Millions of people view, upload, share, and comment on YouTube videos every day. The vast majority of these people have good intentions, but as with any community, a few don't. This month, we’re celebrating the 3rd Annual Internet Safety Month by spotlighting videos that educate families on how to stay safe online. From making smart decisions about posting personal information, to dealing with rude comments and cyberbullies, these straightforward tips will enable you to have the best possible experience on YouTube and across the Web. Be sure to check them out and also take a moment to brush up on some of the tools YouTube offers to help you stay safe on our site:

• Community Guidelines: This is our description of what is and isn’t allowed on the site. You should read these Guidelines before you post content, or if you see something that you think maybe shouldn’t be on YouTube.

• Flagging: If you see something that you think violates our Community Guidelines, flag it! The flag icon is located below the video player. When flagging a video be sure to let us know which of our policies you think the video violates and we’ll review it.

• Safety Mode: A setting that you can opt in to that will filter out content that may be inappropriate for sensitive users and teens. This setting reduces your chances of stumbling across content that you may not want to see. 

• Unlisted Videos: These videos don’t appear in search results and only people who have the video's link can view them. Unlike private sharing, there’s no limit to the number of people who can view unlisted videos.

• Help & Safety Tool: A tool that allows you to report privacy violations, block users and report harassment and bullying anonymously.

The more our community treats each other with respect, keeps personal information private, and reports inappropriate content, the better the YouTube community experience as a whole will be. Please do your part!

Mandy Albanese, Policy & Communications Associate, recently watched "Digital Citizenshop - Who Will You Be?”

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Your interview with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

[Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog]

It’s not every day that you get to ask your country’s leader questions about issues you care about. But that’s exactly what Canadians did this afternoon when Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with YouTube.

Roughly 170,000 votes were cast through Google Moderator for nearly 1,800 questions -- giving voice to thousands of Canadians. And don’t think that these were softball questions. Canadians asked their Prime Minister questions on a wide variety of important topics: from the deficit to Canada’s role in Afgahistan, from child care to protecting pensions. We tried to select questions that represented the most popular topics and would solicit conversation. (We also minimized duplicate questions so we could cover a range of issues.) Neither the Prime Minister nor his office knew in advance which questions he’d be asked.

You can see the Prime Minister respond to your questions in this video:



Prime Minister Harper is the second world leader to answer your questions in a YouTube Interview. It’s your appetite for political discussion on YouTube that creates these opportunities to access public leaders in this format, and we look forward to conducting more YouTube Interviews soon.

Posted by Jacob Glick, Google Canada Policy Counsel

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The Internet in America: A YouTube Interview with the FCC

If you're reading this, then you're probably on the Internet -- via your laptop, your mobile phone or other handheld device, or maybe even through your television. But in 2010, millions of Americans still do not have access to the wealth of information made available on the Web. Even though the Internet was invented in the U.S. over 20 years ago, many Americans lag behind in both access to the Internet and speed of connections, which is why the Federal Communications Commission (or the FCC, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. communications industry) is launching its much-anticipated National Broadband Plan next Tuesday, to lay out its strategy for connecting all Americans to fast, affordable high-speed Internet.

After this plan is announced, you have the opportunity to interview FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in the second of a series of in-person YouTube interviews with government leaders. (Our first, with United States President Barack Obama, took place last month.) Go to CitizenTube today to submit your video or text question via Google Moderator, and vote on your favorites; we'll bring a selection of the top-voted questions to Chairman Genachowski in our interview next Tuesday, March 16. The deadline for submission is Sunday night March 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

To help structure our conversation with the Chairman, we've broken the interview down into seven topics. To learn more about what the FCC is doing in each area, click on the links next to each topic below. Then submit your question on CitizenTube under one of the topic headings.

• Access and Affordability
• Mobile and Wireless
• Security and Privacy
• Digital Economy
• Internet in Schools
• Open Internet / Network Neutrality
• Others (learn more at Broadband.gov)

Access to the Internet has transformed almost every aspect of our economy and society. This is your chance to press the FCC on how the National Broadband Plan will work, and ask your questions about improving the Internet in America. We're looking forward to seeing your questions and hearing what the Chairman has to say.

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "The Internet in 1969".

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Iraqi Voices: Voter Perspectives on Election Day

On Sunday, despite as many as 100 bomb blasts throughout the country, according to news reports, Iraqi citizens flocked to the polls in higher-than-expected numbers to vote in the first nationwide parliamentary election since 2005. Amidst 38 confirmed casualties, Iraqi citizens from 18 different provinces inside Iraq -- as well as 16 other countries around the world -- cast their ballots to determine who will fill the Prime Minister's office and 325 seats in the nation's parliament.

What is it like to be an Iraqi citizen during this important and volatile time in the nation's history? We partnered with Al Jazeera English to find out, by collecting opinions directly from Iraqi voters on video in our "Iraqi Voices" project. The footage is still coming in as the votes are counted, but you can go to Al-Jazeera's YouTube Channel to see the playlist of content uploaded to YouTube so far. (If you'd like to put things in perspective, you can compare these clips to the ones we collected from American voters during the 2008 election in our Video Your Vote platform with PBS.)

One Iraqi got to the polls at 5 a.m. only to find out that his name was not on the list:

This video documents the actual voting experience in Iraq:

And this woman explains why she will not vote in this year's election:



If you're from Iraq or have thoughts about the Iraqi elections, upload your videos to the Al-Jazeera website (http://interactive.aljazeera.net/iraqelections) using YouTube Direct and your video might be shown on television.

Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "التصويت الخاص للجيش (محمد الصالح" (with subtitles)

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YouTube Interviews: Pelosi, Boehner, Reid Answer Your Top Questions after Health Care Summit

For over seven hours yesterday, the nation's top leaders gathered in Washington for a unique conversation on the future of health care reform. Moderated by President Obama, the health care summit revealed disparate views on current legislation, with Democrats arguing for comprehensive reform and Republicans pressing for a more incremental approach (or for starting over entirely). We streamed the entire summit on CitizenTube, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all agreed to answer some of your top-voted questions from our Google Moderator platform during the event. (We also offered the opportunity to Senator Mitch McConnnell, the Senate Minority Leader, but he was unable to participate due to a scheduling conflict.)

Though it's doubtful many of you were able to tune in to the entire meeting, the fact that it was broadcast online was an important aspect of the discussion. It spoke to one of the top concerns that YouTube users posed to President Obama in our YouTube Interview earlier this month, when they demanded that health care proceedings become more transparent.

We selected three top-voted questions and the two top-voted ideas that you submitted during the summit, and the lawmakers replied with the YouTube videos that we've embedded below, as well as posted on the YouTube homepage. (We didn't ask the top-voted question regarding putting legistlation online, as all the legislation is currently available on the Internet.) Seeing each lawmaker answer the same five questions affords an interesting perspective on where both parties stand with respect to the issues that matter most to the citizens who participated.

Here are the questions and ideas that each leader answered. We'll leave the full list up on CitizenTube for the next few days:

1. What is the explicit reasoning behind mandating the purchase of healthcare services?
- Chris, University of Florida

2. Do you believe that healthcare is a right, or that health insurance is a right?
- Brian, Student

3. Thompson Reuters had performed a study in which they concluded that 40% of healthcare waste was from unnecessary care. Unnecessary care is primarily a result of a fear of being sued, aka malpractice. What is being done to address malpractice?
- JatPat, Chicago, IL

4. Why not quit artificially limiting the market? Stop tying health insurance to employers and increase the market dramatically. Allow insurance providers to sell across state lines and increase it even more. The larger the market the lower the price.
- crodgers1981, Lincoln, NE

5. All people voting on these bills should be required to personally read the entire bill before being allowed to vote on it. It is ridiculous that these bills are thousands of pages long. Bills should be written in clear language.
- Blinn, Illinois

Here are Speaker Pelosi's answers:



Here are Congressman Boehner's:




And here are Senator Reid's replies:

YouTube has become the place where leaders can connect directly with citizens around key events in the political process. That opportunity for meaningful dialogue makes politics feel more personal, more democratic, and opens up Washington in exciting new ways. Stay tuned for more YouTube interviews, and let us know in the comments who you'd like the chance to speak with on this platform.

Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics, recently watched "White House Health Care Summit Part I."

More about → YouTube Interviews: Pelosi, Boehner, Reid Answer Your Top Questions after Health Care Summit

The White House Answers More of Your Questions

As we announced earlier this week, the White House agreed to answer more of the top questions you submitted for our YouTube Interview with the President on Monday. Today, we hosted a live chat in which three administration officials - Heather Higginbottom from the Domestic Policy Council, Brian Deese of the National Economic Council, and Ben Rhodes of the National Security Council - answered additional questions submitted in response to the President's State of the Union address on January 27. Macon Phillips, the White House New Media Director, moderated the discussion and also took some of your questions in real-time, using our Moderator platform on CitizenTube.

Here's the video of the chat, just posted to the White House YouTube channel.



We appreciate all the feedback we've received this week in response to our interview with the President, and we look forward to incorporating your suggestions into upcoming programs. We'll be announcing more events soon that will allow you to connect with your leaders via YouTube, so stay tuned to CitizenTube for more details.


Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "Presidential YouTube Interview - behind the scenes"

More about → The White House Answers More of Your Questions

Your Questions for President Obama

Today, President Obama had his first exclusive interview after his State of the Union speech with you, the YouTube community. The President engaged in a direct conversation about a broad range of issues, from generating jobs to opening up the health care process to investments in nuclear energy.

The best part of the process was that it was driven by you. ​Five days ago, as the President began his State of the Union address, we opened up our Moderator platform on CitizenTube, and over 55,000 of you submitted and voted on both video and text questions. Some of them were hard-hitting, others were emotional, and some were even funny.

You can watch the full interview now:



Only able to ask less than 0.2% of the 11,696 questions submitted, it was hard to choose the final handful. Here's how the selection process worked: we tried to cover a range of issues, minimize duplicate questions, and include both video and text submissions. First, we looked at which topics had the highest participation -- like jobs, foreign policy, health care and government reform -- to determine how many questions to ask in each category. We then took the top 5% of video and text questions and picked questions that reflected what you cared about. None of them were chosen by the White House or seen by the President before the interview.

In some cases, we combined questions, grouping similar ones from different categories like health care and government reform:

"Why are the health care meetings, procedures, etc not on CSPAN as promised?" - Mr. Anderson, Texas

"How do you expect the people of this country to trust you when you have repeatedly broken promises that were made on the campaign trail. Most recently, the promise to have a transparent healthcare debate..." - Warren Hunter, Brooklyn

Sometimes the top overall question in the category was a video question:



To try to get as many question in as possible, we had a section called "Good idea/Bad idea" in which we tried to solicit short responses from the President on ideas you sent in that might not be presented to him in traditional interviews. And in all cases, we tried to select the top questions that would solicit conversation, lead to substantive answers, and hadn't been asked in previous programs we've had with the President.

We had many more questions on hand than we had time to deliver, so we're pleased that the White House has agreed to respond to more of the top-voted questions in their blog soon, at whitehouse.gov.

We hope this interview brings us one step closer to creating better access to your government through YouTube -- and we'd love to hear your feedback and any other ideas you have on YouTube's political programming.

Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics, recently watched, "The YouTube Interview with President Obama"

More about → Your Questions for President Obama

Live Tonight on YouTube: The State of the Union

Tonight at 9 p.m. ET we'll be livestreaming the President's State of the Union address on YouTube. As we announced yesterday, not only will you have the opportunity to watch the speech live online, you'll also be able to submit your questions for the President during and after the speech, and the President himself will respond to a collection of your top-voted questions in a live interview at the White House next week.

When the State of the Union address begins at 9 p.m. ET, we'll open a Google Moderator series on CitizenTube (youtube.com/citizentube) that will allow you to submit and vote on questions (in text or on video) for the President. Be ready to submit your questions right after the speech as we'll only keep the platform open for a few days.

How will we know which questions to bring to the President in the interview? You'll tell us by how you voted. After the votes have been cast, we'll assemble a shortlist of the top questions, ensuring that we cover a range of issues, minimize duplicate questions, and include a mix of both video and text submissions. This is your opportunity for an exclusive interview with the President, so be sure to submit great questions and vote for the ones you think should be asked.

If you're submitting your question on video (which we prefer), please be sure to keep it short (20 seconds or less) and use the highest video and audio quality possible so that we can hear you loud and clear.

After the speech, we'll highlight the video of the entire State of the Union address, so those of you who aren't able to see it live can still watch and participate afterwards. We'll also feature Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell's official GOP response to the President's State of the Union, in what promises to be a lively and important discussion of our nation's future in 2010.

See you tonight at 9 p.m. ET on CitizenTube.

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "NEWSWEEK & YouTube: Nouriel Roubini on the 2010 Economy."

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YouTube's All-Access Pass to Davos

For the past three years at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, YouTube has partnered with WEF to give YouTube users the chance to send videos to world leaders. Fom a special production booth up the Swiss Alps, presidents, CEOs, and global change-makers respond directly to those videos throughout the conference. This year, we're opening up the conference even further by allowing you to share your ideas using our new Moderator tool which will be incorporated into three different panel discussions at Davos. Go to the Davos channel (youtube.com/davos) to submit your ideas and questions.

Loic LeMeur will bring your questions to his panel on the growing influence of social networks; Rima Maktabi of Al Arabiya will use your ideas on her televised panel on the balance of power in the Middle East, and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times will include your thoughts in the debate over female genital mutiliation, a panel which will feature the winner of our "Your Pitch to the World" contest, Julia Lalla-Maharajh.

And as usual, we'll be streaming your questions at our YouTube booth at Davos, too.




One value of the Moderator tool is that it allows you to engage via video and text. You can also vote up the most important ideas and questions submitted by others to help determine which issues you want the panelists to address. We used the same platform in Copenhagen for the CNN/YouTube Debate on climate change, and will continue to use it in 2010 as a way to bring your participation to televised events.

Go to YouTube.com/Davos and join the discussion now. Here's more information about each panel, including the deadlines for submission:

January 20: The Growing Influence of Social Networks

• Host: Loic LeMeur (Seesmic), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Reid Hoffmann (LinkedIn), Owen van Natta (MySpace), Gina Bianchini (Ning), and others

January 21: The Balance of Power in the Middle East

• Host: Rima Maktabi (Al Arabiya)

January 30: YouTube Debate on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

• Host: Nicholas Kristof (The New York Times)

Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, recently watched "Al Arabiya Debate"

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Iraqi Government on YouTube

Governments, heads of state, and leaders from around the world are on YouTube, including the Pope, the Royal Family, and Queen Rania, and presidents from the United States to France, South Korea to Estonia. Today we're especially pleased to announce that the Iraqi Government has launched a dedicated YouTube channel, at youtube.com/iraqigov. Learn more from Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:

Earlier this year, I visited Baghdad as a guest of the U.S. State Department to engage in conversations about the role of technology in Iraq. In discussions with elected officials, private companies and NGOs, I routinely heard the desire to connect with fellow citizens, Iraqis outside the country's borders, and cultures across the world. But it wasn't just the Iraqi Government who expressed an interest in YouTube — I was pleasantly surprised by the high level of awareness from a wide variety of Iraqis. One young student told us she uses YouTube to understand what is really happening in her country based on the variety of opinions, citizen journalism and news reports uploaded to the site. There was little difference between her examples and those we often hear in other countries, which speaks to both the global community on YouTube and the universality of the video experience.

Just this past week, our CEO Eric Schmidt traveled to Iraq to meet with government officials there about the challenge and opportunities they face. While in Iraq, Eric shot this video for Citizentube:

We hope that by launching on YouTube, the Iraqi Government and their citizens will also find it easy to use YouTube to engage in such conversations, and bring their proceedings, policies and ideas to a larger audience around the world.

Hunter Walk, Director of Product Management

More about → Iraqi Government on YouTube

If Only Every Homework Assignment Had Prizes Like This...

As a new school year unfolds, here's an assignment for America's students from the U.S. Department of Education and YouTube: in two minutes or less, make a video showing the nation and the world how education will help you achieve your dreams, and upload it to the submission platform on the Department of Education's YouTube channel.

The good news is that there are no failing grades and the top three submissions, as voted by the YouTube community, will each be issued a $1,000 prize by the DOE. Learn more about the "I Am What I Learn" video contest from Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education:



The contest is open to U.S. middle, high school, college and post-grad students, ages 13 and up, and the deadline to submit is October 20. For complete rules and FAQs, please visit www.ed.gov/iamwhatilearn.

Ramya Raghavan, News and Politics, recently watched "Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price."

More about → If Only Every Homework Assignment Had Prizes Like This...