Tag: youtube

Posted on

Iranian Protesters Are Patriots

WARNING – CONTAINS SOME EXPLICITLY VIOLENT CONTENT

February 11th marks the 31st anniversary of the Revolution in Iran. It was that long ago that the Shah relinquished control and Iran officially became an Islamic Republic. In advance of the expected protests against the current regime, the Iranian government has crippled or blocked nearly all citizen access to the internet.

The protests began in earnest last June, after it became widely believed that the presidential election had been rigged.

I’m sure that the unholy men in power there in Tehran wish they could control things like this. It turns out, they can’t. Videos showing the massive protests have been smuggled out of the country and posted to YouTube. Plus, Google Earth spent a little extra cash and pointed a satellite at Tehran, just so we could get a bird’s eye view. (Maybe Ache-mean-a-jihadebad will think twice the next time he wants to ban gmail?)

Look, I’m warning you again. Some of the stuff shown below is not for the faint of heart. Don’t watch it.

There’s more to read and watch over at CitizenTube and the YouTube-Global blog.

Want to read more about the 2009 Iranian elections? Check out the Niteowl Greenbriefs in the drop-down Archive list, at the top right of this page.

Posted on

Viral Videos Get Professional Help

Have you ever wondered how the most popular videos at youtube get so popular? It’s no accident, says Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of The Commotion Group. In a guest blog at TechCrunch, Dan gives us 9 secrets his viral video marketing company uses to get from 100 thousand to 1.5 million views.

According to Dan:

“There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.

The members of my startup are hired guns – our clients give us videos and we make them go viral. Our rule of thumb is that if we don’t get a video 100,000 views, we don’t charge.”

Even though it is a rather long piece (and coming from me, that’s saying something!), it was reasonably interesting to see how the phenomenon is actually orchestrated. Some of the techniques are so simple, it’s amazing. Other techniques might make you stop and go, hmmm….. For instance, the way they leverage social sites, manipulate online relationships, create false conversations about their project… aren’t these things basically being dishonest to get the job done? It may not be illegal, but is it ethical? What do you think about this? Does it even matter?

I am Jon, and I am going, hmmm……