Month: September 2008

Uploads to YouTube increase to 1GB

Yesterday I posted about micro-casting website 12seconds.tv. And thanks to Kyle and Ron, I now have my very own 12seconds channel with nothing on it (paging Bruce Springsteen ).

Today, I’m heading in the opposite direction, sharing the latest news from the biggest name in online video.

YouTube announced this week that it users can now upload videos as large as 1 gigabyte. Up till now, users were limited to a measly 100 megabytes for their uploads. The new video uploader is now available to anyone who wants to opt in. It also lets you edit your clip’s metadata during upload.

This is good news to anyone who desires to post longer or higher-quality video to the service.

Thanks to TechCrunch and LifeHacker for the info. As TechCrunch points out, YouTube is actually playing catch-up with some of the other services.

Much of these features were already available from other services, but it indicates that YouTube really does have a view of what’s going on in the market and wants to stay competitive in that space even though it’s still the de facto leader.

12seconds: Twitter for TV

For people too rushed to read a Twitter tweet: introducing 12second.tv. The site allows users to offer micro-commentary in 12-second nibbles.

This site (still in private beta) was mentioned in Poynter’s piece on 10 emerging technologies for online news (h/t @steverubel). As an example of how journalists could use 12seconds.tv, Poynter also points (heh) to a clip of an “interactive anchor” at a real TV news station preparing to log on.

Ron Bronson has also discovered 12seconds and he, like me, isn’t quite ready to join the revolution.

But imagine the possibilities for higher ed:

  • a 12-second recruitment video
  • a 12-second newscast
  • a 12-second video annual report
  • a 12-second campaign video

    • What do you think? You have more than 12 seconds to leave a comment of more than 140 characters.

    Friday Five: higher ed odds and sods

    Important stuff about Twitter, LinkedIn, Unigo, rankings and geeks

    While I slack, other higher ed bloggers and news outlets have been cranking out some good stuff. Here are five recent posts you should check out:

    1. 10 reasons to monitor Twitter. Fellow Twitter junkie Brad J. Ward‘s list is solid. And he offers examples, straight from the tweeters.
    2. A case study on setting up a LinkedIn alumni group. Last spring I posted about Caltech’s use of LinkedIn to connect with alumni. Kyle James picked up and ran with the idea. Here, he details how Wofford College set up their own LinkedIn group.
    3. Creating the college anti-rankings. Inside Higher Ed reports on the Education Conservancy‘s creation of College Speaks, “an explicitly anti-rankings system for the college search.” A prototype was presented Thursday at the National Association for College Admissions Counseling Conference in Seattle. (The Education Conservancy is best known for campaigning against the “reputational” surveys used by U.S. News & World Report for its rankings.)
    4. Sam Jackson extols the virtues of Unigo. Unigo is the latest player in the college search game but it leverages the power of social networking by involving students. It launched last week with 225 colleges and universities and 30,000-plus reviews. Jackson was involved in its creation so he has an insider’s perspective.
    5. MIT: We’re not all geeks. Really. This MIThBusters video protesting the MIT nerd stereotype may have had the opposite effect. According to the Chronicle’s Wired Campus blog, “the video frustrated one of MIT’s most-famous geeks, Henry Jenkins, a co-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program.” He ranted on his blog: “Most of the folks they depict still come across looking like geeks, not that there’s anything wrong with that!”

    Social networking’s two-thirds majority

    According to this, 68 percent of Americans who use the Internet say they visit social networks, which for the sake of this study includes blogs. These numbers come from the August/September 2008 Insight Report from MarketTools. (You can download the latest MarketTools report, and earlier reports, from this site.)

    Other gleanings from the report:

    • 19 percent of adults say they visit blogs, communities or social networks daily
    • A higher percentage of women do so than men (22 percent vs. 16 percent)
    • The older you get, the less likely you are to visit social networks daily
    • 33 percent of Generation-Y respondents (people mostly in their 20s) visit these sites every day.
    • 17 percent of Generation X (mostly in their 30s and early 40s) visit these sites daily.
    • 11 percent of Baby Boomers (in their mid 40s to early 60s) visit social media sites daily.
    • 8 percent percent of Seniors visit daily.

    Nothing too surprising here. Women are generally more social than men, and younger Internet users are more steeped in social networking than their elders. But it’s nice to see numbers that back up our hunches.

    Via KD Paine’s PR Measurement Blog.

    Hitting the books for PR School 2.0

    I’ve been busily working on thinking about my upcoming presentation for the Higher Ed Experts webinar I’m presenting as part of PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications, to be held in about a month. My session is titled “Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’ts to keep your clip book fat.”

    I’m not sure how many PR folks keep a clip book these days. (We don’t, unless our online del.icio.us version counts as one.) But the concept behind the webinar is simple: new media is gaining prominence as a distribution outlet for institutions’ stories. I’ve got a lot of ideas in my head about this session. I just need to get them down on slides.

    Anyway, I hope you’ll set aside some time and budget to catch at least one of the three webinars in the PR School 2.0 series. Here’s a rundown, lifted straight from the site (sans the HEE graphic):

    Webinar Series – PR School 2.0: How to survive and thrive in the new online world of Public Relations and Communications: October 21, 22 & 23, 2008

    “PR School 2.0” is a 3-webinar series that will bring you up-to-speed on the new higher ed PR practices powered by Web 2.0 technologies. It will show you how you can put the online monitoring of your brand on autopilot at almost no cost, upgrade your story pitching with best online practices and cross over to online news publishing. Designed for seasoned PR practitioners as well as new comers, this series will give you the tools necessary to do your job in the conversation age.

    October 21, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 28, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
    Monitoring 360: how to make sure you hear it and see it before they do
    Responsible for the Web and Social Media initiatives at Texas A&M University College of Engineering, Matt Herzberger will guide in the maze of free and for-a-fee monitoring tools to help you set up an effective system that works but doesn’t require hours and hours of your time. By sharing best practices and good tips, he will help you monitor your brand online without any information overload side effects.

    October 22, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 29, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
    Upgraded story pitching: Do’s and Don’t’s to keep your clip book fat
    Andrew Careaga, director of communications at Missouri S&T, will share creative strategies and techniques to help you keep your stories and your institution in the old and new media. With his list of do’s and don’t’s, you will make the best use of the Web and other online tools to successfully pitch reporters, editors and bloggers.

    October 23, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: October 30, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
    Online news publishing 101: how to go beyond online press releases with a dedicated news website
    Geoffrey Mock, manager of internal communications at Duke and editor of Duke Today, will explain why and how his institution launched Duke Today, an online news website serving the community. He will also share lessons learned on covering, writing and publishing news for an online daily publication and how to drive readership to the site.

    * * *

    I hope to see you there!