YouTube has been listed as the main go to place to search for online videos, presentations, and see launches of new commercials (just what we are currently seeing right now in preparation for the Super Bowl this upcoming weekend). I have to say – my favorite so far is the Bark Side for Wolkswagen – classic! 🙂
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ntDYjS0Y3w[/youtube]
However, when you look at the overall statistics and uses of the video sharing website – the figures are pretty impressive. YouTube has just passed the mark of four billion videos being uploaded – per day! That is amazing! With all of this visual data being created, uploaded, and shared within the digital community, one of the challenges that we are seeing emerging is that there is just so much information out there that it is hard to category and save some of these great visual tools to use for the classroom or in research. Here is a video from Video Infographics highlighting the role of not only social media for searching information, but also the role YouTube has played in this area:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H61WvxOm1AM[/youtube]
Now – this is where emerging companies can stake out their claim and showcase their products to not only be viewed similarly to a video uploading and sharing establishment on social media, but offer something that may intrigue others to gravitate to. This is happening with the new video search engine Blinkx. The company recently announced that they got the patent for their moving thumbnail technology. Incorporating more specific searching within video uploading and sharing is going to be the future within this particular social media platform. With this site, you can search for various terms and you will not only get information from YouTube, but also results from Hulu, Vator.tv, and Blip.tv to name a few. What you get to see are some other examples of videos that you might have not been aware of previously, but are exposed to when looking at this particular video sharing site.
There are many opportunities you can use for this new search engine for videos – both in the classroom as well as in research. Here are just a few ways to use Blinkx in both PR research and teaching:
- Including Blinkx videos in presentations: There are many examples of PR being discussed both in the traditional news as well as popular television shows that you might have not been aware or. One way to use this particular site is to look for video clips to embed into your presentation to share with your students.
- Following news coverage from one centralized location during event: When a natural disaster hits or a crisis emerges for a company – if you are doing research that involves looking at how the media (traditional, web, or social) are covering the event – this may be a good tool for your research. For example, if you wanted to see how the media was reporting the Costa Concordia crisis in Italy, all you have to do is search for these terms and you will get many results (approx 11,000 videos in total). Great research project to work on. 🙂
- Teaching yourself a new skill or educate yourself on a topic: We are all lifelong learners – we never start learning and we have to explore new emerging technologies and features that would help us in our research and practice. There are various topics you can look at for videos – and one is related to teaching social media. Interviews, step-by-step use for some of the new sites, and personal commentary are just some of the types of videos you may get among your results.
In summary, what we have to be aware of when it comes to public relations and social media practices is that we have to look at the main platforms with specific features. We think of Facebook with social networking and Twitter with microblogs and of course videos with YouTube. While these are the mainstream social media platforms – our job as PR researchers and practitioners is to explore these new start ups and see if 1) they offer something that is similar to other products yet offers a unique characteristic; 2) understanding the pros and cons of the site and what are some of the key features it offers and 3) determine how this site and platform could potentially help in both the classroom and in research.
While there are going to be many startups in this area of visual and video searching and data visualization – we just have to see where this technology takes us as a business and communication society. We can always use more resources for our role as educators, researchers, and practitioners – and Blinkx could become revolutionary in the area of video search engines.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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