YouTube Becoming Increasingly Vital Platform for News

For many, YouTube is a beloved repository for humorous content, how-tos and general entertainment. However, YouTube is increasingly becoming a platform for news.

For four months between January 2011 to March 2012, the most searched-for terms on YouTube were related to news events, according to a Pew Research Center report released Monday.

The most popular videos on the web’s third most-visited site concerned natural disasters or political upheaval since videos with “intense visuals” tend to perform best, says Pew. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami was the most popular news event on the video network: In the week following the disaster (March 11 to 18), the 20 most-viewed videos related to the tragedy were viewed more than 96 million times.

The elections in Russia and unrest in the Middle East were the second and third most popular news topics, respectively. If the focus on international events seems unusual, remember that 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the U.S.

The footage itself was mixed — 58% of those included in the survey were edited; the remaining 42% was raw footage. Unlike much of the rest of the YouTube, personalities did not play a large role in a video’s success; no one person was featured in more than 5% of the most popular videos in the “News & Politics” section of YouTube between January 2011 and March 2012. Length, too, varied. The median video length was 2 minutes and 1 second, far longer than the average segment on local TV news, which is 41 seconds, and shorter than the 2-minute-and-23-second average national network evening newscasts allocate to a single story.

Both citizens and professionals are playing a role in video creation and distribution. A little more than half (51%) came from news organizations — or, at least, bore the logos of news organizations. Thirty-nine percent of the most-viewed videos came from citizens. Five percent came from corporate and political groups, and the sources of the remaining five percent could not be identified.

In many cases, the videos and their distribution were collaborative. As Pew notes, “a complex, symbiotic relationship has developed between citizens and news organizations on YouTube, a relationship that comes close to the continuous journalistic ‘dialogue’ many observers predicted would become the new journalism online.” Citizens are creating and posting their own videos, and even responsible for uploading more than a third of the content from news organizations. News organizations, in turn, are including citizen-produced content in their own reporting. The interplay, Pew observes, is creating a new kind of television news.

The collaboration is promising, but issues still exist. Although YouTube has guidelines for content attribution, not everyone adheres to them, nor do they offer a solution for every scenario. News organizations sometimes post citizen-captured video without clear attribution; in turn, citizens are repurposing copyrighted material without permission. All too often, the source of a video cannot be identified altogether, creating opportunity for manufactured or even falsified information to spread.

What’s perhaps most interesting about news-watching on YouTube is the way it enables consumers to set their own “on-demand” news agenda. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami registered among the most-viewed news subjects for three consecutive weeks following the disaster, for example.

And what does that mean for news organizations? Lots of positives, says Pew. YouTube offers considerable opportunities to grow one’s audience, brand and ad revenue — a thing perhaps best exemplified by YouTube’s revenue-sharing scheme with the newswire Reuters. It’s also a rich source for raw video footage.

For a deeper dive into the findings, see Pew’s full report here.

Social Media Is the Top News Source for Brits Under 25

Social media is the news source of choice for Britain’s under 25-year-olds residents.

According to the first Reuters Institute Digital Report, 43% of people between 16 and 24 get their news from social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, rather than search engines, such as Google, the Telegraph reports.

Over 45-year-olds’ use of social media for getting news pales in comparison to the younger demographic — just 11% say they get news from the social web. For 33% of British people over 45, search engines are the online method of choice.

Between different social networks, Facebook is the most popular place to share news. More than half (55%) of people share news on Facebook, beating email, where 33% of people share, and Twitter, where 23% of people share. Few people responded that they share frequently to Google+ or LinkedIn.

The report’s editor, Nic Newman, found that Europeans are generally less interested than Americans in sharing news or engaging otherwise digitally.

As far as what they like to read goes, UK readers are more interested in science and technology news (23%) than business and financial news (19%).

Where do you get your news — search engines, media outlets or social networks?

How is Social Media Impacting Traditional News Distribution?

There is no denying the impact that social media has had on the news industry. Particularly, news distribution. People online, now more than ever, are reading, monitoring, and most importantly sharing news on their mobile phones, with their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and with countless other social media digital tools.

We recently surveyed “social news consumers” and asked them their habits, their interests, their uses of social media as it applies to news, and the results were recently published in the 2012 Social Media News Survey Report. This is the third year that we’ve run this survey, and the results, in our opinion, keep getting more and more interesting.
Five Statistics To Think About

Social media news is not new. The majority of our survey sample indicated they have been using social media tools for more than five years (34.5%) with more than 63% indicating upwards of three years of social media tool experience. Nearly 33% of respondents use social media tools more than two hours per day. Think of that! 1 in 3 people that use social media tools are following, sharing, posting, or reading news and information — possibly about your company. And they have been for quite some time.

The corporate news website is still important. More than 66% of the survey sample reported sometimes (34.3%), very often (22.4%), or all the time (9.7%) making use of a corporate site or online newsroom website when following or sharing news. As people use outlets such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Facebook to discover news, they are inevitably going to then refer to the source — the corporate news website — for verification, additional information, and contact information. Companies of all sizes are using social media as distribution channels to their online newsrooms.

From social to corporate website. Almost 75% of survey respondents indicate they sometimes or frequently visit a corporate website after learning of a news story through social media channels. This is related to the above analysis — people are learning of news about your organization through social channels, and then they are coming to your online newsroom or corporate newscenter. This distribution channel has been proven and your organization can take advantage of sending out tweets and posting onto Facebook links back to your news, thus building up your own distinct, proprietary online news distribution network.

You heard it first. Timeliness of social media channels is an undeniable advantage over traditional media. 75% indicated that news gathered through social media channels was either slightly (36.1%) or much more (38.3%) timely than traditional news outlets. This is obvious and with the increase in traditional news channels offering social content such as CNN iReporters, there is no doubt a huge blend in this area. If your organization can respond to activities happening in your industry in social media channels, you may be able to get a competitive edge and increase your coverage, your leadership position, and your exposure on the issue. Ensuring that your news is timely is of utmost importance.

Facebook and Twitter are distribution kings. Despite the recent Facebook IPO setback, there is no doubt that both of these social media channels are excellent vehicles for distributing news content, engaging with interested customers, informing investors and analysts of financial information, and several companies have taken advantage of these features. Almost 90% cite the use of Facebook and 70% the use of Twitter as primary sources of news and information when following, sharing or posting content. This is more than twice that of the Wall Street Journal and significantly more than CNN, in our survey.

In conclusion, one survey doesn’t set the pace for an entire industry, nor should it. However, there is no doubt that social media is having an impact on the news distribution industry. Social media has become a powerful, effective, and cost-efficient news distribution network for organizations of all sizes.