RSS or
EMAILLet’s talk a little bit about expectations of an admission website, and the evolving nature of it. I’m going to speak in terms of the Whole Product Concept, which some of you might be familiar with. It looks like this:
While you were sleeping, Flickr unveiled what has been largely speculated recently: Video. But why? Isn’t Flickr a photo site? Well, yeah.
Here’s the scoop, from the Flickr Blog: Videos can only be 90 seconds that are smaller than 150mb and uploaded by pro members. There is a ton of great info in their Help section as well, basically all affirming that they don’t intend to compete with YouTube, etc.
In addition, they raised the size of an uploadable photo from 10mb to 20mb. Must be preparing for the new 22.1mp Canon 1Ds Mk 3 and Nikon D3.
Here’s an embed sample, or check it out on Flickr.
Don’t really see much use for this in higher ed, especially given the restrictions. So why did I post it? I’m a Flickr fanatic. 
Enjoy!
I couldn’t possibly go 2 straight Tuesday’s without sharing some sort of how-to, so here is one that I saw a few days ago. How to Make Viral Videos. Ironically enough, the video itself is starting to go viral, averaging about 20,000 views per day.
It seems that as each month passes we have more and more access to metrics/stats/analytics on social media sites, which is great. This will help us continue to dig deep and learn more about our viewers, etc. YouTube recently announced that you can get stats on your videos by clicking Account > Videos, Favorites, & Playlists > then clicking “About this video” to get stats for that video.
Here’s an example from one a Blue2 video; he’s learning how to skateboard in this one:
(click to enlarge)
[WebWare: YouTube Stats Revealed]
Today’s video is a quick overview of trackbacks and how to use them.
I mentioned a link in the video, and that discussion is right here. (You should see a ‘trackback’ comment from this post when you go there!)
I also said that you can’t trackback in Blogger, but technically you can if you wish to install some extra goodies. Learn more here. Also, you can learn more about how trackback works, or read another example from Wordpress. Have a great day!
Vancouver Film School and YouTube have teamed up to create a really unique scholarship, where students create and upload videos, and the YouTube community decides the winners. There are 3 full scholarships up for grabs. I don’t think I’ve seen a school actually hop on board with YouTube for a contest yet. Once I saw it on the homepage under ‘Featured Videos’ I could tell this was going to be something big. Watch the video below for more details, I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds! Very original.
They are also using Google Pages for the rules, etc. More information can be found here. While you’re at it, check out the VancouverFilmSchool channel on YouTube. They’ve uploaded nearly 400 videos of student work. It’s cool to see them use YouTube so heavily; I’m sure it’s hard to showcase student work through your typical boring brochure, especially for a film school!
Today we’re going to touch on ‘The Power of Social Media’, and give you a brief example of how quickly something can grow. The case used in this video is a Facebook group titled ‘PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN STUDENT PROJECT’. The student writes:
I’m doing a communications paper on the marketing world and the new direction it has taken in today’s society and one of the main points that I’m trying to make is how one individual with an average facebook account can reach 100,000+ people in less than a week just by making a group and inviting people.
Think he succeeds? Check it out.
I recorded this in the middle of last week so that we could have an idea of growth for the days past the video. I mentioned in the video that by the end of the 5th day he would probably be over 200,000 members to the group. Well, he did, with 2 hours to spare. Phew, that was close. As of 1:30pm it was at 292,000, so by the time you read this (I’m post-stamping it to the PM to avoid Mr. Pott’s first ever post… don’t worry, it caught us all by surprise too 
) the group should be over 300,000. To check, click here.
I missed this week’s How-To Tuesday, so consider this your viewing for the week. It came out yesterday by CommonCraft, they have a ton of other great video explanations too. This one is really good, I love the examples they use.
When you decide you’re ready to finally join Twitter, add me!
YouTube has given the big thumbs-up to lifecasting, with plans to offer the ability to stream a live feed, according to WebWare reports. It’ll be interesting to see how they approach this, and I’m definitely excited.
Between uStream, Stickam, Yahoo! Live, and many others, we will definitely have some choices for implementing our lifecasting. That’s right, after getting denied on student lifecasting nearly 9 months ago now, I am in the process of setting up lifecasting on our admission site. No, not students… Butler Blue II.
Yep, a live feed of our slobbery mascot dog and his daily adventures. We figure it’s a little safer since he doesn’t drink or party too hard. I have been lifecasting my dog for 8 months now (but still figuring out logistics in the new house, we should be live again next week), so I’m well experience in canine camerawork. It’s all part of a new multimedia area I am working on putting together to try and breathe some life into our site, which is approaching 1.5 years of stagnancy. More to come.
Isn’t he handsome?
Oh, and Happy Leap Day!
Hey Everyone! We’re going to try something new here at SquaredPeg called How-To Tuesday. Each week we’re going to try and pick a topic and do a quick demo or show some neat benefits of using it. This week I’m talking about subscribing to RSS feeds.
The video is below. The quality turned out a little worse than I wanted, so I’ll work on the export settings next week. This was running a little long so I didn’t get to touch on Share/Star/Trends, so that will be a quick addendum next week. Hopefully you can get something out of it if you aren’t using RSS already.
As always, let me know what you think or if there is anything out there you want to learn more about, and we’ll continue to learn together. Enjoy!