YouTube Solicits Ideas For Partner Program
March 12, 2010
YouTube Partners are, pretty much by definition, some of YouTube's most important users. They create original content, don't violate copyright laws, and have huge audiences. It makes sense, then, that YouTube is now looking hard for ways to improve its Partner Program.
The hunt has taken the form of a crowdsourced project. Just as the Ideas Page for YouTube was created not too long ago for the sake of the whole site, the new Product Ideas Page for the YouTube Partner Program covers this single subject. People can submit ideas and vote on which ones they think are best.
It's an effective process. On the YouTube Biz Blog, Filipe Lima noted with respect to the first effort, "It was a success, receiving almost 3,000 ideas and more than 300,000 votes. We even launched a few features that directly addressed some of the requests - namely, an HTML5 Beta (there were many HTML5 advocates who participated) and a sneak peek of our new cleaner video page (some desired a 'less cluttered' YouTube)."
So now we'll see where round two takes us.
The deadline for both new submissions and votes is April 12th. If you have any suggestions, get them in earlier, though, for the sake of giving them more time to become popular.
LinkedIn Greets 60 Millionth Member
February 12, 2010
LinkedIn is getting rather large. Yesterday evening, the network's vice president of marketing announced on Twitter that it had hit a milestone in terms of users, attracting its 60 millionth member.
LinkedIn had just 55 million members as of December 17th, so this new declaration means it's grown by a little more than nine percent in less than two months (which translates to a rate of at least 109 percent per year). That increase in size is, it should be needless to say, impressive.
Patrick Crane's announcement had some positive implications regarding LinkedIn's reach, too. Consider that the 60 millionth member doesn't live in Silicon Valley or some other part of California. Instead, he (or she) is located several thousand miles away in the Netherlands.
Of course, for the sake of putting things in perspective, we should note that Facebook passed the 400 million user mark this month. Also, about 70 percent of Facebook's members live outside the U.S. So it's not like LinkedIn has captured the global social/professional networking crown.
Just the same, LinkedIn has made some impressive strides, and within its niche, is certainly putting some space between itself and its competitors. Hat tip goes to Leena Rao.
Yahoo Mobile Blog Launches
February 6, 2010
Yahoo may be doing a lot more in terms of mobile before long. Or at least telling us more about its current cell phone-related efforts. Either way, it launched the Yahoo Mobile Blog this week for the sake of keeping everyone up to date.
Irv Henderson, who's Yahoo's Vice President of Global Mobile Products, wrote the introductory blog post, and explained, "You can expect to learn about new product launches and enhancements, quick tips and tricks, our take on market trends, and predictions for where we see the market is heading."
Henderson also hinted, "So what's to come in 2010? Three developments will play a key role in shaping the mobile industry: Powerful browsers, the OS as a launching pad, and local content."
It should be interesting to see where Yahoo comes into that list. "Local content" seems like the best bet, but at the same time, Henderson's reference to browsers and operating systems makes it more likely that the company has irons in those fires. Execs tend not to admit that they're ignoring two-thirds of a major growth opportunity, after all.
We'll see what happens. Hopefully Yahoo won't wait too long between blog posts.
Have You Read This?
> Consumers Expected To Spend $6.2 Billion On Mobile Apps In 2010
> Will Apple And Google Have Some Real Smartphone Competition?
Google Analytics, Chromium Receive Language Upgrades
February 2, 2010
The folks in charge of science fiction movies that are currently in development may, for the sake of accuracy, want to feature Google's name on any universal translators. The company's continued to move forward in its work with languages by tweaking Google Analytics and a build of Chromium.
Let's first talk about what might be viewed as a finished product. Late last week, Google Analytics became available in six more languages (Bulgarian, Catalan, Greek, Lithuanian, Slovak, and Vietnamese), and this should, of course, allow many more people to become users (and maybe first-time advertisers).
The ramifications of the other development are a little harder to pin down. Lee Mathews reported this morning, "You can now enable auto-translation of pages in Chromium. Just add the --auto-translate switch to your Chromium shortcut and head over to a foreign language web page to test it out. A Google Translate bar will appear, and you can then click the button to convert all text on the page."
It's hard to say for sure if Chrome will get this feature, and almost impossible to make a guess about the timeframe of any implementation.
Still, Google's continuing to show a definite interest in letting all sorts of people use its products for the sake of learning about all sorts of things.
Have You Read This?
> Google Announces Unicode Progress
> Google Launches New Transliteration Tool
> Google Translate Gets A Makeover And New Features
