YouTube Trends map shows most popular videos by region

 Mapping, videos, youtube  Comments Off
May 082013
 

YouTube Trendsmap

I don't know about you, but when I go to YouTube, I check my subscriptions and then look at what videos are currently popular. Because you know, it's important to stay up to date on the most current news about kittens, people getting caught doing weird things, and movie trailers. The YouTube Trends Map is another way to see what's popular, but from a geographic and demographic point of view.

As you'd expect, the map shows the currently most popular video in a region, based on shares or views, which looks like a lot of noise at first. Look a little closer though, and there are some interesting spots.

For example, looking at it now, the most popular video in the 12 to 24 year old range is a clip from Family Guy. In contrast, move to the older age brackets, and the most popular is a trailer for True Blood. The most popular clip in Oklahoma City is Kevin Durant's winning shot from Sunday's Oklahoma City Thunder game.

Finally, the map is linked with a stacked bar view, which shows the breakdown just by demographic.

YouTube trends stacked bars

I like it.

[via @viegasf and @wattenberg]

Data Points: Visualization That Means Something is available now. Order your copy.

Social Media’s Dirty Work: Contextualizing the Facebook Screening Controversy

 Amazon, Apple, culture, Facebook, social media, users, work, youtube  Comments Off
Feb 272012
 

In the past few days my inbox has seen an influx in forwards from friends and colleagues, all sharing links with me covering the recent revelation that Facebook outsources some of its dirtiest work, and that those  firms handling Facebook’s outsourced labor pay exploitatively low wages for some of the most psychologically damaging digital work imaginable: the screening of user-uploaded content (posts, images and videos) to Facebook.  My colleagues sent these links my way for good reason: this topic has been the primary subject of my own academic research for the past year and a ha

read more

 Posted by on February 27, 2012

In perspective: One hour of video uploaded to YouTube per second

 infographics, interactive, youtube  Comments Off
Jan 252012
 

Babies per second

YouTube surpassed the one hour of video uploaded per second threshold recently. To put that rate into perspective, they launched a fun illustration-based site, One Hour Per Second. Big team effort headed by Punk & Butler, illustrations by Alex Eben Meyer, animation by Justin Young, and development by Use All Five.

The concept is simple. A clock runs that shows how much time has passed, and things that could've happened during the runtime of video uploaded animate on the screen.

For example, it starts with "In 1.5 seconds of uploads to YouTube, the International Space Station completes one orbit of the earth." Let it play, and babies are born, the Nyan can gets older, and millions of letters are typed by the world's fastest texter. Eventually you hit the end: "In 3.8 million years of uploads to YouTube, time as we know it begins, reaches the present day, and keeps ticking on into the future..."

Entertaining even if it is just one number.

[One Hour Per Second | Thanks, Alex]

Episode 70 – Live from THATCamp

 copyright, Google, intellectual property, Libraries, open access, Publishing, Unconferences, youtube  Comments Off
Jun 212011
 

On Friday, June 3, we live-streamed Digital Campus from the first day of THATCamp CHNM, The Humanities and Technology Camp at the Center for History and New Media. About half the live audience of seventy-five or so people said they had heard the podcast before — it was great to see the listeners in person, not to mention one another.

We discussed at some length the trial of the copyright lawsuit brought against Georgia State University by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage Publications, agreeing that if the publishers were to win their suit, teaching faculty would certainly have to become more aware than ever before about the costs of the readings they assign. Also on the table (more briefly) were Google’s cessation of its mass digitization of newspapers, the major search engines’ support for structured data with http://schema.org, the Library of Congress’s plans to transition away from MARC, YouTube’s announcement of Creative Commons licensing, and Amanda’s alternative solution to the Open Researcher and Contributor ID.

Special thanks to Chris Preparato, who managed the audio recording and livestreaming. And, with proof that we’re at least as good-looking as you always imagined, here’s video of the episode 70 of Digital Campus, kindly provided in high definition by George H. Brett (whom you can also hear making a comment about parallels between the GSU case and the early days of Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Thanks so much, George, for capturing this.

Stories or projects mentioned on the podcast:

What’s at Stake in the Georgia State Copyright Case

Google Ditches Newspaper Archive Plan

Google, Bing & Yahoo’s New Schema.org Creates New Standards for Web Content Markup

Open Researcher and Contributor ID

Library of Congress May Begin Transitioning Away from MARC [Machine-Readable Cataloging]

Google Rolls Out YouTube Creative Commons Licenses

Running time: 50:25
Download the .mp3

Having Fun With History

 Fun, play, Posts, youtube  No Responses »
May 052011
 

Last week a friend sent me the link to the YouTube channel of the History Teachers, two high school teachers in Hawaii who create music videos using well known pop songs, stripping out the vocal tracks, and adding their own lyrics. Those original lyrics are history lessons. So, for instance, one can watch/listen to “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell recast as a history of the Trojan Wars or a history of the French Revolution set to “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga.

As cheesy as they may seem on first glance, I really like the playfulness of these teachers. As I’ve written here and elsewhere, I think historians have gotten way to stodgy in our approach to teaching about the past and these teachers have found a way to engage students without taking themselves very seriously. And they are reaching a much wider audience than just their own students (412,000 views of the French Revolution video as of May 4, 2011). Sure, it’s a simplified version of the past. Sure, their versions reinforce a tendency to compress complicated historical issues into a few minutes of text/video/power point slides. But so what? The point, it seems to me, is not to present a complex and nuanced version of the past. Rather, it is to introduce a complicated subject in a fun and engaging way that will then make it possible for teachers and their students to interrogate the evidence in much more complex ways in class.

These videos were a lot of work and so are clearly a labor of love. I’m not suggesting that we all tap our inner Culture Club or Britney Spears. But I am suggesting that the more ways we can find to lighten up a little, to stop taking ourselves so seriously, the more ways we’ll find our students engaging with our serious work.

 Posted by on May 5, 2011

In land of YouTube dislikes, Justin Bieber rules

 infographics, youtube  No Responses »
Apr 012011
 

Most disliked videos on YouTube

Happy Friday, everyone. If you'll allow me, I'd like to take a moment to talk about something serious.

In a move I believe is best for everyone (but mostly me), I am switching gears to only cover facets of pop culture and toilet humor. I will also be switching focus to online education. It's come to my attention that this is a lucrative area, and leveraging my authority on information and data graphics, I believe I can become a rich man and retire by age thirty, quite possibly making four figures even sooner.

Yes, there are other types of data in the world, perhaps more serious, interesting, and worth knowing, but the Web is not for serious or sad things. The Web is a place of free-flowing ideas (therefore this site's name) that revolve around things that matter to today's youth such as Justin Bieber and his new haircut. Case in point: the nearing shut down of Data.gov.

Most of you are probably not even reading this since there are several pictures of the teen dream above. Plus there are quite a few words here. Lengthy.

The above graphic is my first step towards my goal. With data courtesy of ReadWriteWeb, you can see the top ten videos with the most dislikes on YouTube. Some videos, like Friday from Rebecca Black, are hated by many, while other videos simply have a ton of views, and there's no way to please everyone.

This brings up another point. I know that many of you will be displeased with my choice like when I quit data altogether, but again, I do believe this is for the best. When you have a dream, you have to go for it, or you'll end up wondering "what if...?" and that is no way to live, my friend.

And so one chapter ends and a new one begins in the book of Nathan. Today, April 1, will forever be known (to me) as the day I changed my life. I hope you'll join me in this journey, but if not, please still tell your friends to visit FlowingData for all their online education needs. Thanks.

 Older Entries