I’ve been trying for a while now to get in touch with the person in charge of higher education partnership at YouTube . So, when I saw that Obadiah Greenberg – who used to work at UC Berkeley – was scheduled to give a presentation at a conference in San Diego last week, I ask one of my favorite higher ed bloggers, Deanna Wolf, (who was attending this conference in sunny California) if she could prepare a short report about this talk for all of us. Here’s what Deanna emailed me yesterday.
On Friday, Nov. 9, Obadiah “Tarzan” Greenberg (Yes, that really is his middle name) took the floor during the Stamats “Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference” in San Diego. A former Web staffer at University of California-Berkeley, Obadiah now has a Web 2.0 dream job of being the go-between for YouTube with higher ed institutions.
Obadiah opened with a bit of history on YouTube for those of us who know the name, but may not know the story behind it:
* Launched in December 2005 as a way to share videos between friends and family, now a worldwide phenomenon
* 3 million videos watched a day
* 8,000 videos uploaded daily
* It is a community in control, with users having the power to comment on and rate videos
* YouTube’s audience is split fairly evenly between the genders and age groups
* Of the hardcore YouTube watchers, 80 percent are young males
* Most find YouTube videos through friend recommendations and online searches
* The vision of YouTube is to entertain, inform and empower through videos
He then shared some stats about how YouTube is really part of the Web 2.0/technology-infused culture that’s changing the way we get entertainment and live:
* The average person now spends equal time online as she/he does watching TV
* 143 million Americans have bought mobile devices in the past few years
* 11 percent plan to buy a digital video camera in the next year
* 79 percent of online video watchers connect via broadband
Obadiah then talked about the University of California-Berkeley, which was the first to launch an enhanced channel on YouTube back at the beginning of October, which was migrated over from Google video. Contents include actual course lectures, campus events, and campus life videos (see more at youtube.com/ucberkeley). The site has had visitors from across the U.S., India, Canada, Italy, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and more. During this time, Obadiah said they’ve had 150 comments on the main page, and have only had to delete 4. It’s a self-regulating community — any out-of-line negative comments are usually drowned out by supporters who ask, “Why you hating?”
In Obadiah’s view, there are two main ways that higher ed institutions can work with YouTube:
Marketing/PR — Content is special events, tours and athletics, fed to audiences of alumni and prospective students, with the benefits of promotion and monetization.
Education — Content is full courses and other learning/training objectives, fed to audiences of alumni, prospective students, current student, faculty, researchers and self-learners, with the benefits of education and promotion, too.
Obadiah’s practical YouTube advice is for anyone considering making YouTube videos or launching channels to bring together staff players with the video producers and think about all your audiences to determine content (which could be lectures, events, news, tours, sports, training, ceremonies, and campus ads).
To build your audiences, he offers this advice: be real, be consistent, and be interesting.
Obadiah’s presentation was all of those things, in my opinion, and I highly recommend anyone who has a chance to see him speak, do so.
And D.W.’s last words of advice: next time your boss catches you on YouTube at work, remember to say you’re doing “research.”
His 2 ways that higher ed can work with YouTube are the same reasons to use iTunes U. However, iTunes U offers a lot more (such as authentication for course content when desired and a much cleaner and -dare I say – professional look…).
I think that YouTube’s easier access and larger audience makes it better for other types of content – probably more of the PR content (which is not #1 on Apple’s preferred content list) aimed at audiences like high school students for recruiting.
As I mentioned in the Higher Ed Experts webinar this month, your agreement with Apple is not exclusive and your content can exist in other places – like YouTube.