In 2007 father Howard Davies-Carr put up a YouTube video titled “Charlie Bit My Finger” which as the name suggests featured a baby boy named Charlie who bit his brothers finger.

Since going viral just over 4 years ago the video has been viewed 436 million times, earning the family heaps of money under Google’s revenue sharing program.

According to Mr. Davies-Carr he almost removed the video at one boy but then realized:

“At first I thought, well, this is a bit strange, maybe I should take it down.  And then I realized that, well, if I take it down then what would happen is that everybody that’s already created parodies or taken a copy of it and put it on their own website will just keep those running.”

The family started receiving revenue after the video reached 50 million views and when added in with TV spots the family soon found itself half a million dollars richer with more money coming in as people continue to revisit an internet favorite clip.  read more

If like millions of Google account holders you have chosen to use your same account for YouTube and Google+ the company has rolled out a new feature that allows you to create new YouTube channels directly from your Google+ account.

On Youtube’s blog Product manager Trevor O’Brien reveals:

You can now use your Google+ profile name and photo on a new YouTube channel, giving you one consistent identity across platforms when uploading videos, sharing, commenting and other public activities.”

The process is very simply to implement, basically you choose to create a new YouTube channel from inside your Google+ account and you will see the following options: read more

Over the last eight months video views on popular video streaming website YouTube have jumped 25% to 4 billion online videos each day.

Video views continue to increase particularly in the smartphone and Smart TV market where users are able to download YouTube videos faster and with better display quality.

YouTube has also revealed that uploads to the service have greatly increased from 48 hours each minute in May to 60 hours each minute at the current time.

While YouTube users are watching more videos through the service YouTube users only spend 15 minutes each day watching videos on the site while American TV watchers consume four to five hours watching TV every day on average. It’s that low level of engagement that has led investors to question YouTube’s earnings capabilities.  read more

I honestly don’t fully know the best way to combat online piracy; but I do know that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) isn’t it. The bill would create a plethora of problems if it were passed. Let’s be real here, copyright infringement and piracy are real problems that need real solutions, but when you spot a weed growing in your front yard, do you dig up the entire lawn to get rid of it? No, you pull that weed, and ONLY that weed, out of the ground and you do your best to monitor the lawn for any future weeds.

User-Generated Content Sites and SOPA

One of the complaints that you’ll consistently hear about the SOPA bill is that it is way too generalized and all-encompassing. For instance, under SOPA, a site will be considered dedicated to the theft of U.S. intellectual property if it is “primarily designed or operated for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables or facilitates copyright infringement”. Well, take YouTube for example; the online video site serves an average of 100 million videos every single day. The majority of it is uploaded by users, who can remain anonymous with minimal effort if they so choose. Under SOPA, YouTube can be considered a site that is primarily designed in a way that enables copyright infringement because of those reasons. Totally nuts. Blog owners might find themselves harboring illegal content through RSS, and pay the price for it; who knows anymore? read more

It’s probably not the first sport you’d think of when discussing live sporting event streaming on YouTube but it turns out bull riding will be coming to the world’s largest media repository in 2012.

YouTube revealed this week that the Professional Bull Riders(PBR) will be airing their events to more than 100 million worldwide fans and they’ll do it through live streaming on the video network.

Along with streaming of the actual bull rides viewers will also receive original programming, interviews with the riders, highlights from the current and past events and more.

Here’s the list of the first PBR events to be streamed live on YouTube: read more

Eighteen-year-old Ben Breedlove fought a serious heart condition all of his life, a condition that took his life on Christmas Day but not before he posted a two-part video on YouTube in which he describes his ordeal silently through cue cards.

The video went viral when the rapper Kid Cudi found out that Breedlove claimed to once see him in a near-death experience. Here’s what Cudi had to say: read more

YouTube on Monday announced the acquisition of copyright management firm RightsFlow, a buyout they hope will provide the video streaming service with better management of licensing and royalty payment services.

RightsFlow works with music labels, artists, music services and distributors to manage music rights in the digital age.

YouTube hopes that the system will allow them to better manage the 48 hours of video uploaded to the service every minute, allowing for better treatment of the company’s creative community.

Writing about the acquisition YouTube Product Manager David King noted:

“By combining RightsFlow’s expertise and technology with YouTube’s platform, we hope to more rapidly and efficiently license music on YouTube, meaning more music for you all to enjoy, and more money for the talented people producing music.” read more

Annoying Orange is a huge YouTube success with more than 850 million combined views for all of its videos combined and now that mass appeal has translated into a new show on Cartoon Network.

Joining the networks 2012 lineup Annoying Orange will feature a half-hour show in which Orange and his friends use a “magical fruit cart” to travel through time.

The show was conceived earlier in the year when management company The Collective began working with creator Dane Boedigheimer to shoot a pilot which was then shown to TV networks.

If you’re unfamiliar with the character it’s literally an orange (pictured above) that talks in a squeaky voice and plays tricks on other fruits and vegetables, all the while using corny puns to get their point across.  read more

In case you’ve been living under a rock or spending every conceivable moment on Facebook and nowhere else on the web here’s a list of five stories from the past week that are worth taking a look at.

1. YouTube Sending User-Submitted Science Experiments Into Space

How cool would it be to have Stephen Hawking and a group of his peers choose your science experiment to launch into outerspace. YouTube is holding a contest through their YouTube Space Lab which allows users to submit 2-minute experiment ideas. Two winners will watch live as their experiments are carried out aboard the International Space Station. This is social media meets social experimentation at it’s finest. read more

YouTube Space Lab is currently accepting submissions from students ages 14 to 18 for a new program that will send their science experiments into space to be tested by NASA and European Space Agency astronauts.

The two winners will be hand selected by world renowned physicist Stephen Hawking along with a team of judges from NASA, the European Space Agency and Cirque du Soleil.

Once launched into space aboard a Japanese rocket the experiments will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) where they will be tested and those experiments will be broadcast live on YouTube.

The contest is open to students around the world and entries are being accepted until December 7. In order to qualify each contestant must submit a two-minute video explaining their science idea which must be posted on the YouTube Space Lab page. read more