Great news for online video publishers today — YouTube announced via the YouTube blog that users can now upload videos up to 15 minutes in duration.  That’s a 50% increase over the previous upload limit of 10 minutes.

The company explains that the time limit is extending for uploaded videos because the YouTube Content ID system has evolved to a point where it’s easier and more reliable in identifying videos that have been uploaded but violate copyright laws  (for example, uploaded movies or television shows).

Newstex syndicates video content from many authoritative online publishers who use YouTube to share their video content, and it will be great to see what they do with that extra time!

If you publish video content through YouTube, then you might be interested in the contest YouTube is holding to promote the new time upgrade.  Here are the steps to enter the contest via the YouTube blog:

“We encourage you to take full advantage of this new time limit by making a video of your “15 minutes of fame.” Imagine that this video is all the world will ever know about you: what would you want to communicate? What will be the enduring stamp you’ve left on us all? Tag your video with “yt15minutes,” upload it by Wednesday, August 4, and we’ll select a handful of people to truly gain their 15 minutes of fame by featuring them on the YouTube homepage in a future spotlight.”

What do you think of the upgraded time limit for YouTube videos?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

comScore has released its monthly report about online video viewing in the United States, and the results show that online video continues to be extremely popular and growing.

According to comScore, May 2010 online video viewing delivered the following statistics:

• U.S. Internet users viewed nearly 34 billion online videos in May 2010.
• Google sites (including YouTube.com) received by far the most online video views with 14.6 billion videos viewed.  That’s a 43.1% market share!  The next closest site was Hulu.com with 1.2 billion videos viewed or a 3.5% market share.  That’s a huge gap between the market leader and everyone else!
• Nearly 183 million people viewed online videos.
• The average number of videos viewed per person was 186.
• For YouTube alone, 144.1 million viewers watched 14.6 billion videos for an average of 101.2 videos per person.
• The average online video viewed was 4.3 minutes.
• 84.8% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in May 2010.

Check out the chart below to see the top online video sites in May 2010 according to the comScore report.

Are you using online video to establish your reputation as an authoritative source?  Check out some of the online video publishers who are already syndicating their authoritative content through Newstex, and contact us to learn how you can syndicate your content to boost your exposure and earn some money, too.

Want to be part of the historical record officially?  You will be if you’ve published a public tweet on Twitter since March 2006, because your tweets are going into the Library of Congress archives.

You might not be able to edit those old tweets, but it’s as good a time as any to make sure your future tweets are good.  They’ll be available through the Library of Congress, after all.

The announcement began to travel quickly across Twitter and the social Web this morning when the Library of Congress published the tweet shown below.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and adding the complete public Twitter archive to its digital assets will undoubtedly spawn a lot of research in a wide variety of areas of study.

Newstex already syndicates tweets from thousands of authoritative bloggers and makes that content available to top distributors who provide it, primarily via closed systems such as corporate and educational libraries, to professionals who need access to trustworthy content to do their jobs.  Professionals in the fields of business, government, journalism, academics, and more access syndicated Twitter content for a variety of purposes, including research.  Contact Newstex to learn more about syndicating your Twitter content.

In marketing, there are consumers who are considered ‘early adopters’ or products and brands, and there are consumers who fall into the ‘laggards’ category.  The latter consumer group is slow to try new products and prefers to wait for others to test drive them first.  Laggards need to fully understand the benefits that products can deliver to them before they pull out their hard-earned money and buy them.

In 2009, the smartphone market took a big jump when laggards (including members of the baby boomer generation) embraced the benefits of having access to the Internet and mobile apps.  2009 marked the year that devices like the Apple iPhone and Google Droid moved from being cool new toys to truly useful and helpful products.

The chart below from eMarketer (via a comScore study) shows the break down of mobile device ownership by age range as of November 2009.

Smartphone sales are expected to grow in record numbers in 2010, eventually eclipsing personal computer sales.  It’s interesting to imagine how different the above chart will look at the end of 2010.  Just 20 years ago, almost no one had a mobile phone.  Today, 55% of baby boomers consider their mobile phones to be a necessity.  As people from all age ranges and demographics begin to rely more and more on mobile apps, that percentage will surely grow.

Could you live without your mobile device?  Would you want to?  What app can’t you live without?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Elections are now open for the 2010 Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Content Division Board, a volunteer group of industry executives that works closely with the division’s leadership to direct our activities and initiatives. The members of the SIIA Content Division Board perform a variety of functions, including:

* Helping to decide which industry issues the Content Division focuses on
* Leveraging SIIA to build relationships with industry leaders
* Ensuring that elected members’ companies maximize their SIIA memberships>

SIIA Content Division Board Requirements: Any SIIA member executive who can commit time, energy and passion for a two-year term is encouraged to run. Board members must attend board meetings and are encouraged to serve on working groups and ad hoc committees. In general, the Board holds four meetings per year, although the Chair may call additional meetings as the business of the Board dictates. Board members must participate in at least three of the four meetings, and attend at least two meetings in person.

All nominations must be received by Tuesday, February 23. You can get more details on the SIIA Web site.

The first meeting for new Board members will be held on the morning of Wednesday, May 26, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, CA, immediately following the SIIA’s next conference, SIIA NetGain.

You can follow the link to view the list of current SIIA Content Division Board members.

Many of the online video publishers who syndicate their video content through Newstex publish their videos on YouTube.  The ability to create your own, branded YouTube channel and the ease-of-use that YouTube offers makes it a popular online video destination for publishers and viewers.

Yesterday, a post was published on the YouTube blog asking users to provide product ideas to help the team behind the site develop strategies to enhance it.  If there is something that has been bothering you about YouTube’s functionality or you have a new idea to make the site even better, now is your chance to speak up!

You can get all of the details on the YouTube blog, and you can provide your feedback on the Google product ideas page.

According to the YouTube blog post, Google plans to take a few weeks reviewing all submitted ideas and will, “respond directly to the ideas you’re most excited about.”  So if you want Google to acknowledge an idea that is posted on the product ideas page, make sure you vote for it.

Right now, I’m seeing a lot of suggestions for YouTube to move to HTML 5.  I’m also seeing some interesting ideas like adding a feature that makes it easy to find the next video in a series for users and the making it possible to upload multiple videos at the same time and then schedule them to publish online at specific times in the future.

One of my favorite suggestions so far is one that would eliminate the one channel per user restriction.  Many publishers have multiple brands that they create content for and having a simple way to manage multiple channels from a single account would save time and hassle.

What’s your suggestion for YouTube?

November 2009 marked a new milestone for online video viewing.  According to a new report from comScore, over 170 million Internet users in the U.S. watched online video in November 2009 for a total of nearly 31 billion videos viewed during the month.  That’s a new record, which demonstrates that comScore’s predictions for the future of online video viewing made in June 2009 appear to be well on track.

Google-owned online video sites (which include YouTube) are far and away leading the pack in terms of the number of viewers and videos viewed, but Hulu is showing impressive momentum — more than doubling its stats from less than a year ago as reported by Nielsen.  Check out the stats below:

Top 10 Sites by Number of Videos Viewed in November 2009

Top 10 Online Video Sites by Number of Unique Viewers in November 2009

Online video represents one of the biggest opportunities for businesses and individuals to grow their online reputations in 2010.  You can follow the link to check out some of the Authoritative Content video publishers who are already making names for themselves online and syndicating their video content through Newstex.

Google has officially launched its new YouTube Direct, which allows organizations to better manage reader video submissions.  The Huffington Post, San Fransisco Chronicle, NPR and Politico have all signed on to use YouTube Direct as a resource.

The process for organizations to use YouTube Direct is simple.  Individuals can upload their own videos related to content found on client Web sites, such as Politico, and flag their uploaded videos for review by that organization’s editors.  Those editors can either approve or reject submissions for inclusion or referencing on their Web sites.  The goal is to connect media and news organizations with individual, citizen journalists.

According to an article in The New York Times, Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube, states that YouTube Direct allows “news organizations to control their experience with users while tapping into the community where that activity is taking place.”

And what’s in it for YouTube?  That’s simple, too.  With YouTube Direct, YouTube.com can position itself as a source for finding useful content rather than amateur videos created solely for entertainment purposes.

This move by Google’s YouTube and its media Web site partners represents one more way that individuals are publishing authoritative content online as well as the continued challenge in finding that useful, meaningful and trustworthy content.  With YouTube Direct, media organizations can cut through some of the clutter to find that authoritative content and incorporate it into their own news offerings.

It’s an exciting time for authoritative content publishers and distributors!

Read more about Newstex Authoritative Content.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is enacting new guidelines that bloggers and Twitter users need to be aware of.  The new rules go into effect on December 1, 2009, and anyone who violates them could face fines up to $11,000 per violation.

The new guidelines affect how bloggers and Twitter users must write and publish review or endorsement posts for which they receive compensation of any kind (e.g., money, products, services, etc.).  The FTC refers to this as a “material connection” between the blogger or Twitter user who publishes the review or endorsement and the company providing the compensation.

In short, bloggers and Twitter users must clearly disclose the “material connection”.  Furthermore, the review or endorsement must be accurate and reflect the average user’s experience with the item being reviewed.  The FTC words the latter requirement as writing a review that reflects the results an average user would “generally expect” to achieve when using the same product or service.

This is the first revision to FTC rules related to endorsements and advertising since 1980, and it comes as no surprise to advertisers who have waited for nearly a year for the FTC to release the new guidelines the agency has made no secret of developing.

You can follow the link to read the complete new FTC guidelines.

Image: Flickr

At a time when traditional media sources are struggling to remain profitable, smaller, niche players are emerging as the go-to places for authoritative content.  Many of those authoritative content providers syndicate their content through Newstex, including GlobalPost, which focuses on foreign news coverage with approximately 70 foreign correspondents in 50 countries.

According to the New York Times, CBS has taken notice of the depth of authoritative coverage that GlobalPost brings to the world of journalism and plans to partner with GlobalPost to report foreign news.

The partnership makes sense for both parties.  For CBS, the company gets access to talented reporters living in the countries from where they report and delivering current news from the inside.  For GlobalPost, the increased exposure can only be a good thing.  As long as GlobalPost is allowed to continue reporting foreign news in the authoritative way it has done since its inception earlier this year, the alliance should bring GlobalPost the revenue and recognition it needs to grow and produce more news from around the world in a way that only GlobalPost can.  It’s a business model that seems poised to grow to new heights.

To syndicate your own online content through Newstex, click here.  If you’re a distributor and would like to offer Newstex Authoritative Content, including GlobalPost content, to your customers, click here.