How brands should try and mirror the success of Young Turks News

I read last week that for every minute that passes, 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube; it receives 4,000,000,000 page views a day (around a trillion a year) and it has around 800,000,000 users (similar to Facebook) who watch 3,000,000,000 hours of video a month. 

After digesting these staggering numbers I came to the conclusion that anyone reading this will have at some point fallen victim themselves to the procrastination inducing powers of videos titled “LOLZ - this is totes amazeballs…” or at least something similar, and probably wonder how an earth YouTube has become such a media phenomenon wherein randomness reigns supreme!

Both YouTube’s size and its ability to distract are a result of its most important feature – that it allows anyone to become a broadcaster. Because of this strategy, and the digital media revolution in general, there has been a shift in how we all consume media over the past few years. For example, with regards to broadcast media, CNN has 61,000 subscribers on YouTube, yet the otherwise unknown Young Turks news channel (the bombastic, longest standing all online American politics show), with a fraction of CNN’s resources, has gathered 340,000. If online news channels such as the Young Turks can attract nearly six times as many online viewers as a global news company then surely there are wider implications for broadcast media’s biggest brands?

Almost as a reaction to this though is that I do sometimes wonder whether in the land of viral video and social media consumption it is possible for the likes of “Baby monkey riding backwards on a pig,” and “Credit Suisse AG Videos” to peacefully coexist? Certainly we have to celebrate the diversity YouTube has on offer and Credit Suisse’s collated views are impressive, but with regards to success, one breaks the viral fresh-hold and one doesn’t. Then again this is dependent on the audience and their consumption habits; there will always be the niche following and YouTube does work excellently as a resource - think ‘how to’ guides for specialist products.

Whilst not every brand can create an Old Spice Guy or taste the rainbow like Skittles, there are considerable opportunities on YouTube for brands to be different. The online landscape is a much more level playing field and many brands who have always dominated traditional media end up playing like amateurs on YouTube, whilst the real amateurs play like the international brands. YouTube in this sense gives real power to the people, and brands big and small (although it is worth noting that Young Turks are firmly established these days).

CNN Twitter sacking raises difficult corporate questions

The sacking of CNN journalist Octavia Nasr, the editor responsible for the network's Middle East coverage, over a Twitter post on her own page, in which she expressed her sadness over the death of a Lebanese cleric she described as a ‘Hezbollah giant’, raises some difficult questions for all companies whose staff like to communicate via social networking sites.

Now if there is one place in the world where a journalist (or for that matter any of us) needs to tread carefully it is the Middle East, rife as it is with claim and counter-claim. It is often exceptionally difficult to get the bottom of what is going on or who started what – witness the recent boarding of the aid ship which attempted to breach the Gaza blockade. Journalist impartiality is therefore a vital currency.

It was unquestionably an error of judgement on Nasr’s part to post what she did, in the process compromising her journalistic integrity and almost certainly terminating any possibility that she can be regarded as impartial on Middle Eastern issues. However, sacking her, after 20 years service, seems a draconian measure when a more thought-through response would possibly have been to move her to another region or assign her to other duties.

As one of my colleagues has just pointed out to me, it is often corporate policy, at Sky News for example, for journalists to have Twitter pages and encourage them to air their instantaneous views on the breaking news. For that matter, many of us working in PR now have our own Twitter and blog pages upon which we regularly give vent to our own thoughts and opinions.

There are certainly people far more qualified than me, not least within our own digital division (little plug!) to comment on corporate best practice in this area, but I can’t help thinking that organisations are asking their employees to try and walk an increasingly difficult line between the personal and professional.