[Editor’s note: This blog post is the first by Cathy Resmer, online editor for Seven Days. Read more about her on our About the Authors page. Welcome to web.aan.org, Cathy!]

I don’t make many videos, so I don’t use video-sharing sites for my own personal content.

But last November, it dawned on me that I should start monitoring sites like YouTube to find out how other Vermonters are using it. I started by searching for “Vermont,” but have since branched out to look for other things, too, like the names of cities, “Burlington,” “Montpelier,” etc. Or better yet, the names of colleges, i.e. “University of Vermont,” or “UVM” (YouTubers might use one but not the other) “Middlebury College,” etc. College kids are tech-savvy and have time on their hands, so they make many videos.

I found so much material that I created a separate category for local YouTube clips on my blog, called “Vermont YouTube of the Day,” which, despite its name, is not updated daily. I do my YouTube searching at least once a week or so, which — given the flow of material in this somewhat technologically backward state — is generally enough time to stay on top of what’s out there (or at least to keep up with what people have tagged and want found).

Here are some examples of how we’ve used this material:

• When Vermont had a record blizzard over Valentine’s Day, I found a bunch of blizzard videos on YouTube (more here, and here). I posted them on my blog, then promoted the post in our weekly email newsletter, which generated more traffic.
• I found this video of librarian author/blogger Jessamyn West installing open-source operating system Ubuntu on rural library computers. After I posted it to my blog, I submitted it to Boing Boing and they actually posted it — Cory Doctorow ended up referring to Jessamyn as an “internet folk-hero.” The BB post generated a publicity blip for Jessamyn (and a bunch of web traffic for me). Jessamyn ended up getting a call from the Ubuntu people, who sent her CDs to help her install Ubuntu elsewhere.
• A few weeks ago, I found a video in which a Vermont guy claimed to have found the world’s largest strawberry. I sent him a message via YouTube, our food writer got in touch with him, and then interviewed him in her story about strawberries this week.
• Some anti-war activists called us the other day to tell us about an action at a video gaming center in town. We couldn’t do a story, but I happened to find this YouTube clip of their protest and blogged about it.
• Someone who knew I was interested in Vermont YouTube videos emailed me this 802 Music Video. I posted it, and within a few weeks, it was picked up by other local media. The NY Times eventually ran a story about it, and NPR interviewed these kids. The governor’s press secretary even chimed in to say the guv had seen it. I’m not sure if my original blog post had anything to do with spreading the word, but as far as I can tell, I was the first media person to pick up on them. Last week, those kids did another video, about global warming (they called it the CO2 Music Video), which urges Democratic legislators to override the governor’s veto on an energy bill.
• Over the past few months, I’ve noticed that there are tons of local kateboarding videos on YouTube. I passed this info on to one of our writers, who’s working on a cover story about local skate culture, and he’s referencing some of the videos in his story. We may also be embedding some of the videos on the site with our story.
• Because we don’t have the money or time to build our own flash player yet, we have our vlogger post her weekly Stuck in Vermont vlog on YouTube. YT has featured her videos on its main page in the past (which generates thousands more views — too bad we haven’t been able to make much money off it… yet).
• Occasionally I find stuff that is just weird and funny and fun to watch. Our readers rely on us to find good local bands that fly under the radar — I think they also want us to tell them about stuff like this. And this. And this.

Anybody else have other ideas/concerns/stories to share?

Hitwise, an online marketing firm, released a study earlier this month on online trends in Top US News Media for the period from March 2006 - March 2007.

Among their findings?

Online video is huge - the number of folks leaving a News site and heading to a video site rose by 196 percent, especially when a news story involved user-generated video content.

Why is this important to alt papers?

I’ll argue that the rise in folks leaving news sites for video sites is a very pressing issue for newspapers - it represents not only a major traffic leak, but a decline in credibility for a news organization.

In the age of YouTube, folks want to see things for themselves - and newspapers that publish a story without including relevant video footage are leaving out a major component of the story. In moments, a user can Google “David Hasselhoff drunk,” - and instantly get sucked into the instant-gratification world of YouTube. Will they return to your site to read your columnist’s insightfully snarky analysis of the cultural event - or will they watch the related spoof videos?

How do I plug this traffic gap and keep users on my site?

Thanks to a dubious business decision on the part of video-sharing sites, the solution is simple … cut and paste.

I’ve included allegedly-drunken footage of David Hasselhoff above - if you’re interested, you can watch it here, without leaving the site.

Including the footage on my site - even though it is branded with another site’s logo - allows me to capture any traffic gains by folks who might discuss the footage in comments below, instead of on another site where they might find the video.

The traffic leak of folks leaving newspaper sites for video sites illustrates one of the central tenants of this blog - that if newspaper sites want to succeed, they will have to invest more energy into creating well rounded and comprehensive web content - optimized for the web experience, instead of a 1/2 page of newsprint and a 600 word editorial hole.

Other findings of interest in the Hitwise report include …

• Market share of visits to the top 10 News sites declined 2.3 percent
• Search engines and news aggregators were the leading sources of traffic to News sites - increasing by 29.7 percent for ‘print’ media sites.
• Traffic to celebrity gossip sites rose expontentially.
  
• Local news aggregator Topix.net saw a rise in market share of 81 percent - with above average representation in rural areas.

• Digg did not yet serve as a major source of upstream traffic to News sites.

(This study is by no means comprehensive - it focused on the Top 10 News and Media sites, including Yahoo! and Google News, and papers like USA Today and the New York Times.)

Link via The IndiePub Blog

There’s a Junior Boys concert on my website. It’s full length with awesome video quality, and it’s free. And it could be on your website, courtesty of Dutch website FabChannel.com.

Unlike music footage on YouTube - currently under attack by Viacom for copyright infringement - these concerts are cleared to use legally on your site.

CEO Justin Kniest said via email:

“We have cleared the rights of all our concerts with the labels and artists so you can post them on the sites of your papers. In fact the artists would love that because these days they can use all the publicity they can get.”

Neat, huh? Get to copying and pasting!

NERD TIP: For technical advice on embedding FabChannel content in Wordpress and MySpace, read this FAQ.

Can you define “Web 2.0″? It’s kinda like pornography or irony - you know it when you see it (or when you hear a really bad song that misses the point. How was that ironic? How??).

Fortunately for those of us who have short attention spans, Kansas State Professor Michael Wesch has put together this awesome short flick that explains what Web 2.0 really is about without being dull. In five minutes time, you’ll be able to cogently define Web 2.0. You know, for the next time that’s asked on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

[via E-Media Tidbits …. via Steven Snedker via Danish Broadcast listserv … oh, heck, isn’t that kinda the point!]