Last weekend the interweb was all a buzz about the new Lady Gaga and Beyonce video for "Telephone" (I didn't link to it here on purpose). Being the audiophile that I am, I decided that I needed to go ahead and check it out.

Of course, the first place I go to see this is good old reliable YouTube. Imagine my surprise when I look up the video, click on it to play and am not given the video right away. Instead I am greeted by a 10 second ad for some new movie with a mini banner at the bottom saying "Your video will start in..."

Where did that come from????

I've seen ads on YouTube before, but that was either because I looked them up to watch them (see this post for examples) or they were placed in areas on the page, but never inside the video I wanted to watch before. The whole thing seemed weird to me.

One of the reason I think that YouTube is so popular is because you, the user, got to choose what you watched. Nothing was forced on you. If you wanted to watch an ad on it it was because you wanted to. While there were ads on pages they were never really in your face and forced upon you. There really was a "you" to YouTube.

Of course, the first thing I did when I saw this new practice was tweet about my surprise. A few people responded saying that they've seen this happen before, but not often. I also have not seen it again since on any other of the hundreds of videos I've watched over this past week, which makes me wonder if it's something the company is just trying out as a new source of revenue.

Granted, I have no idea about YouTube's revenue stream and how or even if Google is making any money off the site, but I think this way isn't going to work.

Like I said before, people came to YouTube because they got to choose exactly what it was they wanted to see. Things were suggested for them to watch, but nothing was ever forced on them. I think if this is a new thing that's going to start happening on the site a lot, the company is going to see a big backlash from its users. I know I'm already upset about it.

Seriously though, the thing about the internet is that if people aren't getting what they want, the way they want it, they simply move on to a next site that does give them what they want how they want it. If I wanted these ads before things I watch I could just turn my TV on.

I'm curious to see how this whole thing plays out in the near future. Will it disappear or will it start showing up more often??

I'm also curious to know what everyone else thinks about this whole subject. Have you seen one of these ads before? Please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts about the subject. I'd love to start a conversation about this.

Finally, if you're dying to see the video click here (although I just noticed the ad I'm talking about isn't in front of the video anymore, but I hope you still got my point).

If you don't know the band OK GO then you obviously have not really spent any time on the internet in the past three(ish) years.

OK GO is a band that managed to go from relatively unknown obscurity (not total, they had been around for a while doing a few good things) to huge popularity almost overnight thanks to this YouTube video:


The video is a music video that the band shot themselves with nothing more than a camera, a couple borrowed treadmills and the choreography of a band members sister. The band posted the video onto YouTube and shared it with their friends and fans, who loved it. How could you not love that video??

From there, the magic of the interweb took over. This video started getting passed around by EVERYONE. This video went seriously viral. Seriously, even my dad has seen this video. The video that was posted officially by OK GO has a play count of over 50 million. Plus, there are other copies of the video on YouTube that also have well over a million plays.

One of the things that made this sharing of the video even more possible was the embed code that anyone could take off of YouTube to post the video on any other website. The band loved that and actually encouraged it.

This video propelled them into the public spotlight and even helped them to gain a spot performing at the MTV Video Music Awards and have the song featured on one of the Rock Band video games' many incarnations.

Fast forward to the fall of 2009. The band released a new album and put together a new low budget, but fun and awesome music video for a song called "This Too Shall Pass". Their record label, EMI, put the video up onto YouTube, but like all their other artists official music videos, turned off the embedding feature. That meant people could watch it only on the YouTube site. For this reason you'll have to click here to see the video.

The band was not happy about this. This lead to a huge fight with their record label over the issue. The band eventually went on to develop a second music video for the song outside of their record label with funding from State Farm Insurance. This one however could have the embed feature included with it. In my opinion this video is better than the first one:


This video was posted about a week ago and the official version already has almost 8 million plays! Also this week, the band left EMI to start their own label and handle all their own business. The band left their MAJOR RECORD LABEL because of how strongly they felt about being able to share things on the internet.

This is a band that understands the power of the general public and the internet. They became famous because of a viral video and they wanted to continue down that route, because they know it has so much more potential.

Other businesses. especially the music industry, need to see the power of the internet and the social networks of people around the world and think really hard about a way to make it work for them as well.

I originally started this blog to explore where the worlds of PR and social media meet. I also thought that it would be a great platform to talk about my journey into the professional world of both these things.

Lately I've been focusing it solely on my job search and not so much on the other stuff, so I'm going to try to mix the two together a bit more, starting now.

I started this blog off with a video that showed how the internet was changing our world, so it's only appropriate that I continue showing these videos as they keep getting made. I find the info in these videos to be both amazing and sometimes shocking.

This one is called The State of the Internet and was released a few weeks ago. If you haven't seen it already, here's your chance:

I've been meaning to write this post for two weeks now but have found myself too busy to actually get it out. I'm sorry if you missed me. I'll try to not let this much time pass between us ever again.

So any ways, think back, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to my last post. That was on #HAPPO (Help A PR Pro Out) day. This day was set up to help PR people (like myself) who currently are seeking work (like myself) connect with new people and new jobs.

Well in my opinion, the day was a huge success for making those connections. While I did not get a job offer or find anything really new, I did make a ton of new connections to people in the industry throughout North America, which is just as good.

This is what this social media stuff is all about. Making connections with people in ways that were previously impossible. I love that. Here's what I mean:

On #HAPPO day I put up my post that spoke a bit about myself and what kind of work I was trying to get into. I put it out to my network of people through as many online channels as I could. My network then also helped to pass my post along through retweeting my link and other means. That way new people that weren't in my immediate network were now reading my blog. From there I can only assume that some of these people knew about the #HAPPO movement (either that or they liked my post) because people I didn't know were also starting to pass along my post to their networks. I was also getting compliments on my writing from people across North America. One lady even said she thought I sounded like someone she could love (kinda flattering, kinda weird).

All in all, in 24 hours I had over 700 people read my blog post!! I don't know if that many people have read all my posts combined.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who had this happen, and that's why social media is amazing for things like this. People were willing to help out strangers and making connections with people they never would have before. The movement was started to help people out, and on that day that's what we saw. An entire community of strangers came together and worked together in ways that weren't possible maybe even 10 years ago.

That's why I love this stuff.