On YouTube, Pacquiao, and Copyright Infringement.

So Youtube signed with Korean giant LG to develop a phone directly integrated with YouTube for direct video uploads without the use of a computer. Pretty cool, but pointless if you're trying to edit videos first. Also, this was like a year ago they annouced this, and I haven't heard any updates really. But the idea is pretty next level when you think of how easy it would be to upload random video. If you thought YouTube was wild now think of how insane it will be once all phones evolve to have this feature. Kinda scary even.

"The LG KU990 is a new phone with very nice feature - YouTube integration plus a 5-megapixel camera. With LG YouTube phone you can shoot video at 120 frames per second nad upload those new videos directly to your YouTube account. It hasn’t been released yet, and the prices have not been announced either, but the phone is scheduled to be available soon."


I have a few videos on YouTube, some unedited, some slightly edited, mostly for fun or to show friends something mundane. Most of the videos have maybe mustered up about 60 or 70 views over a years span. But I noticed that in one of my videos, scrapped up camera-phone footage of a weekend trip to Las Vegas, there was close to 700 views, even though it was uploaded at the same time as the other videos. I wondered what might have made this video so interesting, then realized it was because the name "Pacquiao" was tagged on the videos list of keywords. So I came up with an experiment to see just how many views I could get with an actual Pacquiao video....nothing too fancy or high tech, just a quick highlight of one of his fights. I chose to cater it towards their rematch, and labeled it "Get Hyped! Pacquiao vs. Marquez 2!!" And the gimmic worked! Before long, in just 1 and a half months it had tallied close to 5,000 views! Its not even a decent video--its choppy, quickly edited, and the image is actually really poor and mega-pixelated. The only thing cool about it is that I used Bad Brains as the background music.

Oh and check this...when it was actually time for the rematch, I was still nearing 5,000 views....then the next day after the fight, I checked on the view count again, and it jumped all the way up to 28,000 views! Pretty wild to think that 23,000 people viewed it overnight, probably just from reading the title. I think by the end of today it will be over 30,000. It's like an experiement on Marketing! Here's a link to the "trick" video: Get Hyped!! Pacquiao vs. Marquez II

As an addendum to this, that night Pac won by a close split decision, so I made a video of him knocking down Marquez in the 3rd round. It was complete with an antagonizing message to his naysayers, slow-motion of the punch and replays of Marquez knocked on his ass. I thought this would garner up even more views than the Get Hype! video. However...it lived for about an hour or two, then disappeared into cyberspace. Huh? I then received an email from the folks at YouTube and HBO that it was stepping into the realms of Copyright Infringement and that if it happens again they'll remove all my videos and cancel my account. I had jumped the gun... It was too soon to give away the spoiler before it airs on non pay-per-view HBO. So.... I'll wait till next Monday! -Jaguarman