all posts tagged “google”
We're approaching the 4 year mark in our video business. On April 27th, we'll celebrate the anniversary of posting "RSS in Plain English" on YouTube and our website. Since that time a lot has happened, but I think it's interesting that the RSS video, which we did on a whim, established much of the style for which we are known around the world.
It's these anniversaries that prompt me to step back and take a look at the data and wonder how it all happened. In a nutshell, we're into the 10’s of millions of views now.
Let’s take a look at where our videos are right now:
YouTube: We shared our early videos (less than half the library) on YouTube and many of them are still there and referring people to our website.
dotSUB: We used dotSUB.com for some of the early videos because they crowdsource subtitles. dotSUB was the host of Twitter in Plain English, which Twitter chose to link from their front page for over a year. And a bonus - subtitles in over 87 languages!
Our Website: In choosing not to use video sharing services, our goal became to make commoncraft.com the home of our videos.
Custom Work: We’ve also been fortunate to work with some well-known companies that have helped introduce us to the world as well. These videos are on YouTube and hosted on customer websites.
Other: We've licensed our work to people and businesses around the world for the past three years, but it's hard to track these views.
Here’s how all this breaks down:
YouTube says we have over 12 million views:
dotSUB says Twitter in Plain English has 9 million views:
About 50k people click “play” on videos on our website per month, which equals about 1 million views over two years.
Across three Google videos there are about 7 million views, the biggest of which is “Google Docs in Plain English” (3.9m), followed by Google Reader (1.3m) and My Location (1.7m).
Then we have the video we made with Dropbox, which is currently on their front page and in their app. Recently we estimated it had about 7 million views.
So, taking a look at the numbers (since 2007):
- 12 million from YouTube
- 9 million from dotSUB
- 7 million from Dropbox
- 7 million from Google videos
- 1 million from Common Craft
That's over 35 million views - and we're not counting all our custom work or videos we've licensed to others.
If someone would have told me that the RSS video would lead to this, I would have laughed myself silly. But here we are. In fact, we continue to feel that we're just getting started. At the end of the day, it's not about views for us, especially since we’ve chosen not to use the videos to sell ads. These views are seeds that build awareness of our brand and abilities. We have big plans for Common Craft that wouldn’t be possible without a high degree of visibility - and that’s how the views help the most.
The future goal isn’t millions of views, it’s millions of happy customers who use our videos to delight others. Here’s to the next million of those!
On Christmas Eve of 2004, Sachi and I made a decision. We decided that, in one year, we would depart on a year long trip. We reserved a web site address that night: www.theworldisnotflat.com (TwinF). In January of 2006 we departed, dedicated to blogging the whole trip.
After a glowing recommendation from another traveler along the way, we added Sri Lanka to our itinerary, with some apprehension. Sri Lanka experiences some domestic terrorism, but it mostly stays in the northern part of the country. Further, the southern part of the country was devastated by the tsunami a year before. We knew it would be an adventure.
Thanks to connections via Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forums we were introduced to Mervyn, our driver for 10 days in Sri Lanka. Like others in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka, Mervyn depends on tourists coming to their country. Tourists who start their plans by searching the Web.
This is Mervyn showing us how to drink a King Coconut:
We became friends with Mervyn and had a wonderful time in Sri Lanka. We always felt safe and Mervyn was a perfect driver and guide - he gave us a local's perspective and became our friend. He introduced us to Arrack, a favorite alcohol of locals. We told him that we would write about him on the Internet and hoped it would help his business. It was the least we could do.
Last night, on Christmas Eve, 4 years after deciding we would go on the trip, we received this email message from Mervyn:
DEAR SIR,
HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE AND ALL OK WITH ME. I HAD GOOD BUSINESS FOR THIS YEAR. THAT IS BECAUSE OF YOU. THIS YEAR 90% FROM THE BUSINESS I GOT FROM YOUR WEB SITE THAT YOU RECOMAND ME. I SAY AGAIN AND AGAIN THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
I WISH MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND YOUR WIFE.
MERVYN
This message made our Christmas extra special this year. Mervyn is honest, has a good heart, is very hard-working, and deserves to have a successful business. It's inspiring to me, as a blogger, to think that a couple of blog posts can make such a big difference to someone like him on the other side of the world. Our post is the #3 result for "Driver Sri Lanka" on Google. I hope we can continue to help Mervyn's business in 2009.
Our photos from Sri Lanka
Blog posts from Sri Lanka
Yay! I just noticed that we've reached a statistical milestone. For the first time, a video we produced "Google Docs in Plain English" has reached the 1 million view mark on You Tube. This is our first 7 figure view count on You Tube, or any single site (other Common Craft videos have over 1m views across multiple hosts).
We were hired by the Google Docs team to make this video back in the summer of 2007. Obviously, the Google brand and placement on http://docs.google.com helps a lot. We're so proud to have worked with Google on this - it's a product we use every single day. Here's the video:
Custom Video: Google Reader in Plain English
Posted by: leelefever on August 25, 2008- 5:00pm
Categories: clientproduction, google, ourwork, rss, video
The Google Reader team hired us to create this one minute introduction to Google Reader.
Our other videos for Google include:
View all of our custom client productions.
From the description on the video page, this is:
A video that Saatchi Moscow created and produced for Google to attract more Russian people on GMail.
Visually, it's a bit like our videos, but in a giant format. Instead of pieces of paper, they are using giant pieces of pre-printed fabric. The video is quite artful and well done. Isn't it funny too, that it's by Saatchi and Saatchi instead of Lee and Sachi?
Thanks to Bruno for sending over the link!
Help Translate the Google Docs Video on DotSUB
Posted by: leelefever on September 20, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: clientproduction, dotsub, google, language, paperworks, plainenglish, transcript, video
We've been friends and fans of dotSUB since we first started making video for The Common Craft Show. They make it easy for videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles.
The RSS in Plain English video has been translated into 20+ languages on dotSUB. A truly useful and innovative service.
I've gotten permission from the Google Docs team to share the Google Docs video on dotSUB so it's acessible for the hearing impaired and our non-English speaking friends.
Are you bi-lingual? Multi-lingual? Please help us get the Google docs video translated. All you need is a dotSub account and a visit to the video's page (right side) to start the translation.
Here's the video in the dotSUB player - you can click the arrows at the bottom to see other languages (once the translations are complete).
Plenty of Fish and Dating Site Disruption
Posted by: leelefever on June 10, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: advertising, business, community, disruption, google
If you haven't heard about Markus Frind and his dating site at plentyoffish.com, you will.
Markus is singlehandedly disrupting the dating site industry by offering a free alternative to pay-to-play sites like match.com. What makes his story so interesting is that he is the site's only employee - he runs the whole site from his Vancouver, Canada apartment and makes millions of dollars from Google ad revenue.
Here are some of the basic facts from a recent Wall Street Journal story (via: online personal watch):
- For the week ended April 28, PlentyOfFish.com was the 96th-busiest Web site in the U.S. (HitWise)
- Busy Web sites like these usually require scores of people. Mr. Frind says people often don't believe him when he says PlentyOfFish is all his.
- Nielsen/NetRatings says that by some measures, such as the time its members spend on the site, it ranks second after eHarmony.
- A few months back, he posted on his blog a picture of a check from Google for nearly $1 million for a two-month period. Google confirmed the check was for real.
- Mr. Frind says the site brings in between $5 million and $10 million a year.
- Many companies would respond to competitive pressure by hiring someone. Mr. Frind says he has no plans to do so.
There are two things that I love about this story:
1. Disruption: Markus is constantly talking about the demise of the paid sites and has the model to prove that he's a real threat to the top players. I have nothing against the paid sites, or their model, but it's great to see one guy be able to create something so threatening to an established industry. His blog is here.
2. Small is beautiful. Consider this: In 2005, Match.com had 275 employees and Alexa (whose permalinking and graph sharing tool is very broken - booo!) says Plenty of Fish is gaining on them in a big way - with only one employee and no venture funding.
This idea of being small, lightweight and happy really appeals to me in a fundamental way. It reminds me of the Robot Co-op who run very large sites (like 43 Things) with a small team of 6. The same is true with 37 Signals who have chosen to stay small despite the to opportunity to grow in #s of employees and of course, Craigslist.
These days, 20+ employees and millions of capital can be more of an impediment than an advantage - especially if you count the happiness factor. I count Markus as one the few who are showing us the business models of the future.
I write that title with tongue firmly in-cheek. I do work with a couple of Fortune 500s, but Steve is reacting to the survey results that show that Google Results = Bad PR and referring to a case study I wrote a while back about using blogs to get better search results. He says:
Fortune 500 companies need to tear a page out of Common Craft's Google playbook. They boosted their Google rankings by defining a niche for their blog, targeting search phrases, naming categories for each phrase, and writing effectively about subjects related to each category.
I'm flattered, but I think it is an odd comparison to make. Here's an excerpt from the comment I left on the entry:
From my perspective, what Coke needs is the ability to have a voice in the "conversation". By having (something like) an authoritative blog on the soft drink industry, they can become a more powerful voice among the negative press. They can stand up for themselves and perhaps earn better Google rankings in the process.
They should be doing the same thing that brought me to this post -- listening to what the blog world is saying and responding like a person.
A few weeks ago I posted a note about photos from our recent nuptials. Soon after, I notice the entry getting traffic and see that Google is pointing people to it.
Then I notice that somehow, at least for now, the entry is at the #2 position in a search for wedding pictures(search results- may change). I cannot imagine how many sites there are devoted to that subject or how my site gets the #2 position.
This is telling me that there is a google-niche here that needs to be filled by someone other than me. Or maybe I’ll take up wedding photography. Either way, I’m not sure what Google is thinking.
I guess the real message here is that I need to get going on AdWords.
List of Sites with a Google PageRank of "10"
Interesting list- I'm surprised by some of them... Keio University is #35? Scientific organizations seem to have it dialed- big surprise.
Via: ReadWriteWeb
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