How well do user generated media sites (YouTube, Flickr, AOL Video, etc.) keep their visitors up to date on current events? I decided to spend a little time last night analyzing what content, if any, would be available on the California wildfires.
My methodology was simple - search a variety of user generated media sites for the phrase "fire california." I did not use quotes in my query. Though I concentrated on the first page of results, I sometimes looked at the second page. Here's what I found.
Photos
Flickr - Very timely images. Almost all were related to the current event.
SmugMug - A few photo sets of the California fires, but you can find much more on Flickr.
Shutterfly - "Sorry, 0 items found for fire california."
snapfish - "No results found"
Video
YouTube - Most of the videos were old (8-12 months). There were only a few related to the current wildfires. This was surprising since YouTube is the dominant site in video sharing.
Crackle - No videos. I did appreciate the clip of how to make a california roll.
Yahoo Video - Lots of videos. Included clips from Google Video, ABC News, Revver, and others. Heavy on ABC News. Only 1 user submitted video on the first page of results.
AOL Video - Only 10 videos on the first page, but 2 were from the current fires. Almost as much content as YouTube.
Blinkx - Had many videos on the fires. All results were provided by major news sources (CNN, ABC, BBC, CBS, etc.). All links went to the source site.
blip.tv - Only 1 result relevant to the California fires.
Break - No current content but did have user submitted footage from previous fires.
BreakTaker - No current content. The monster potato gun was one of the better videos.
Brightcove.tv - The top 6 results of the first page covered the current fires. They provided a mix of local and national news sources but no user generated videos. Brightcove.tv is a great source for timely reports from news organizations.
Current - Almost all results were relevant to the fires (29 of 30 videos). All were user generated video or text comments. Some of the text comment areas linked to video files hosted at national news source sites (e.g., CNN). Current had a compelling mix of user generated content and provided easy access to professional news sources.
Dabble - Had a few user generated video clips but all were hosted at YouTube. It seems like Dabble may be doing a better job at searching YouTube's videos than YouTube.
Dailymotion - No videos, but they did have a clip of "You Really Got Me" that I really appreciated. I really wish I went to one of the Van Halen shows last week. Ugh!
dalealplay - This site (all spanish) provided one clip about the news story.
Dave.tv - No videos. Don’t be fooled by this site’s domain. It is not affiliated with David Lee Roth. There’s not even anyone named Dave on the company’s leadership team.
eyespot - No videos. “Sorry, no hits for that search.” This site needs to do a better job with providing suggestions if searches return no results. They have videos for “fire” and “california.”
flukiest - No videos. I’d give them the same recommendation as eyespot.
GKKO - No videos.
Google Video - No matches on the first page of results. A little shocking. It also seems odd to me that some people record CNN broadcasts with a video camera... usually with John Lennon's "Imagine" playing in the background. I guess that's just the kind of people they are.
PureVideo - Good meta-search results on the event. Providers include Flixya, ClipSyndicate, Revver, Blip.tv, Rootv, and Reuters. All links fowarded to the content provider's site. In the case of Flixya, the video was hosted with YouTube. It's starting to get complicated in this syndication/meta-search space.
Veoh - They had a good number of relevant results and I was impressed with their mix of professional (CBS) and user generated videos. The first result wasn’t really a match, but I appreciated the Mr. Bungle clip.
Conclusions
Top photo site - Flickr was the best source for information on the California fires. SmugMug was a distant second.
Top video site - Current was the overall best source for user generated media (video and text) and links to traditional news sources. Veoh and Brightcove tied for the second best. Yahoo Video came in third. Again, I'm surprised by the poor results at YouTube and Google Video on this event.
I realize that some of these sites might perform better or worse depending on the type of news event. I assume that YouTube would perform better if I were analyzing one of the many Britney Spears train wrecks. I should note that I just checked YouTube and their top Feature Video is about the fires.
Here are two opportunities that I believe might help all of the sites grow their current events content.
- Improve the search results algorithm. Try to avoid null result sets. If no results come back for a multiple word query, then parse out each individual word.
- There's a difference between informing visitors of top viewed videos and top visitor searches. There may be an opportunity to encourage UGM producers to create content that is lacking on your network by informing them of what people are searching for. It could also help educate your producers on better keywords to assign to their content. Think Google Trends but for your own site.
Please share any opinions on my test or the results.
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