DSA Online | New Media Updates

Anyone that has watched more than 3 YouTube videos has likely come across the dreaded ‘embedding disabled’ screen when they try to view a video on a 3rd party site (a site other than YouTube). One of the great social attributes of YouTube is that anyone can repost a video to another site; whether it be a another website or a Facebook profile, YouTube videos can easily make their way around the internet.  Video sharing is a great social tool – so why would anyone want to prevent it?

There are two simple reasons for this:

The owner of the video relies on YouTube page views for revenue. They are likely advertising something on their page that they want you to see that isn’t visible from the video alone.  Fair enough.  If your name is Magibon and you’re getting 5 million hits for 20 second videos of smiling at the screen from your bedroom, then good for you. Take your pile of Google ad money and go film yourself rolling around in it on a bed.

The rest of the crowd that is disabling embedding is trying to control where their video is seen (on their YouTube page) and they’re missing out on the social wave.  Having a video get passed around the web isn’t the same as waking up in a different frat house 6 days in a row. When others post your video to their site – they are promoting your material, not stealing it.

Recently, I attended a presentation by Ryan Williams (business website here) on social media that briefly touched on this topic. When a business is determining whether social media tools are something to be considered, they should consider the following:

Control: This one pertains the most to the example above. Getting involved in social media can be a leap of faith: once you’re out there on the big, scary net, you cannot control everything that is said about you or how your materials will be used. Often if you are trying to control the media, the web is going to push back.  Spending time attacking critics makes companies look like schoolyard bullies.

Conversation: The web isn’t like other media channels. If you want to be successful socially you need to accept that its a two way street. While putting out banner ads is a great way to drive traffic to your site, social media really begins when the public responds to your message … and you listen.

Transparency: This follows conversation – there’s not really much point to having a conversation if your answer to every question is ‘I’m not prepared to discuss that’.  For this point I could easily swap ‘transparency’ for ‘honesty’. If you’re claiming to have a great price or great quality, you’d better believe that I’m going to price-compare and read independent product reviews. This is the web, and almost everything about what you’re selling is just a Google search away.

Democracy: Go America. Actually, this is more to the point that it makes sense that the person managing the social media needs to have a voice within their company. I’m not suggesting that managers and CEOs need to hand the keys over to the tech kids, but whoever’s handling the social-media is likely to glean a few things doing it, and if everyone in the room rolls their eyes when you’ve announced the new business Twitter account – that might mean something (though it may just mean your staff isn’t hip to the tech). There should be some level of dialogue between management and staff that knows a thing or two about the web.

So let’s get back to that dreaded ‘disabled by request’. You could have let others embed their video on their site; I would have watched the video, seen your content and, if interested, would have looked into it further.  But I didn’t see the video, wasn’t amazed with the content, and went on to look at something else.