Internet, Online Video | featured news

A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world.

A child watching videos on YouTube is an average of three clicks away from potentially disturbing adult content, according to a recent study released by British digital security firm Kaspersky Lab.

If you feel online video is just another over hyped, passing fad, think again. In fact, online video is gaining strength as a source for content marketing. Take a peek at some pertinent data from the B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey for 2012. This is just one of the survey topics: Percentage of Marketers Using Each Content or Offer.

Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar will leave the online video service in the first quarter, he disclosed Friday in a blog post.

PSY’s ubiquitious Gangnam Style video just passed Justin Bieber’s Baby as the most viewed YouTube video ever. It has currently clocked 803,761,928 views. According to ChannelMeter, Gangnam Style had its best day ever on Oct. 28, when the video was viewed 24,563,506 times. Since it premiered 132 days ago, it has averaged 6.1 million daily views. ChannelMeter now predicts Gangam Style will be the first video in history to reach 1 billion views on Dec. 16, 2012.

Netflix is moving to protect itself against hostile takeovers, less than a week after activist investor Carl Icahn disclosed a stake of nearly 10 percent in the online video company. Netflix Inc. said Monday that it has adopted a shareholder rights plan, also known as a poison pill. Such a plan is designed to make it difficult or even impossible for someone to take over the company without an agreement from the board. When the provision is triggered, additional shares flood the market and make it prohibitively expensive for a takeover.

Only about a third of those "Gangnam Style" plays, 438 million, have been of the original video.

Part of the enduring appeal of YouTube is the sheer random nature of it all -- the way videos of a South Korean pop song or a doped-up kid after a dentist visit can go from obscure to internationally known in a matter of days. But increasingly, the Web's leading video site has also been working to become the Internet's cable provider, mixing channels of its own original content, often in partnership with established stars, into the mix.

Hey, YouTubers! Have you danced your fill to "Gangnam Style"? Have you seen enough versions of "Call Me Maybe"? Now video grazers can check out a brand-new YouTube channel that promises to be as amusing as any cat on a skateboard but also to engage you with ideas for changing the world. TakePart TV, launching Tuesday, is a digital home for what the network has termed "clever, eye-opening and optimistic content around big issues that face our planet." The target audience is millennials ranging from teenage to 30.

Google Inc.'s head of operations in Brazil was detained by the country's federal police Wednesday after the company failed to heed a judge's order to take down YouTube videos that the court ruled violate Brazilian electoral law....