Some rumours were circulating last week that YouTube might be about to announce live streams. A screenshot showing a ‘livwe stream’ icon seemed to point a new feature but apparently is only part of the producer account of certain channels and not viewable by the public…which, for now, is very sensible.

YouTube are constantly battling with copyright issues, so opening up live streaming to the general public would seem slightly suicidal, however there is a strong argument for them to work with more  organisations such as sports teams, fashion and entertainment brands to give them this option in their channels.

You Tube have been getting into streaming Live Music and live sport in the past year, and I would expect to see the trend continue. Obviously there is broadcast rights and copyright redtape that would stretch around the globe, but with connectivity and device capability increasing rapidly there is going to be more and more opportunity to put live events to a global audience.

Facebook has started to integrate live streaming apps and there is already the likes Ustream and Live Stream (who have been doing some stuff with fashion brands recently) for raw live streaming so there are options for the types of organization or brand that has both ownershjip over live content and fans willing to chew it up. YouTube would do well to get in on that action…and will almost certainly give the others a headache when they do.

There has been a fair amount going on this week in social media with the Social Media World Forum (smwf) on Monday and Tuesday and SXSW the other side of the pond. Due to this, there is a bonus post in our top six this week.

1. Brands Must Become Media to Earn Relevance – Brian Solis

Always on the money in terms of in depth analysis and forward thinking, Brian Solis looks at how brands have to become adept at creating content and actually becoming media. He also breaks down the differences between paid, earned and owned media and looks at how, as content creators, brands and individuals can use social media to build influence and trust within their niche.

2. Social Fans More Likely to Buy – emarketer.com

Who’s looking for some ROI ammo? That’s most of us then! A recent study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate (US) indicates that if you are a friend or follower of a brand then you are more likely to buy their stuff. Not exactly a Eureka moment but anyone working with B2C clients, it may be worth throwing pointing them here.

3. 4 Ways the Entertainment Industry is Getting More Social – David A. Yovanno

If you are a fan of something or someone then social media should be your friend. TV companies, Movie studios, bands or labels and especially sports teams or athletes now have the tools to bring their fans into their world like never before. In this guest post by David A. Yovanno on Mashable, he looks at some examples of how the entertainment world is getting its social on.

4. Hats off to Heineken - Molly Flatt

I had originally credited this one to Mashable but a tweet from James Whatley at 1000Heads set me straight on how they had it first! This is one of the best WOM (word of mouth) campaigns I have seen in a while. The video is below so doesn’t need too many words, but note the harnessing of: real life, both genders, online and offline and the human touch. Enjoy.

5. Social Listening for Economists? – Aaron Lewis

Interesting angle from Aaron Lewis on how social media can be used as an economic prediction engine. By using the social media monitoring tools (in this case Crimson Hexagon), a decline in social chatter about job hunting pre-empted a slight increase in overall economic performance in the US. Not sure if we should hang our hats on the data just yet…but I like the way he is thinking!

6. Sequoia’s Kvamme: Social Media Marketing Can Replace Advertising – Liz Gannes

According to Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme, “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising any more.” With so many people now creating their own media, if marketers and advertisers of old can navigate the new waters and find a way in to these communities then they can turbo charge their messages. They are going to need to learn the new languages and etiquette though.

7.  Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv #1 – PianoChatImprov (Merton)

Controversial, I know but I couldn’t resist throwing in a seventh this week. If you aren’t familiar with chatroulette then go here or here. Then watch the below video and laugh accordingly!

“Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise” (Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent)

Human beings are visual creatures and the experiences we get from seeing someone or something is far deeper than reading text or hearing audio. The good news, is social media and the web in general is becoming more video friendly. It is easy to make videos, easy to upload them to sites with potentially millions of viewers and easy for those people to share them. With the search engines and advertisers now more interested in engagement levels and time and depth of a site visit, it is a bit of no brainer for media owners and brands to not harness this.

You hear online video and you think YouTube, and why not? There are over 400m people per month watching between 6-9 million channels! Impressive. Also, we have the social networks who have their own video upload platforms and streaming sites such as Ustream or JustinTV. A recent, and very interesting entrant is Vpype. I saw them in action at SMWF on Monday and think this has some real legs from a fan engagement perspective.

This is truly social video . Sure, you can watch a video on YouTube and comment on it or watch a live event or broadcast on Ustream (even with some nice social chat features running alongside) but the ability to run a live, unscripted, ‘meeting’ or ‘party’ with your friends or fans is a far more engaging and authentic proposition.

Features include:

-          Live chat alongside each video

-          Chat History and storage

-          Viral tools to promote broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter

Bring out the Celebrities

I think the real winners in this will be celebrities or brands who have a community of advocates such as bands, fashion designers and especially sports teams and athletes. The ability to provide an experience such as Vpype to fans, embedded into a platform where they are already investing a huge amount of their online time is one that they should be seriously looking at.

Too many media owners are still thinking they need to use this type of golden content as a way to drive traffic to their ‘official websites’ or require a two page registration form before you can access this good stuff. You don’t need to put your audience or fans in a headlock before giving them what they want! The tools are available to provide remarkable experiences outside of official sites and it will be interesting to see who starts putting some stakes in the ground and experimenting.

Would love to hear you thoughts…and Happy St Patrick’s Day!

Entertainment, news and education. Yes, it has some of the capabilities of a laptop and a giant iPhone… and there may be some that want to use it like that but what it is absolutely going to dominate at, is watching movies, sports games, music events and providing a new, rich reading experience.

Erik Qualman writes an excellent post here about the possibilities for enhanced knowledge transfer for educational books through the iPad. Imagine no more scribbling in text books or getting a second hand Economics book with the notes of a D- student masquerading as useful insights (I am still bitter about that one!). Instead, you will get the best notes from the smartest brains, even the authors themselves and be able to search for complimentary information all in the same place – very cool.

The latest industries to be disrupted by emerging technology, music and print, can start to tip toe their way back in by utilizing these platforms. Will people (micro) pay to have their chosen sections of the Times, Sun, NYT, FT downloaded to their tablet each day so they can read it on the train without attacking the person sitting next to them with a load of paper – yeah I reckon they might. How about the latest blockbuster while they are on a 4 hour train or plane journey? Definitely. The highlights from their team’s win in the Cup the day before as they lie in bed on Sunday morning…yes please!

Don’t expect it to do something that already exists. If Apple are good at one thing then its leading innovation and I think the entertainment industry as a whole is the most obvious application for the ipad and it should present a wealth of opportunities for the producers and gatekeepers of the content.

The iPhone or HTC (in my case) are too small to watch anything longer than 15-20mins worth of footage and people don’t want to hump their heavy laptops around everywhere they go. The iPad (I should point out that I am yet to touch one!) looks the perfect size to consume entertainment and that means new business models can start to appear – micro payments, freemium, sponsorship, content marketing etc.

What say you?