Cisco Systems has released results from its new Visual Networking Index survey looking at video consumption habits around the world, and some of them may surprise you. Among other things, it gauged people’s attitudes toward online, mobile and television viewing of video content in the U.S., China, Germany and Sweden. Below, we’ve broken down the report’s findings for optimum factoid digestion:

• American internet users spend 2.5 as much time watching professionally-produced content (shows and movies created by studios and distributed through sites like Hulu and Joost) than they do the user-generated clips dished up by sites like video giant YouTube. This seems counterintuitive, considering the hype surrounding instant online starlets and user-submitted material in general, but NewTeeVee shares some interesting thoughts on why this is happening here. One reason is that full TV episodes and movies make for much longer viewing times on sites like Hulu, as confirmed by comScore.

• The trend is reversed in Germany, where viewers spend twice as much time with user-generated than professional video — then again, Hulu has yet to reach Deutschland (a potentially ripe market). The site is blocked in many places abroad because TV rights differ from country to country and the company has to negotiate individual deals for all the rights holders.

• The U.S. may lay claim to the explosively popular “Evolution of Dance” and the “Numa Numa” Guy, but China is actually the leader in time spent watching online video — the average Chinese viewer sitting in front of two hours of it a day. This even beats out the time the Chinese spent watching actual television: 1.8 hours a day. Why is this? After all, internet content in China is subject to the same (if not more stringent) censorship standards. Maybe it’s because there are several YouTube-style goliaths in the online video space there, including rivals Youku and Tudou, making it more ubiquitous. Maybe it’s because TV never caught on in China as much as it has in the western world (compare that 1.8 hours in front of the tube to the 3.8 enjoyed by the average American). Remember, America invented the TV dinner.

• The report notes general apathy when it comes to watching online video on traditional TV screens. Not even Americans seemed particularly excited at the prospect — which could spell disappointment for set-top box innovators striving to bring a mix of broadcast and internet content to living rooms everywhere. Consider Roku and Boxee (I would say Apple TV, but really, what does Apple have to worry about?), two companies that have placed their bets on this trend taking off. It could be that the market is still warming to the idea, but 2009 may be the make it or break it year.

• About 23 percent of American video consumers watch content on their mobile phones, way more than in any of the other countries surveyed, where only about 8 to 12 percent do so. Impressively, those in the U.S. who use their phones to view videos spend about 36 minutes a day doing so. Predictably, the 25 to 34 demographic indulges in this activity the most (40 minutes a day). There are some bizarre stats out of the other countries on this count, however, with Swedish viewers in the same bracket typically spending 193 minutes watching video on their phones — contrasted with 15 minutes for 18 to 24-year-olds and 11 minutes for 35 to 44-year-olds. In China, 35 to 44-year-olds actually spent the most time (39 minutes daily) on mobile video. This last fact points to greater familiarity with video among older users, which may explain why online video has gained so much traction there as well.

The report goes into deeper detail on gendered and age-related patterns that you can decipher for yourself by downloading it here as a PDF. It was produced in partnership with the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, and represents just the first phase of what will likely be a series of results. So stay tuned, or at least glued to your computers and mobile phones.

[chart via NewTeeVee, courtesy of Cisco]

In discussions about the conflicts in the Middle East, one of the consistent, sensitive points of debate has revolved around the question of media bias in covering any related events — which is why the adoption of online communication mediums like Twitter and YouTube in the chatter around the most recent Gaza conflict is both timely and interesting.

Tweet the press (conference)

In reading up on the current situation, you may have chanced on the Israel Defense Forces’ YouTube channel, blog, or even the press conference the New York Israeli Consulate held via Twitter (transcript here).

And you may also have come across the Gaza government’s (i.e., Hamas’) YouTube-knockoff channel, AqsaTube, and related site, available in 8 languages.

The use of online tools for political PR isn’t by any means new. And the concept of seeking out the relevant channels to reach a mass audience is as age-old as any means of public communication. Still, the way these channels (particularly those that fall into the social-media bucket) are being used reflects an apparent understanding in their inherent potential to breed a sense of transparency and accountability, which are critical to any successful PR push.

Running a press conference on Twitter gives people the sense that they can each act as a ‘citizen journalist,’ per se. You have a question for the IDF? Ask it via Twitter and you might just get an answer — minus the red tape. Liberating, isn’t it? To some extent, sure. At the very least it gives you the feeling that it is. And that feeling might drown out your reaction to — or perhaps even ignorance of — the reported struggle to actually allow foreign reporters into Gaza.

Social propaganda is still propaganda

So, despite the play of these more social online outlets in the overall coverage and discussion of the conflict, you might still find it difficult to unearth truly unbiased related journalism. Sure, there are protest and bloody warfare photos on Flickr, ongoing rants on Twitter (at the time this article was written, the hottest topic on Twitter was #gaza) and the more sensational news stories bookmarked on Digg. And there’s much information to be digested there. But, considering the sources, much of what you’re reading is still biased.

So whereas before one could blame the media for too easily succumbing to the PR machines, these machines are now out in our own element — our social nooks online — and up for our own interpretation and reaction. Call it a heightened need for citizen vigilance.

[photo: flickr/zoriah]

YouTube is introducing an expanded high definition video section today. It’s an obvious move, improving the viewing experience and the ability to target advertising; until now HD content was mixed in with videos encoded at YouTube’s regular resolution.

YouTube has been offering a limited selection of HD videos over the past few weeks, with links indicating which ones were available in high definition. Clicking the “watch in HD” link beneath any HD-enabled video will now open the video in a widescreen, much larger player, according to the YouTube blog, Widescreen is a feature that YouTube has been rolling out since last month. You can check out this larger player with HD content such as the famous “Where The Hell is Matt?” dancing videos here.

YouTube is also funneling its huge selection of videos into three main landing pages, news, music and movies, making it easier for users to find what they want. Each section pulls the most popular YouTube videos for each category, with the movies page getting a chance to compete with Hulu by offering full-length films from partners like MGM and Lions Gate.

By separating the content into these categories, YouTube may be able to attract more advertisers. The distinct pages could entice more companies to run targeted ads since they’re so specific to an industry — for example, it would be more valuable to run an ad for the latest summer blockbuster on the movie page than on a page featuring random videos. However, there’s still the issue of user-generated content mixed in with more premium offerings, which has kept advertisers wary of YouTube.

YouTube has been a great market for posting viral videos related to video games, just as it has been for almost any other kind of video that captures buzz.

But Google’s YouTube division is starting to pull out the stops to enable game developers to launch video campaigns on the video site — and to make money by doing officially sanctioned game videos. You can expect this viral marketing to grow as the economy takes a toll on marketing budgets and more publishers discover how to take advantage of the enthusiasm of YouTube fans.

A case in point is the Tiger Woods “walk on water” video that Electronic Arts posted in response to a user of the Tiger Woods video game who was pointing out a bug. Levinator 25 posted a video that showed how Woods could walk on water in the game and hit a ball. EA’s marketing department turned it around, launching a video that specifically addressed Levinator 25. In the video, the real Tiger Woods walks on water into a pond and hits a ball from the top of a lily pad. The video has had more than 2.5 million views and YouTube shares the ad revenue with EA so that it makes money from the marketing effort.

It’s not a ton of money, for sure. But it comes as a time when the costs of marketing on TV and other places is climbing and contributing to the budget headaches at game publishers who now spend $25 million or more on developing and marketing a game on a regular basis.

The effort to make YouTube friendly to games came from a couple of directions. Game fans became obsessed with Machinima videos, or those that were films of actual game play, with funny voice overs that helped create unique narratives. Among the biggest were Red vs Blue, which started the Halo Master Chief characters in red or blue body armor. Now the videos on the Machinima channel on YouTube have been viewed more than 14 million times. The most popular one, a Red vs. Blue episode entitled Master Chief Sucks at Halo 3, has been viewed more than six million times.

Microsoft tapped into the viral craze when it created a television commercial for the game Gears of War in 2006. The searing video images from the game were set to the haunting Donnie Darko version of the song Mad World. The video aired on YouTube at the same time the commercial launched. To date, the YouTube video has been viewed more than 5 million times.

And YouTube also built syndication tools that made it easier for game publishers to incorporate YouTube into their actual products, said Nikhil Chandhok, head of the video syndication efforts related to gaming at YouTube. In March of this year, YouTube contacted EA to launch a formal program for scripting videos for game fans. By that time, it was a no brainer that channels on YouTube could be great marketing tools.

“They were in tune with this viral growth on the web,” Chandhok said.

In June, EA launched Spore Creature Creator, a $10 version of its Spore game that let players create a creature. Then, from within the application, players could share the video by clicking a button and uploading it to YouTube. The idea was to get buzz going about the game before its September launch. To date, more than 158,000 videos of Spore creatures have been uploaded. The most popular of those videos has been viewed 194,000 times. EA ran a contest on YouTube and on the contest page the company included a link to buy the game online. YouTube thus helps monetize the videos.

Here’s a video that I created using the Spore Creature Creator.

YouTube makes the videos with EA’s content available on the EA channel on the site and then shares revenue from ads associated with those videos. Chandhok said there will be a lot more collaborations coming in 2009 between game publishers and YouTube. On top of that, Chandhok anticipates that users will start creating their own games based on videos. They can, for instance, show users a scene from a story and then have the users pick what happens next in the story. when the user makes a selection, a video plays that goes with that selection. Here’s a video that illustrates that point.

Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, which means that NBC’s best Saturday Night Live clips should be exclusive hits on Hulu, right? Wrong.

Saturday Night Live star Andy Samberg’s production company, The Lonely Island, uploaded its “Jizz in My Pants” music video to Google-owned YouTube. The not-safe-for-work video (at least not without headphones) has racked up over 7 million views and over 28,000 comments, making it the most popular video in the past month. This suggests that YouTube is still a faster way to distribute content, despite Hulu videos being embeddable on web sites.

The clip’s on Hulu, but Hulu doesn’t reveal view counts. The video is also available for viewing on FunnyorDie.com and can be downloaded from iTunes. On NBC.com, the same video has tallied only around 561,000 views, running with ads from Nissan and Wrigley’s, according to AdAge.

The song is the first single from The Lonely Island’s debut album “Incredibad” (set to release in February 2009) through Universal Music Group, so it makes perfect sense that Samberg and Co. want to build up an audience through YouTube. And the audience that’s watching this video there? 72% male, with 64% between 15 and 24 years old. Perfect.

Taking a page from fellow Brits Monty Python’s recent move into online video, Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s entertainment company, Really Useful Group (RUG), has launched its own YouTube channel.

RUG, which is a theatrical, TV and film production company that owns several West End theaters, hopes its online presence will translate into more music downloads, ticket sales and merchandise purchases. This pairing also highlights how Broadway shows, whose ticket sales have cooled, are trying to tap into online audiences with YouTube clips for shows such as In The Heights.

Clips on the channel span over 40 years of Lloyd Webber hits, with live performances of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” (Antonio Banderas sings!) and segments from the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar, plus music videos.

For those of you who want to know more about the man behind the musical mask, there’s even a Charlie Rose interview with Lloyd Webber.

Lord Lloyd Webber (yes, he was knighted) has been trying to cement his relevance in the world of pop culture, with an appearance as a guest judge on the singapalooza phenomenon show American Idol earlier this year. It makes sense that he’s trying to move his greatest hits to YouTube. Besides, he created the iconic musical Cats eons before videos of cats flushing toilets became YouTube favorites.

Sadly, my fruitless search for the Saturday Night Live parody of Cats from 1999 is mirrored by a lack of Cats videos on RUG’s YouTube Channel. Well, we’ll always have this Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat shoutout, immortalized by the TV show Seinfeld.

[Photo via malaspina.com]

Making videos for YouTube can be a legitimate source of income for the most popular users, some of whom can bring home the bacon with their creations — six figures worth of bacon. At least that’s what The New York Times is reporting.

It has been a year since Google-owned YouTube invited users to join its partner program and add advertising to their videos. Big media companies like Lions Gate, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and CBS are among the partners, but now even individual users are able to quit their day jobs and make videos full-time.

The Times piece focuses on Michael Buckley, the host of the celebrity comedy/commentary show What The Buck, who said he is earning over $100,000 from YouTube ads. When his cousin started posting segments of Buckley’s public access station tv show to YouTube in 2006, he never imagined that his celebrity rants would bring in 100 million views just two years later. YouTube’s most-subscribed creator, with over 700,000 subscribers, is Fred, a teenager who poses as a hyperactive, angry 6-year old perpetually under the influence of helium. How do you like them apples? Seriously, tell me how far you get through this video:

A Google spokesman was vague about how much money these videos are making, saying that “hundreds of YouTube partners are making thousands of dollars a month.” So that’s not a lake of gold for Scrooge McDuck to swim through, but it suggests YouTube is making progress on the revenue front.

YouTube positions the ads in and around the partner videos and shares the revenues with the creators. It has been difficult for Google to profit from videos because a majority of them are uploaded by users who probably don’t have copyrights to the material. As a result, only about 3 percent of videos on YouTube are supported by ads, because of copyright concerns. However, using technology called Content ID, YouTube can scour videos and identify what it thinks it copyrighted material. The copyright owner can then choose to monetize the unauthorized upload (Google says 90 percent of its partners choose to do so ).

[Image via www.changetowin.org]

YouTube gets links to high-definition videos – It already offered HD videos, you just had to use a simple hack to access them. In other YouTube news, the company is offering a new service for adding sound to videos you upload.

Valley investor Del Biaggio nailed with fraud charges — William Del Biaggio, a high-flying investor who forged his way to tens of millions, has been permanently banned from being an investment advisor; now he faces fines and imprisonment.

“Second Life’s second wind” (of press coverage?) — Forbes takes a look at the once-hyped virtual world’s latest efforts to stay relevant.

Korean government plans to invest $200 million in video game industry — It hopes to accelerate the already strong industry’s growth to compete with Japan and the U.S.

Digital media software maker RealNetworks lays off 130 — More on the company blog, here.

EDS chief to retire — Hewlett-Packard bought tech services giant Electronic Data Systems, Inc. for $13.25 billion earlier this year. Now, EDS chief executive Ronald Rittenmeyer plans to retire.

Supply-chain company acquisition called off – I2 Technologies was planning to acquire JDA Software Group in a $346 million deal, but now it’s not going to happen due to lack of financing.

Google putting more ads on pages — According to a report by search marketing agency AdGooroo.

Bad guys winning internet security battle — Software written to extract information like credit card numbers is becoming more prevalent; efforts to stop it are failing, as this in-depth New York Times article examines.

A closer look at why some social networks have failed — They didn’t offer things people wanted, or they were copycats who missed the market opportunity, basically.

Looks like President-elect Barack Obama isn’t the only politician to see the value of communicating through popular video site YouTube. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom created a YouTube channel to deliver this year’s State of the City address — all 7.5 hours of it.

We’ve been fans of Obama’s YouTube addresses, because they make it much easier to see and hear the president-elect’s words. The first address has been viewed nearly 1 million times, and according to my highly scientific measurement of “what my friends talk about at parties,” these videos are starting to enter the general cultural conversation. That’s no mean feat — how many weekly presidential addresses (which are traditionally broadcast over the radio) did you listen to before this?

Not that Obama is the first politician on YouTube. In fact, Newsom actually modeled his channel on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Regardless, more and more elected officials are jumping on this bandwagon.

Newsom is approaching these videos a bit differently than Obama. The most notable difference is the aforementioned 7.5 hour length, spread out over several videos, each about 45 minutes in length. Apparently, Newsom took advantage of the freedom provided by YouTube to go on and on in much more depth.

On the one hand, it’s cool to see Newsom deliver a speech that could never have been broadcast on traditional television — except maybe on CSPAN? — and with more interactivity in the presentation. Instead of tuning in and out, you can just choose the video that you’re interested in. On the other hand, 45 minutes per topic is nuts. Will anyone other than the hardcore policy wonks sit through one YouTube video of that length, much less multiple videos?

New videos will be unveiled throughout the week; VentureBeat readers may want to tune in on Thursday, when the economic development segment gets posted. As a San Francisco resident, I’m pretty disappointed that housing isn’t one of the announced topics, but perhaps that will be part of the larger business discussion.

The Guild, the popular web series, premieres its second season today with a Microsoft twist — the episodes will be distributed through Microsoft’s platforms of XBox 360 Live, MSN and Zune. The deal between series creator/producer Felicia Day and Microsoft was announced on Monday.

The comedy series, about a motley crew addicted to the online game World of Warcraft, was a breakout hit on YouTube in 2007 and 2008, gaining over 9 million views. Felicia Day is also known for being one of the stars of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (along with Neil Patrick Harris, a.k.a. Doogie Howser), a web musical created by Joss Whedon.

The Guild’s move to the Xbox Independent Video channel, as well as MSN video, may help the show make money — Sprint’s sponsorship of the 12-episode second season marks the beginning of ad-supported content and product placement — but it also makes The Guild less convenient to watch. I mean, how many people are going to watch this show on their Zunes?

The episodes will be available on The Guild’s official website, Watchtheguild.com, four weeks after each one airs, but there’s something weird about not being able to watch a web-based show on its own site, at least not right away.

It’s great that The Guild, with more financial support, will have a chance to shoot in high-definition (and hopefully get a logo that’s less ugly). It’s also fantastic that Day will retain ownership of the show. But will this partnership change expectations from the show’s viewers, now that it has gone from a PayPal-funded, grassroots phenomenon to a series branded with Sprint?

And now, without further ado, the season premiere, in its MSN video player embedded glory:

Season 2 - Episode 1: Link the Loot

Oh, just kidding. By “embed” I really mean a link with an image, since that’s what MSN Video seems to think an embed is.