PR and the Social Web

This video has been on Youtube for a month without generating a massive amount of interest but just hours before the Apple tablet launches it has been recieving thousands of hits because it looks very much like it might be the real deal. A couple of days ago it became clear that Apple had tested a new iPhone OS and there was much speculation that this would be the basis to the tablet.

If the video clip is genuine it makes it clear that this is the case. That means the iPhone App store named here as the Web Wonder of the last decade will become even more of a powerhouse in this one.

It was the social media sensation of 2009 making the cover of Time Magazine and it makes number three in our list of the most important web phenomena of the last decade.

Number 3: Twitter

The success of Twitter  in under four years is astounding.  Last March Nielsen ranked Twitter as the fastest growing social network with a monthly growth of 1,382 percent.

Alongside the startling growth it has changed the rules in so many areas. It has altered the way we consume news – stories can be tracked instantly and direct from the source; we have seen this starkly with post election protests in Iran and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

Twitter changes the rules for ‘search’ by delivering a  human component.  Google has recognized this and in the last few weeks added live twitter results to its front page returns for a multitude of queries.

Twitter can be a social network but the potential reach is well beyond the real world proxies for friends and colleagues offered by Facebook and LinkedIn.  One of its many functions is that of an ‘introduction engine’ opening the way to bulding new contacts and relationships.

The real beauty of Twitter is that is isn’t a web site, many people prefer to use twitter clients like Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite, its a new medium like SMS was or before that the phone.  We can use it in a host of different ways.  Some say that it is a flash in the pan like Seconds Life or Bebo. I think that is unlikely – it’s a bit like saying “the telephone? That’ll never catch on.”

Number 5: YouTube

It is testament to the sheer scale of web innovation in the last ten years that YouTube only just makes the top five. 

It feels like the video sharing site has been around for ever but it is still a few weeks short of its fifth birthday (although it didn’t officially launch until November 2005).   Its potential however was almost immediately obvious and twelve months later it was snapped up by Google for $1.65 billion.   

A lot of the numbers associated with YouTube are astounding.  In October this year co-founder of the site Chad Hurley announced that YouTube was getting “well over a billion views a day” worldwide.   The Susan Boyle X-Factor video alone received over 120 million hits in 2009.

YouTube is also the 2nd largest search engine in the United States (after its owner Google).  In  October there were a total of more than 3.7 Billion search queries on YouTube as measured by comScore compared with Yahoo which has a billion fewer queries per month.

It is likely that the biggest impact is yet to come.  Hunter Walk  the Director of Product Management at the sites believes the new frontier is the battle for TV dominance “Our average user spends 15 minutes a day on the site, they spend about five hours in front of the television.”  YouTube is already a major broadcast channel for short clips but with leaps forward in video quality and a series of content deals it is sey to become a major player in the delivery of long form content – or what you and I call films and television.