Computer Support Blog

While YouTube does act as a platform for promoting stars and brands in other media such as television, movies, sports, music and video games, there are many people now who have gained influence and popularity in pop culture purely from releasing YouTube videos themselves.  Many people have developed informative and entertaining web series that gain thousands of views every week on their YouTube channels.  Some of the most popular YouTube personalities include the host of SciShow Hank Green, host of PBS Idea Channel Mike Rugnetta and popular video game bloggers the Game Theorists.  These channels receive hundreds of thousands of views for their videos and have developed fan bases that rival many other forms of media.  Cool product in technology FameBit wants to connect popular brands with these YouTube personalities in order to work out marketing deals or endorsement campaigns.  On FameBit companies can search through available “YouTubers” and check the size and makeup of their audiences before contacting them to work out a deal.  Any company that wants to use FameBit but is having trouble signing up or viewing listings might have a connection issue requiring help from a network service provider. Read more »

YouTube revolutionized the web when it popularized the idea of user-generated content powering a large social media site.  However, YouTube just supports one medium of user-generated content—video.  Wattpad is a cool product in technology that wants to do what YouTube did for user-created video, but for creative written works instead.  With Wattpad, people upload their stories for popular consumption on the website and mobile app.  Just as YouTube videos are free for the public, so are all works posted by Wattpad members.  Wattpad contains works from many different genres, ranging from crime drama to science fiction to creative nonfiction.  Users can read and react to any story on the site by leaving comments, ratings or marking stories as favorites.  Readers can read stories via the cloud or download the text for offline viewing on the Wattpad mobile application for tablets and smartphones.  Any users who have issues getting their chosen stories to download to their Wattpad library may need mobile tech support for their devices.  Wattpad also keeps track of how many people view a text and download it so writers can see the reach their work has on the service. Read more »

YouTube is no longer just an amateur video site.  Many people produce high quality content for the massive Internet video platform on a regular basis and even manage to earn a living purely from the advertisement money coming from their YouTube channels.  YouTube has gone from an interesting novelty to a major platform for many different types of media—from talk shows to independent dramatic web series.  However, for potential YouTube personalities, the task of building an audience large enough to sustain a regular show or popular channel can be daunting.  Cool product VidIQ wants to give users a better chance at getting enough regular viewers to make their YouTube videos profitable.  Building an audience takes far more work than just content creation and VidIQ is a platform that streamlines that work.  Read more »

It’s becoming more and more difficult to separate yourself from the pack with a video chatting product when Microsoft’s Skype, Google’s Hangouts, and Apple’s FaceTime provide stiff competition.  However, cool product Oovoo is giving users plenty of extra features that distinguish it from the rest of the pack.  Unlike the competition from major corporations, Oovoo offers customers not just chatting but also video recording and uploading tools.  Any users who want to record video podcasts or post video blogs on social media sites don’t have to use any outside programs when making calls on Oovoo.  People can record video calls directly through Oovoo saving them time and effort.  Given the rise of independent video blogs and media on the web, Oovoo is likely appealing to video bloggers and content creators due to this feature.  This cool product even lets users upload directly to YouTube through the software without even having to open a web browser.  People will have to link their YouTube accounts to Oovoo to take advantage of this feature.  Anyone who has difficulty linking their video account to Oovoo will need to find an online computer support service to help them. Read more »

In 2005, three ex-PayPal employees founded a site that changed content distribution and viral marketing on the web forever.  They named that site YouTube.  YouTube popularized the practice of everyday users creating content and posting it on the web.  YouTube kept the content specific to the video format, but still managed to change the way people thought about the web.  YouTube videos are now essential for many companies, public personas, celebrities, and artists in order to have a serious presence on the web and gain a strong fan base.  However, not all content marketing is best through a video format.  That’s where cool person in technology Scott Annan steps in with his company Accel.io. Read more »

It seems there are countless new messaging apps popping up every month for mobile devices.  Mobile chat is currently one of the most popular platforms in consumer technology and many different companies are trying to jump on the bandwagon.  However, most of these apps aren’t very different from each other.  Many use basic text, others use photos, and some even use videos.  However, with such an explosion of options becoming available, it is very difficult to find a messaging app that does something truly different or unique.  Cool product Pingtune is a messaging app that manages to stand out from its competition due to its creative medium for messaging: music.  Pingtune lets users send messages in the form of songs to their friends.  Pingtune users can take music available from SoundCloud and YouTube and embed them in special messages to send to others.  Users who have difficulty getting songs to embed correctly in their messages should seek help from a mobile IT support service. Read more »

The Internet has severely changed the state of being for independent musicians and artists.  Having a web and social media presence is essential to maintaining your career as an artist if you want to stay independent.  Most successful musicians on the web stick to social media sites such as YouTube and BandCamp to promote and sell their music.  That was not enough for cool person in technology Jack Conte.  Conte worked for years as an independent musician with a heavy web presence, both with his solo projects and with his partner Nataly Dawn in the band Pomplamoose.  Conte has drawn a significant following of fans on the Internet thanks to his popular music videos on YouTube, which reveal how he creates the unique sounds in his music.  However, Conte was not satisfied with promoting his work on a social network while selling it elsewhere.  This is why he founded Patreon, a website that allows users to patronize specific artists and fund them for their continued work. Read more »

In the tech sector, businesses evolve or they die.  Given the rapid pace of technological development since the Internet became a mainstream communications platform, companies founded on the Internet seem to have even greater volatility; there are very few sites that remain cool and well-trafficked year after year.  YouTube.com is one the sites that has worked very hard to maintain its strong presence in the minds of Internet users.  Best known as a library of viral videos and videos that never achieved such renown, YouTube is working to reinvent itself by creating original programming in the form of regular web-based series’.  Working to make that vision a reality is Ivana Kirkbride. Read more »

There are amazing things users can do on YouTube. YouTube is the ultimate playground for users with creativity, a video camera, and a computer. It should come as no surprise then to find that the YouTube user ThatsMrRobertson has created a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game entitled The Dark Room. Read more »

The Internet is a remarkably shifty place.  Like the most clique-oriented teenagers, the Internet is home to overnight successes and equally fast crashes in popularity.  The Internet is, in many ways, the ultimate medium for those who have short attention spans.  Perhaps that is why there have been remarkably few Internet music phenomena.  The latest celebrity in music to have gotten her start from exposure on the Internet is also, arguably, the one who has gained the most from her time as an Internet phenomenon.  That person is Rebecca Black.

Rebecca Black was thirteen years old when she became an Internet phenomenon with her song “Friday.”  ARK Music Factory produced the song “Friday” and its creation was a gift from Black’s mother to Rebecca.  When the video for “Friday” was released on YouTube, it languished for a month before exploding with popularity.  On March 11, 2011, “Friday” started picking up millions of hits and the song and Rebecca Black became trending topics on Twitter.  Despite having a vastly disproportionate number of “dislike” ratings by viewers, “Friday” became a legitimate Internet success when YouTube users downloaded the video over 165 million times. The video earned tens of thousands of dollars in royalties and revenue-sharing from advertising through YouTube.

But how did Rebecca Black become an Internet phenomenon and what did she do with her sudden celebrity?

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