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All The Best of 2020 Reviews For Content & Marketing

December 5, 2020 By Dan Thornton

As each year comes to an end, it’s traditional for most big technology and content services to publish a look back at what’s been successful or interesting over the past 12 months. And as content creators and marketers, they can be really useful, which is why I’m collecting the best of 2020 reviews, right here.

There’s not always a correlation between popularity and quality, or in providing business or personal value. An extremely niche article on a specific part of a product may result in more sales than a viral video of someone dancing, or pranking a member of the public. But at the same time, maybe you’ll be inspired to look differently at content which might seem a bit dull in hindsight, or which has been underperforming.

At the same time, it’s also hopefully a useful resource for numbers and statistics if you still need to convince clients or senior management to let you spend some spare time playing around with a new social platform, create some short video content, or invest in better editing software.

Obviously 2020 has been a tough year for so many, but it’s also likely that trends and habits which have emerged during the last 12 months will define the future for the next few years at least.

I’ll be updating this article over the coming months as more platforms share their reviews of 2020.

All of the reviews will be listed in alphabetical order below as they become available:

Google
Pocket
Spotify
TikTok
Youtube

Google

One useful resource Google offers to marketing professionals is the Think With Google website, which includes reports, interviews and trends on various topics. So the 10 most read articles are useful, including some guides to lockdown and Christmas advertising, plus some of the free online courses currently offered by Google.

Plus it’s handy to see what was of interest to other people working in marketing!

Think with Google UK: Most Read Articles

Pocket: Best of 2020

If you’re not familiar with Pocket, it’s one of the remaining survivors from the bookmarking tools which article lovers and curators find invaluable. Acquired by Mozilla Corporation in 2017 (who also run the Firefox web browser), seeing what users have saved to read later is incredibly interesting whether you’re looking for writing inspiration, or just want some interesting things to read over Christmas downtime.

Pocket has shared the top 3 Most Read articles, along with the most popular trio for “Life in 2020”, Tech, Culture, Racial Justice, Making History, Science and Long Reads, so you’re bound to find something intriguing which you might not have already seen.

Pocket: Best of 2020

Spotify: 2020 Wrapped

I’ve always been a music nerd, even before it was possible to track all of my digital listening. So the personal side of the annual Spotify run down is always interesting, although also predictable, considering more of my work is powered by a couple of playlists (ambient classical music for calmer work, and a loud punky playlist for hammering out tasks closer to deadlines).

But it’s also interesting to discover something different, and see what’s proved popular for different genres, and in the world of podcasts. Especially when our teenage tastes tend to shape our listing as we get older, and it can be tempting and reassuring to replay the same classics over and over again. Creativity is shown to come from changing routines, and when you’re not able to travel to work a different way or meet new people as easily, choosing to dive into an entirely different genre of music can help.

Spotify: 2020 Wrapped

The Year on TikTok

The video sharing network may still be relatively new, and somewhat incomprehensible to many businesses. But it’s continued to grow in importance and utility despite controversy, a nationwide ban in India, and other issues over content and privacy.

So it’s worth being familiar with the type of videos which are popular, even if you haven’t already experimented with TikTok or jumped all the way into using it as another marketing channel.

The Year on TikTok: Top 100

Youtube

Youtube has listed the top trending videos and creators for 2020 in the U.S, along with breakout creators and top music videos. But you can find other data on the specific Youtube Culture and Trends website.

Hopefully by collecting the Best of 2020 reviews in tech and digital, I’ve helped you discover something interesting or new. Because that’s something I love doing, whether that’s from working with clients to provide articles, SEO and more. Or via the blog, and The Cipher email newsletter, which are going to be big priorities for 2021, as TheWayoftheWeb evolves after celebrating 10 years of business in 2020.

(image credit: Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash)

Youtube introduces Interactive Cards

March 17, 2015 By Dan Thornton

Youtube has introduced interactive cards as a replacement for annotations on videos. There’s a new Cards tab available in the Youtube Video Editor to allow you to choose from 6 types; Merchandise, Fundraising, Video, Playlist, Associated Website and Fan Funding.

Youtube_Interactive_Cards — Youtube Interactive Cards

They’ll work across mobile and desktop and eventually annotations will be phased out to make way for the new interactive cards. Each type of card has specific settings – for instance Merchandise cards allow you to add an image, merchandise url and a call to action, while fan funding cards allow for donations to creators within the video itself.

They display as a small pop-up, and the teaser can then be clicked for more information. In addition there is an information button that shows throughout the video to see all cards at once. And the new interactive cards will also work in livestreams as well as pre-recorded video.

At the moment you can’t choose size, or position them anywhere other than on the right edge. You can have a maximum of 5 cards per video, and the colours are fixed. Plus their location will change depending on the device being used to view them – so it’s not a good idea to point to them when you’re on camera.

Judging new media by old media metrics

November 12, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Apparently Youtube has announced it will renew around 40% of the original content channels it funded last year (paying channels up to $5 million). As reported by AllThingsD, the channels not receiving new funding won’t be kicked off Youtube – and why would they with infinite space, and the deal requiring them to pay back the investment via advertising revenue if it hasn’t already been recouped?

What sparked my interest was the comparison to traditional TV only picking up the hits at the end of a season, and the fact that the first two comments on the article both said the experiment was a ‘failure’ in traditional TV terms and because 60% won’t be continued.

I’d completely disagree, and it’s symptomatic of the ease with which we default to existing yardsticks.

The long tail strikes again:

Presumably Google has already made back the initial investment on the 40% for renewal, or is close.

For the remaining 60%, Google will make back it’s investment eventually – those channels will remain contributing in perpetuity until they break even.

And the creators that aren’t having renewed deals do have an incentive to keep going – the investment and news will have certainly allowed them to raise their profiles and traffic beyond what they previously had. It certainly should have done with millions of dollars being handed out. Once their investment is re-payed they get the benefits of their increased traffic and funding to go forwards with.

I’m not a Google fan boy by any stretch of the imagination, but having followed the online video industry closely for many years, things have changed with the lowering costs of bandwith and storage, and that means better opportunities for all involved to operate with a lower risk. The cost of a prime time TV network show would be far more than a Youtube channel, and if it failed, there’s no coming back – compared to any of the ‘failed’ channels which could still break out with their next video or series.

Why it doesn’t matter if not all user-created content is great…

January 23, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Youtube users are currently uploading an hour of content every second, or 60 hours every minute.

Assuming 0.25% of all content being uploaded is great content, that’s 3.6 hours of amazing videos every day. That’s 25.2 hours of great content per week, with the average TV viewing in a UK household somewhere between 20 and 30 hours per week.

Pretty amazing, and also why the follow-up attempts to enact laws such as SOPA and PIPA will occur with regularity in the U.S, and the influence of the U.S will be increasingly felt on every country around the world which might be encouraged or persuaded to enact such laws.

It isn’t about piracy. It’s about copying, creating and the disruptive effects we have all had.

The noble purpose of skateboarding dogs

August 22, 2011 By Dan Thornton

Something I inherently felt about the rise and success of Youtube and On Demand video and TV seemed to click when I happened to be re-reading 59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman. Besides being packed full of quick and useful ways to make practical improvements to your life, it also has a lot of references to relevant studies. And one referred to the role of pets, particularly dogs, in lowering stress and blood pressure.

In addition to real pets, Wiseman also mentions studies which used the Sony Aibo (Now discontinued but available via Ebay), and videos of dogs playing, and all had a similar effect at different levels.

And that’s something which people might have missed when they often dismiss a lot of Youtube or online video content as ‘dogs on skateboards’. Broadcast news has long ended bulletins, particularly on slow news days, with the ‘cat stuck up tree’ or similar heartwarming tale of human or animal misfortune. But if you’re in need of cheering up, being able to find endless videos of cute pets is guaranteed online. Including Tillman, who ended up advertising the iPhone:

But besides helping us to feel better and less stressed, there’s also an interesting flipside, which is that most of the media are in an endless race of shock and awe to try and compete with the real-time internet in new and exciting ways. The coverage of the recent London riots, and the events currently unfolding in Libya as I type, are both constantly providing examples of traditional and new media organisations and reporters trying to utilise, and compete with, the internet at the same time, leading to a strange dichotomy.

Even as seemingly clueless presenters commentated on the evils of social networking during the London Riots, the BBC and other media organisations were repeating content from, and sharing content to, Twitter, for example.

And at the same time, there’s a filtering and curation element of popular entertainment, away from the ever-increasing Fox-style shouting controversy that seems to permeate modern TV news reporting, in that I have never had access to so many broadcast channels and yet struggled to find anything which doesn’t irritate me at the very least. The reasons are many, included my awareness of all the alternatives, the possible effects of lowering resources and funding but trying to fill more hours, and the fact that so much content is being endlessly repeated across channels.

But I can get away from all this with my personal selection of things I enjoy watching, and that might help me relax as much as a skateboarding dog, or might be useful, inspiring, or god forbid, actually relevant to me at a time when I’m actually able to watch it. It would be interesting to figure out what I watch most online, but I’m certain the TED Talks would be up there, along with MotoGP, and various racing and FPS game videos, for example. And then a selection of robots, 3D Printing, Extreme Sports, Vintage Rallycross, and a mix of music videos.

But I’m never actively seeking out the news anymore. I’m letting it come to me via social networks and social sharing sites, and it essentially filters into:

stuff that people in my local area are talking about and bringing to my attention.
stuff that people in my areas of interest are talking about, and that I’m actively interested in – so technology,privacy,hacking, etc.
stuff that’s so big it makes an impact across everything – earthquakes, riots, tsunamis, overthrowing governments.

But a lot of this passes through RSS feeds and Twitter so quickly, that I’m only looking at stuff which matters to me in some way, and I wonder whether that’s actually making me a happier person. I still worry that politicians are all corrupt, corporations are inherently evil, the economic downturn means everyone will be poor for 50 years unless they’re rich enough not to worry, and crime may or may not be on the increase (although in the reality most people exist in, it’s whether crime is actually likely to personally affect us).

But I’m spending less time reading about all of it, and more time actually figuring out how I might be able to do something about the parts which are more important to me – for instance, looking at what the likes of the EFF and Open Rights Group are doing with regards to privacy.

Wait, wasn’t this about skateboarding dogs?

Maybe skateboarding dogs have actually have 3 noble purposes in our lives:

When we watch them, we feel more releaxed and our stress decreases.
Because we enjoy watching them (and then sharing links with friends), they made sites like Youtube extremely popular extremely quickly, and far more popular than the corresponding broadcast channels, because there’s no barrier to anyone uploading a video of a skateboarding dog they may have spotted.
And the huge popularity of video on-demand sites has enabled them to reach scale, even if there have been concerns they aren’t making enough money. That scale gives them some elements of power in terms of advertising and revenue, and that means their survival is continued, allowing millions to upload more content that Hollywood could ever produce (for example), and a breadth of content which ranges from babies laughing to lectures on quantum physics and everything in between. Projects like the Khan Academy, for example, which allows anyone with access to the internet the ability to learn via video tuition.

So the next time you’re laughing at a talented hound riding a skateboard, it’s worth remembering that they’re also serving a noble purpose in better the world…