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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]

The best viral videos of 2008 weren’t necessarily the ones that got the most page views, in my humble opinion. Or the list below would feature Fred — whose helium and sugar-fueled antics often make me want to chuck my dying laptop out the window — a music video, or Paris Hilton.

Here’s the final countdown, with more videos after the jump. While you’ve likely seen a few on the list, there should be a couple of surprises.

10. Pojemna paszcza - There’s a cookbook called A Man, A Can, A Plan. This guy took the title literally. Is that a sandwich or a Mountain Dew can or both? It garnered over 16.7 million views, with over 15 million on YouTube, making it the most popular (and disturbing) viral video of 2008.

9. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (Note: this is 42 minutes long) - Quarterlife, the first web-based show to make it to network television, tanked, while online videos reigned supreme this year. But Internet musicals did better. Case in point: Fans of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog flooded the site and crashed its servers earlier this summer. Its success had a multi-pronged approach — the show can also be downloaded on iTunes, viewed on Hulu, and ordered on DVD. One of Dr. Horrible’s stars, Felicia Day, also made it big with her web-based series The Guild and scored a deal with Microsoft. Felicia, if you’re reading this, please e-mail me — I have VentureBeatnik Anthony Ha’s phone number for you.

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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 provided 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 all the stops to enable game developers to launch video campaigns on the site — and to make money by adding 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 prime example is the Tiger Woods “walk on water” video posted by Electronic Arts in response to a user pointing out a bug in the game. 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.

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

The effort to make YouTube more friendly to games sprung up for a couple reasons. Game fans have become obsessed with Machinima videos (films of actual game play) with funny voice overs creating unique narratives. Among the biggest is Red vs. Blue, which starts 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 [updated] Machinima.com 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 has also built syndication tools that made it easier for game publishers to incorporate YouTube into their actual products, said Nikhil Chandhok, head of 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. Then, from within the application, players could share videos of their creations by clicking a button and uploading 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 these videos has been viewed 194,000 times. EA ran a contest on YouTube, including a link to buy the game online on the contest site. This way, YouTube helps monetize the videos directly.

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

Spore itself picked up from EA’s earlier game, The Sims. There are more than 240,000 Sims videos on YouTube created by users. The top 100 Sims YouTube videos have been viewed over 130 million times, and about 35 percent of the top 100 machinima video views are of The Sims. Some of the best videos are highlighted on EA’s own site (www.thesims2.com) and on The Sims channel on YouTube.

There is, of course, competition for game videos on YouTube. That includes sites such as WeGame and GameTrailers.

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. Here’s a video that illustrates that point.

Hulu is an online joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp, but it’s not the site that’s fueling the traffic for one very popular NBC video, according to a report in AdAge.

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 gained more than seven million views and more than 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, too, 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.

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

Overlay.tv, a company that lets you overlay video with graphics and other information, has raised $4.6 million more in backing.

Overlay is just one of several companies helping publishers monetize video by letting them insert ads within video. Like a number of other companies, it’s working on technology that’s more nimble than currently offered by leading video sites such as Google’s YouTube. It doesn’t rely on standard ad technology, such as Flash, which can take many hours to hardcode multiple ads into.

Overlay doesn’t host the video itself. It lets marketers or regular users grab videos from more than 20 other online video sites, including YouTube, Metacafe, Videojug and others and then overlay the videos with pictures, words and graphics that link to products or information on external websites.

Other players are doing something similar.

There’s VideoClix, which offers users similar ways to inject information into video. If you point to any object in the video with your cursor, it will tell you what that object is and find out more information about it (image left). Video site Revision3 partnered with VideoClix to give its users access the technology in order to make Revision3’s videos more interactive. There’s also Bubbleply, which lets you add bubbles and text into video. And there’s Qoof, which focuses purely on publishers inserting sales information into videos. So for instance, a snowboard retailer could have one of its salespeople explain how to use snowboards, while inserted info in the video shows how to buy them, how much they cost, and how they compare with other snowboards (see demo currently on bottom of Qoof’s home page). Then there are sites such as Adap.TV, which inserts ads whenever its technology recognizes spoken words in a video. [Update: Veeple, another site that inserts media, such as PDFs or PowerPoints into video, recently launched.]

Overlay is trying to distinguish itself by being even faster to use and more flexible in how it lets users interact with content, says chief executive Rob Lane. It lets you interlay content in a video within two or three minutes, with say, 20 links pointing to other sites or information — and if it’s not performing the way you like, you can change it on the fly.

I played around with the technology enough to agree that it’s very easy to use. However, its interface is not as elegant as that of some others — VideoClix’s, for example.

However, Lane says companies like VideoClix remind him of Flash technology because they require mastery of a new set of tools and take more time to use. Other, lighter technologies, such as BubblePLY’s, meanwhile, don’t have the backend platform that allow links to be dynamically created to point to ad affiliates. Using Overlay, though, if a user clicks on a product link in a video and then buys it, the publisher can earn affiliate revenue. Overlay says it has relationships with 1,000 affiliates.

Overlay recently created a way to insert a Twitter widget — letting you add your Twitter profile with one click and insert recent Tweets to any video. Other viewers click on the widget, and they’re allowed to log into Twitter and send a message from their account.

The company is working on a host of other interactive technologies. For example, it allows fans to sing along karaoke style to music produced by the Jonas Brothers. It also lets users link through to their MySpace and Facebook accounts.

It has signed up 20 contracts with labels and publishers including Nettwerk Music Group (including Sarah McLachlan videos, for example), Hollywood Records, KidzBop (see here) and Transcontinental Media. It also provides a white-label technology for publishers to use on their own sites. The company’s software developer kit allows further customization.

Overlay, based in Ottawa, Canada, launched earlier this year after raising $4.53 million in a first round of capital. This second, most recent round comes from the same backers: Celtic House Venture Partners, Tech Capital Partners and EdgeStone Capital Partners.

CEO Lane said the company isn’t too focused on making money this year or next, because its still early and he’s more interested in getting users. He says it won’t be realistic to expect profitability until around 2010.

A sample of Overlay.TV’s technology can be seen in the video below.

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’s 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 these 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, host of the celebrity comedy/commentary show What The Buck, who says he is earning over $100,000 from YouTube ads. When his cousin started posting segments of Buckley’s public access TV show to YouTube in 2006, he never imagined that his celebrity rants would bring in 100 million views just two years later (and an HBO deal to boot). YouTube’s most-subscribed creator, with over 700,000 subscribers, is Fred, a teenager who poses as a hyperactive, angry six-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 only that “hundreds of YouTube partners are making thousands of dollars a month.” So that’s not exactly a lake of gold for Scrooge McDuck to swim through, but it suggests YouTube is making progress on the revenue front.

The site positions the ads in and around its partners’ videos and shares the revenues with 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 their material. As a result, only about 3 percent of videos on YouTube are supported by ads due to copyright concerns. However, using technology called Content ID, YouTube can scour videos and identify protected material. Copyright owners can then choose to monetize the unauthorized uploads (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.

Move over, vegetable orchestra, YouTube is holding auditions for the world’s first collaborative online orchestra. Announced yesterday, The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is a worldwide project in partnership with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) to bring together international musicians of all ages, instruments and internet connections.

Anyone can download sheet music, rehearse and upload a video of themselves performing “The Internet Symphony,” a piece written especially for the occasion by Tan Dun, composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. All the submissions will be considered for a massive global video performance of the piece, which will be compiled from the individual videos and of course posted to YouTube. Get the video rundown of how it all works here.

The event culminates in a live performance of the piece at Carnegie Hall in April 2009 with the YouTube Symphony, which musicians can audition for with a second video (more details here) of a piece that best showcases their talent. Sadly, none of the pre-selected Symphony audition songs include “Carry On Wayward Son.”

There are parts available for nearly every instrument, from piccolo to timpani. Online support and pro tips are available in master class videos posted by members of the LSO, as well as a video to rehearse along with the conductor. A judging panel from the London Symphony, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic and other orchestras will choose semi-finalists from the videos, and YouTube user votes determine who gets to attend a three-day classical music camp in New York (insanely talented pianist Lang Lang will be there!) and rock Carnegie Hall.

Now I kind of wish I’d kept up with my marimba skills. Fortunately, there’s a loophole for those who aren’t violin prodigies — you can sing a instrumental part (if you can imitate the sound of a French horn) or beatbox the percussion part. Get inspired by Tan Dun’s interview on the project below and upload your videos by January 28.

[photo via: inmagine]

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.

Here’s the latest action:

19 year old commits suicide on Justin.tv — The young man overdosed on pills while streaming live. People watching apparently weren’t sure if it was serious or not, but once they were, they alerted the police. By then it was too late. NewTeeVee has the full story.

Obama’s personal cellphone records hacked — The President-elect’s cell phone account with Verizon Wireless was improperly accessed by some employees. It was simply a regular phone and not a smart phone, so no emails were seen, likely just a list of incoming and outgoing numbers. Verizon has issued an apology and put all the employees involved on immediate leave. GigaOM has more.

Sezmi lays off 20 percent of its staff — The company that had hoped to reinvent television now will have to reinvent itself. The New York Times has more.

Apple TV 2.3 firmware update — Apple has updated the firmware for its set-top box. While it adds the ability to use third-party remote controls (nice), it destroys previously installed Boxee support (not nice). AppleInsider has more.

CES feeling the economic burn — The Consumer Electronics Show is normally an engagement that gets larger every year, but this year several larger companies including Cisco, Yahoo, Seagate, Logitech and others are scaling back their involvement. Crave has more.

Apple’s stock now at pre-iPhone levels — The iPhone has been one of the biggest tech success stories in recent years, but even the company behind it can’t avoid the stock market woes. Apple’s stock is below $85 a share for the first time since early 2007 when the iPhone was first unveiled. It had been over $200 a share during late 2007. MarketWatch has more.

YouTube in HD — While the online video site is still sticking with lower resolution videos as the norm for now, appending “$fmt=22″ to the end of a videos URL will give it to you in 720p resolution, which is technically high definition. Wired has more and CNET has a good before and after example as well.

BitGravity brings an emcompassing HD picture — The content delivery network has a new product called Multiview, which shows six synced up high-definition video streams at once. You can easily switch which one is the focus by clicking on it. As TechCrunch notes, this would be awesome for sports broadcasts.

Spam, that emblematic hard times food staple, is back in your pantry. Now its rallying cry (”Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!”) may soon make an official appearance on your computer, as Monty Python, the legendary British comedy team, has just launched its own official YouTube channel.

“We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell,” Monty Python posted on its YouTube page. “But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.”

Infuriated that users have been uploading tens of thousands of grainy, low-quality snippets of the troupe’s bowel-busting, iconic sketches over the past three years (and as a result, squinting their eyes, missing the funniest bits and being too cheap to buy the DVD box set), Monty Python has taken matters into its own hands and uploaded high-quality clips and sketches from its official vault.

The lineup currently consists of 24 clips, which includes old favorites such as The Black Knight scene from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, as well as interviews with Monty Python’s creators on writing and music. Anyone who wants to join the Flying Circus is free to watch and enjoy the videos, but Monty Python asks its fans to please to refrain from posting “mindless, driveling” comments and show some gratitude instead: Get off the couch, get a job and buy their shows and movies.

Sadly, my favorite anthem to Spam has not made an appearance yet, but more clips are promised. The best part of the announcement? The introductory video that chastises viewers for being stingy (even I feel penitent, despite owning several of the troupe’s films):

Hulu, do you have a rebuttal?

Maybe you’ve read some of the headlines this morning about the NBC and Fox-backed online video site Hulu “catching” or getting “bigger” than YouTube. Hopefully you read deeper into those articles, because while the headlines suggest that Hulu is catching YouTube in traffic, that’s not the case. What they mean to say is that Hulu could match YouTube’s U.S. revenue by next year, according to The Financial Times.

And really, that’s not all that surprising. Everyone knows YouTube is having trouble monetizing its huge traffic. The issue is that most of its videos are user-generated and, thus, hard to pitch to advertisers. Compare that with Hulu, which has all professional content from television networks like NBC and Fox, as well as some feature films. Advertisers know how to work with these, and they do so with big brand pre-rolls (ads that play before the shows start) and mid-stream advertising.

But YouTube is showing signs of coming out to meet Hulu in the professional content arena. While it’s been showing CBS shows for a while now, the Google-owned company recently signed a deal with the movie studio MGM to show some of its older films on the site. It also previously reached a deal to put popular clips from Lions Gate films on the site. All of these seem like baby steps towards becoming more like Hulu, just much larger and with the user-generated content element (and perhaps even a live-streaming element eventually).

That doesn’t even take into account such elements of YouTube as President-elect Obama’s decision to use the site to send out his weekly video addresses and the possibility of a live-streaming YouTube service. Both should make the site even more popular.

And that’s really the key. At the end of the day, look at YouTube’s traffic compared to Hulu’s. While Hulu is growing pretty quickly, it’s still nowhere near YouTube. Depending on which analytics company you ask, YouTube has anywhere from 60-80 million visitors a month. Hulu is more like 3-6 million. Could Hulu eventually catch up? Sure, but it’ll take a long time and assumes that YouTube doesn’t strike similar deals to its MGM one with Hollywood.

But Hulu should draw hope from MGM’s co-president Jim Packer, who upon signing the YouTube deal said:

“We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once,” Mr. Packer said. “I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.”

Still, that is one Hollywood exec giving his thoughts. It’s probably just as likely that Google figures out how to monetize YouTube and its revenue explodes.

Update: MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka spoke to Arash Amel, the analyst behind the numbers the Financial Times used. Amel believes that Hulu is already profitable. For net revenue, he thinks Hulu is making around $12 million a year right now. If YouTube is still losing money every year (which a lot of people assume), that makes Hulu more profitable than YouTube right now.

Of course, Kafka’s former associate at Silicon Alley Insider, Henry Blodget takes exception to the idea that Hulu is already profitable. “We’ll believe it when we see it,” he says.

Blog fight!

This is just brilliant. As we wrote about yesterday, President-elect Obama will be giving weekly video addresses alongside the radio addresses that have become routine for previous administrations. The big key for these video addresses is that all of them will be placed on the largest Internet video portal in the world: YouTube. Today the first of those was released (watch it embedded below).

The fact that I can watch this on my computer, my TV (via the Apple TV YouTube channel) or my phone (on the iPhone’s YouTube app) is remarkable. Oh yeah, and the content of the speech isn’t half bad either. The game has changed.

With families no longer huddling around the radio, the presidential “Fireside chats” of the ’30s and ’40s are moving to YouTube. Today, President-elect Barack Obama will be recording his weekly Democratic address not just on radio, but on video for the first time. The video will be uploaded to YouTube and available for viewing after the radio address is released on Saturday. Recorded in Chicago at the transition team’s office, the YouTube video will be posted to Obama’s site Change.gov, which is supposed to make his administration more transparent.

Obama will continue to record these videos and post them weekly, with the goal being to make the White House and the political process more transparent and to give government a public face. They are to be followed by video interviews of policy experts and senior transition team members, online Q&As and perhaps some aww-inducing footage of the Obama family’s future puppy. It has been reported that the administration will even launch a White House YouTube channel soon after taking office.

But will these videos really make an Obama White House more transparent? The video will be more visually appealing, user-friendly and accessible than a radio address (can you remember the last time you turned on the radio for an important announcement?) and much more widely distributed, but it’s still a controlled, one-way message. Let’s hope Obama starts using Change.gov to enable real dialogue and interaction soon.

Regardless, Obama’s innovative campaign and approach to multimedia has set the tone for increased online interaction between the White House and the public, as compelling videos like this one have certainly rallied more supporters, sparked conversations and fostered communities.

YouTube is set to announce a deal with movie studio MGM that will allow for some of its content to be viewed on the extremely popular online video site, The New York Times reports. This deal, which had been previously rumored (though the studio involved wasn’t clear at the time), will bring feature films to YouTube — legally. That’s big news, but it’s not all great news.

While it always seemed likely that any studio would hold back newly released content from YouTube, even the older catalog selections of films is going to be very restricted. The NYT lists films like Bulletproof Monk and The Magnificent Seven as coming to the service, but notes that what would likely be the most popular catalog fare, movies like Legally Blond, will only have select clips available on the service.

MGM’s co-president, Jim Packer, doesn’t see the studio putting a significant part of its catalog on YouTube anytime soon, according to the NYT article. One definite hold up has to be advertising. Google, which owns YouTube, has been famously unable to successfully monetize the service. Hollywood, particularly studios like Lions Gate and now MGM, seem more open to trying and seem to like YouTube’s technology which finds unathorized clips, but the most telling quote from the NYT piece is this:

“We will have some long-form videos up on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s the platform to have 30 or 40 movies up at once,” Mr. Packer said. “I feel much more comfortable doing that on a site like Hulu.”

Hulu, the NBC and Fox-backed online video service, does not allow for user generated content (which YouTube excels in), and thus there is no uploading of unauthorized material. And perhaps because there are no crazy videos of cats trying to drink from fire-hoses, Hulu’s content is more appealing to big name advertisers — the kind you might find on TV.

The MGM/YouTube deal will also see older television content come to the service. Again, that’s nice, but Hulu has fresh television content — that’s nicer.

Online video site