Vidmeter
If you need to monitor pop culture for professional reasons (sure!), or if you're just killing time before your next meeting, check out Vidmeter, a service that ranks viewing of online videos across all the major players — YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Atom Films, Revver and others.
The first of our readers to score a video in the top 100 — for your organization, that is, no “Crazy Jumping Cat” or “Hamster Dance Video” or bodily exposure qualifies — will win a memorable prize, courtesy of Roger, as well as the unrestrained public adulation of The Agitator.
Since I'm sure this post will cause a stampede to your digital cams and video cell phones, let me just caution …
As with every other direct marketing tool and technique, test, test, test.
Video content might significantly lift your e-mail appeal; it might not. It might draw impressive traffic to web pages describing your new major initiative; it might not. “Version A” might wildly outperform “Version B,” or vice versa. It might showcase the energizing charisma of your executive director; it might … !