Earn a Spot on ‘America’s Got Talent’ With a YouTube Submission

Earn a Spot on ‘America’s Got Talent’ With a YouTube Submission
07/05/2012 by Brian Anthony Hernandez on Mashable

Televised talent show America’s Got Talent returns May 14 for season 7 and it’s again letting skilled fans audition via YouTube submissions.

This online component of AGT began in 2010 and spawned 10-year-old singer Jackie Evancho. She had previously unsuccessfully auditioned twice before earning a slot on the show thanks to her operatic YouTube entry. Evancho finished as runner-up that season.

This year, people living in the U.S. have until June 1 to woo producers, who will handpick 20 YouTube acts for a public vote. The top voted performer makes it into the TV show’s quarterfinals. Eleven other YouTube acts will compete in a live show in August for places in the semifinals.

Those acts will then face judges Howard Stern, Howie Mandel and Sharon Osbourne, and battle for the $1 million prize against acts that advanced from the early rounds of AGT.

People can submit a video audition on the show’s app (for Android and iPhone), YouTube channel, NBC pageor Facebook page.

For a sampling of what people have submitted in the past, here are last season’s top 12 acts that came out of the YouTube contest:

Matt Wilhelm

Matt Wilhelm, a BMX racer from Chicago, was voted number one by fans.

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Aeon Fever

Aeon Fever, a dance troupe, made this list with this energetic entry.

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Beth Ann Robinson

Robinson gives ballet a hip-hop twist.

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Breena Bell

Bell, a young dancer, exposes some gymnastic talent.

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Brett Daniels

Daniels, a magician, makes a motorcycle disappear and then re-appear.

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Gabe Rocks

Gabe, a Bulldog, performs some impressive tricks.

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Gymkana

Gymkana, a group of acrobats, do a quick, circus-like number.

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Kalani Basketball Freestyle

Some basketball tricks from Kalani.

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Kevin Colis

Colis sings "Amazing Grace."

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Powerhouse Choir

Singing and dancing from the Powerhouse Choir.

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TNC Elite

Precision dancing from TNC Elite.

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West Springfield Dance

More precision dancing, this time with a bit of a dark feel.

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What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised
May 6, 2012 by Sam Laird on Mashable

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.

Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).

Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.

The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.

“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”

As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.

Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.

With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.

“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.

“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”

Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.





Image courtesy of iStockphoto, akinbostanci
Source: Mashable.com

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Millions of Americans Cut the TV Cord [STUDY]

Millions of Americans Cut the TV Cord [STUDY]
April 4, 2012 By Alissa Skelton on Mashable

Users aren’t completely ditching pay-TV subscriptions, but a new report says 3.58 million people in the U.S. will have cut the TV cord by the end of 2012.

A report entitled “The Battle for the North American Couch Potato: Online & Traditional TV and Movie Distribution” [PDF] is just one indicator that paid online streaming TV and movie services are growing and pay-TV subscriptions are slowing.

From 2008 to 2011, the Convergence Consulting Group estimates 2.65 million — 2.6% of the U.S. population — ended their pay-TV subscriptions and replaced them with online streaming services such as Netflix. More than 40% of U.S. pay-TV subscribers became non-subscribers by dropping their service in 2011. According to the report, Canadian TV services have seen a slower bleed — about 83,000 Canadians, or .7%, dropped their pay-TV subscriptions in 2011 to watch online subscription services.

Compared to 2010, U.S. TV services added 160,000 fewer subscribers in 2011. The number dropped from 272,000 in 2010 to 112,000 in 2011. Convergence Consulting estimates 185,000 people will start new TV subscriptions in 2012.


SEE ALSO: We Now Watch Less Live TV, But More Programming Thanks to DVRs [STUDY]
“Kiosk, mail and now streaming rental (assuming sufficient usage) offer a lower-price value proposition and have radically altered the rental channel while negatively impacting DVD/Blu-ray/Download sales, and encroaching on TV subscription,” the report said.

Online TV watching is expected to increase in 2012 and years to come. In 2011, about 18% of U.S. broadcast specialty-network viewers watched an average of one to two shows online per week — an increase from 16% in 2010.

Advertisers are following their viewers onto the web. The research firm says online ad revenue is increasing. Broadcast and cable network’s online TV advertising revenues reached $1.9 billion, or 2.8% of U.S. Broadcast/Cable Network TV advertising revenue, in 2011. Online TV network’s ad revenue is expected to climb 3% in 2012, Convergence Consulting estimates.

Which do you prefer to use: TV subscriptions or online subscriptions? Tell us in the comments.