This week's Trends: twisters, drive-thrus, and backflips

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we've come across this week:

• We saw damage from twisters that touched down in Massachusetts and learned that searches for the word "tornado" have been hitting a high.
  
  
• We found that the trend of singing your McDonald's drive-thru order has now gone international.
  
  
• We highlighted dramatic footage from a protest in Bahrain
  
  
• We discovered a 75-year-old man who'd become a soccer star in Europe.
  
  
• We looked at the "Nyan Cat" phenomenon with the help of What's Trending.
  
  
• And we watched New Zealand BMXer Jed Mildon set one of two incredible, high-flying records this week:

Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Thumbs Up for Rock and Roll!."

Happy At Home

Courtney blogs over at Women Living Well. She has been married to her high school sweet heart for 12 ½ years, home schools her son and daughter and is a graduate of the Moody Bible Institute. Her passion to see women living well landed her on the Rachael Ray Show in November, 2009. Since then, she blogs regularly about marriage according to God’s word.

Visit her blog at:


Find great recipes for the weekend at:



You are loved by an almighty God,

Darlene

For comments or questions, contact me at:
darlene[at]darleneschacht.net

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The X Factor U.S. talent search comes to YouTube

Simon Cowell, the man who has made many an aspiring pop star’s dream, is coming to YouTube in search of new talent.

Future singing superstars in the U.S. take note: you have one week, starting today until 11:59pm ET on June 9, to submit your X Factor audition video for a chance to compete on the show for a $5 million recording contract.



Here’s the fine print. You can audition either as a solo artist or as a group, but you must keep your submission to two minutes or less and be sure to include a brief introduction (around 30 seconds) stating the name of your act and everyone in your group. Also, you must be living in the U.S. and all video submissions must have been created in the past two months, or you risk disqualification. Full rules and regulations can be found here.

If things go well, you could be performing in front of Simon Cowell, The X Factor judges and millions of viewers this Fall.

We know how much talent there is on YouTube — you’ve been showing us for years — and we’re excited to be partnering with The X Factor to bring you more opportunities to shine.

Sara Pollack, Entertainment Marketing Lead, recently watched “3-Way (The Golden Rule) (feat. Justin Timberlake & Lady Gaga).

YouTube and Creative Commons: raising the bar on user creativity

Have you ever been in the process of creating a video and just needed that one perfect clip to make it pop? Maybe you were creating your own music video and needed an aerial video of Los Angeles at night to spice it up. Unless you had a helicopter, a pretty powerful camera and some fierce editing skills, this would have been a big challenge. Now, look no further than the Creative Commons library accessible through YouTube Video Editor to make this happen. Creative Commons provides a simple way to license and use creative works.

You can now access an ever-expanding library of Creative Commons videos to edit and incorporate into your own projects. To find a video, just search in the YouTube search bar or from within the YouTube Video Editor. We’re working with organizations like C-SPAN, Public.Resource.org, Voice of America, Al Jazeera and others, so that over 10,000 Creative Commons videos are available for your creative use.

To get started, visit youtube.com/editor and select the CC tab:

Any video you create using Creative Commons content will automatically show the source videos’ titles underneath the video player:

As part of the launch of Creative Commons licensing on YouTube, you’ll also be able to mark any or all of your videos with the Creative Commons CC-BY license that lets others share and remix your work, so long as they give you credit. To mark your video with the Creative Commons license, select ‘Creative Commons Attribution license’ on the upload page or on the Video Description page:

You can learn more about Creative Commons on YouTube at our help center, and remember that all content must still follow the rules in our Copyright Center.

We’re excited to see what you come up with!

Stace Peterson, Software Engineer, recently watched Conan - Acting Out The Oscar Noms: The Social Network

The inaugural YouTube U.S. NextUp class gives their commencement address

Editor’s note: We just wrapped up the first ever Creator Camp as part of the YouTube NextUp program in the U.S., and we felt like we should hand it over to the class itself to tell you all how the week went - in (mostly) their own words. The class filled in the blanks for this blog post - you can follow each link to see who contributed that phrase. Huge congratulations to the first ever YouTube NextUp class!

We’re a group of 25 YouTube Partners who were bodacious enough to be selected for the first ever YouTube NextUp program. We received $35,000 from YouTube to take our career to the next level, and were invited to attend a special Creator Camp in New York to perfect our skills.

That first ever YouTube Creator Camp wrapped up last Friday, and it can best be described as stinkin awesome. The week started with a group of alien individuals getting to know each other, and by the end of it, we were our own YouTube wolf pack.

New York city provided a frenetic backdrop to our experience. For some of us, it was our first trip to the Big Apple, and it was common to hear people saying “this isn’t anything like Dallas”. Or sometimes “do you smell that?”

It’s hard to pick out highlights in a week that was so overwhelmingly intense, but they have to include the time when Luke Conard wore a full face of makeup and also the moment when I held back tears after being handed the biggest check I have ever received as an independent filmmaker.

We worked hard during the week and learned a lot. One of the most important lessons we came away with was to bring along Chescaleigh if you want someone to eat a fish eye at a Chinese restuarant, and also that it's a marathon, not a sprint. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that humping the air on occasion was really important too.  (Ok, ok, the main thing we all learned was the importance of collaboration!)

During the final presentation, we learned that our videos have collectively been viewed more than 30 million times this year alone - which made us feel like rock stars.

Shooting the collaborative videos was a crazy and amazing experience. You can see some a sneak preview of our projects below - we think you’ll agree it’s pretty epic, with dashes of sentimental mushiness.

What will the future hold for us, as the first YouTube NextUp class? We’re sure it’s going to involve tons of amazing video collaborations and probably a little bit of sweet sweet YouTube money. (Editor’s note: Each of our YouTube NextUp participants received $35,000 to take their YouTube channel to the next level).

So tune in - watch our videos as they progress towards respectability, and we’ll do our best to keep producing the same genuine, creative and fun-filled videos that you’ve grown used to. The YouTube community is full of awesome and creative people, and we really want to make sure we continue to rock it out in future. Here’s to ever-growing view counts and a happy YouTube future.

YouTube NextUp Class of 2011, recently watched “25 winners, 25 videos, countless memories - YouTube NextUp NYC 2011 Recap.”

the everyday things

it is the everyday things that bring me joy and comfort.

The +1 Button on YouTube

Today, as announced on the Google Blog, we're excited to roll out the Google +1 button on YouTube. The +1 button will be available to everyone on the YouTube watch page under the Share feature. If you're signed in, you'll also be able to see +1 annotations from your Google contacts on YouTube search results. We believe letting users see videos recommended by people they are connected to will be incredibly valuable in helping you find and watch the videos that matter to you.

Rick Klau, YouTube Product Manager, recently watched “NBA Finals: Karmin ‘Take it Away.”