NewsGator Daily: Create Your Own YouTube Video Feeds

One of the biggest stories of 2006 has to be the ascendancy of YouTube, the website (http://www.youtube.com) where anyone can upload digital content to the Internet. In August of 2005, YouTube claimed 58,000 visitors; one year later the site boasts 20 million unique visitors in August. In June, more than two billion videos were viewed on YouTube. Just a few months ago, NBC forced YouTube to take down a Saturday Night Live segment; last month the network signed a deal to showcase network previews and archival content. Some observers are saying that YouTube could be worth a billion dollars to the right buyer.

Most of us don’t really care about the staggering numbers or how rich the owners will be when they sell; we just want to watch cool videos. And YouTube serves up an astounding array of video content. I have found cereal commercials from the 1950s (keyword: Maypo) videos of nearly every rock/rap band in existence and history (and some, like Spinal Tap, that aren’t), old television clips, archival historical footage and film clips of people embarrassing or otherwise hurting themselves – falling off bicycles or skateboards, giving wedgies, punching walls – that are the site’s bread-and-butter. There is most certainly something for any age or taste.

The way users tag (or classify) YouTube videos can take some getting used to. A short video of a person falling off his bicycle might be tagged “bicycle,” “fall,” "hurt" or “hilarious.” But if you’re looking for something specific, you can create an RSS feed for any tag or word in YouTube and keep up with in your NewsGator Web Reader.

First find a tag you like – for instance “Beatles” or “Gnarls Barkley.” From the Web Reader, click on Add Feeds and then URL & Import. If you want “beatles,” for instance, type: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/Beatles.rss into the box that says Feed URL. Type in the keyword into this string where it says “Beatles,” and that feed will appear in your Web Reader. If it’s two words, leave a space between them: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/Gnarls Barkley.rss.

We couldn’t find another video service that allows tags on words or phrases, but other video services offer RSS feeds for their most popular content. Google Video (http://video.google.com/) allows you to put an RSS feed on its Top 100 New Videos (“How to Cut Class” and “Incredible Warrior Tricks” were the first posts I found).

Other video sites, like Ebaum’s World (http://ebaumsworld.com/), iFilm (http://www.ifilm.com/), Metacafe (http://www.metacafe.com/) and Grouper (http://www.grouper.com/), which was just purchased earlier this week by Sony for $65 million, all let you to put an RSS feed on Most Popular or New Videos or on channels of specific content.