Yesterday, Weezer posted the official video for "Pork and Beans", the first single from their new self-titled Red Album that gets released early next month. The video is already featured on the front page of Youtube, and as of yesterday at 5pm PDT, it has already garnered over 500,000 views.

The song is catchy and awesome in the way that you'd expect if you're a Weezer fan, and the video also delivers. Put quite simply, it's brilliant. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but not only is the idea excellent, but it was executed flawlessly. The video incorporates dozens of characters and people that have been popular on Youtube--the Numa Numa guy (over 1 million views), the Star Wars Kid (over 7 million views), Chris Crocker (Leave Britney Alone has garnered more than 22 million hits), Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain (viewed over 22 million times) fame, the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment, Miss Teen South Carolina's confusing answer, the dramatic groundhog, the evolution of dance, girls dancing to a Daft Punk song, and those are just some of the ones that have a prominent feature in the video! There are many many others that appear quickly or in the background such as the Will it Blend series, Charle the Unicorn, and peanut butter jelly time. These videos constitute millions of views, so Pork and Beans appeals to anyone who has seen even a few of these massively popular clips. The way Weezer incorporated the dozens of different popular videos is amazing, and I cant' even tell you how many times I've watched it today, to try and find all the little details I may have missed!

This video was masterfully done, which means that they had to take a lot of time, effort, and money to pull this off. They also had to reach out and contact the many Youtube artists who appear in the video, although I'm guessing that most of them jumped at the chance to appear on something that would gain such wide exposure, and a music video for a well-known band no less! The fact that I've watched this video not once, not twice, but many times is great for the marketers of this video. They've now ensured that I am very familiar with the song--by tapping into the most popular videos on Youtube, they've automatically gained a large target market of people who will love watching this video. Weezer is popular enough that they don't necessarily need to aggressively grow their market, but they are a prime example of how to capture what's popular and make it work for you. The key is to know what's popular and what's next when you see it and to use the right amount of resources to successfully produce a product that will catch on--if this video had been slapped together I don't think I would be nearly as impressed.

My favorite recent story that I came across was on Wired.com. There I found an article about "Canada's dumbest car thief." This individual took a tricked-out car for a test drive, only to never return. The owner of the dealership, an internet-savvy 20-something, went straight to the automotive discussion forum Beyond.ca and posted a description of the vehicle and the suspect.

What started as a mere post on a forum branched out and used many other online tools such as Facebook and Google Maps to discover the suspect's name, address, and other personally identifying information. Since the thief kept the car parked in front of his own house, the dealership owner knew exactly where to send police, and made sure to be there to tape the arrest and post it on YouTube--a fitting online ending to a crime solved thanks to the Internet.

While the Internet is a tool often used for entertainment or research, it also offers means to track down criminals for crimes that occurred offline. The resolution of these two different cases is just so cool that it shows how much the Internet has to offer when its powers are used for good!

Surfing blog sites will often talk about what they have encountered each and every day, and in what spots. Bigger, more commercialized sites, such as Surfline, provide links to webcams, reports, forecasts, and other news that can help a surfer decide when and where to catch their next wave.

Being the sole member of my company who lives in a beach town, I was inundated last weekend by reports of an "epic swell" that was expected to hit the coast of California mid-week. Talk of the huge impending surf popped up everywhere, from localized blogs, to local newspapers, from local news to widely circulated newspapers. Everyone had something to say about the topic, which is interesting considering that I don't believe I've ever heard traditional media focus so much attention on high surf advisories in past years. Certainly one would want to be aware of when it is dangerous to be walking along the beach, but in the winter, the majority of people who would dare venture out in the cold are those who go to partake in the sport of surfing. More likely is that in this increasingly digital age, the media has noticed how much is out there in terms of online resources for surfers, and want to cash in a bit.

Like many other niche groups on the internet, surfers have a lot of resources from which they have formed a community--there are forums, swell charts, video, podcasts, reports updated several times daily, blogs to share experiences, and of course Flickr and Youtube to post all those photos and videos you took to share that perfect barrel with friends and other like-minded individuals. When the swell peaked on Tuesday and Wednesday, photos were almost instantly available--something that validates the hype of the day, while getting to share and compare experiences from all over the coast.

The ease with which one can find information on surfing can easily correlate to the increased number of people out when the surf is at its best. Gone are the days when one had to get up before dawn and see what was in store and then use word of mouth. Now with live webcams, the conversations revolve not around "is it good today" but "what time should I meet you there?"

Possibly cooler: the video title, description, thumbnail images, comments, and number of views tracked in YouTube will automatically be pulled and displayed within a client's domain. Always keeping an SEO focus, the client maintains the ability to add keyword tagging to each entry - and of course, all RSS feed stats are available for meaningful reporting. Fun stuff.

Personally the most interesting line in Marshall's post was the summary of The Financial Times article on the belief that the shortage of marketers skilled in negotiating sites like MySpace and YouTube is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of advertising online.

We can attest to the truth behind The Financial Time's position, as the largest and most sophisticated brand and marketing agencies are getting stumped on how to enter social media sites. We are seeing a sharp increase in curiosity and questions about how to capitalize on the growing popularity of MySpace and YouTube, and a lot of that interest comes for large established brand agencies that are use to dropping a few million on traditional main stream media campaigns.

Sure there are companies and people right now setting up clandestine marketing programs in MySpace, hoping their message will go viral. But our perspective lies in leveraging the deep niche interest areas of the site that bring people together because of shared passions. It's one thing to make a funny video and see it spread like mad through YouTube, it's another to reach out to a particularly small group of people that have chosen to communicate with each other because of like interests and provide something of value to the conversation.

Reaching out and spending time communicating with small niche groups is not a skill set most marketers are good at. In social media the idea of marketing needs to be replaced with the idea of having a conversation. Buying your way in doesn't cut it - you need to actively join and participate to gain credibility and confidence from your peers. Hmm, sounds a lot like real life doesn't it? Maybe that's why it scares people.

As the popularity of online video grows, you can expect truckloads of advertising dollars to come rolling in. Online video is arguably the most compelling medium for advertisers and as always the challenge will be targeting the right audience and alignment with appropriate content. Advertisers will also be challenged with thinking of crafty new ways incorporate product placement and promotional campaigns into user generated content.

As high speed broadband becomes more standard and the quantity/quality of content improves, the line between my TV box and computer monitor will definitely continue to blur.