Youtube

In assembling a list of several of the saddest holiday songs ever recorded for Calendar, I preemptively noted that “We can't claim these are definitively the saddest, because there are so many more available to choose from.” Sure enough, readers quickly started citing their own depressive/dysfunctional/downcast holiday favorites that I hadn't singled out: Willie Nelson's “Pretty Paper,” Randy Newman's “Snow,” the Pogues' “Fairytale of...

Kobe Bryant's video for Turkish Airlines with Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi has reached 90 million views on YouTube. An airborne Bryant and Messi compete for the attention of a young boy, escalating to the absurd until ice cream trumps both stars' antics. Bryant has represented Turkish Airlines for a number of years.  He's also a soccer buff and fan of Messi. The video was initially published on YouTube on Dec. 6, garnering an impressive number of hits in a scant 2-1/2 weeks.

Last month we brought you news that the viral video for Psy's "Gangnam Style" had supplanted Justin Bieber's "Baby" as the most-viewed clip of all time on YouTube. Was that enough for the South Korean pop star, who just bought a condo in L.A.'s Blair House? Hardly: On Friday Psy's horse-dancing spectacle became the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views -- an astonishing number he'd already left in the dust by Saturday afternoon, at which point "Gangnam Style" had been seen an additional 17 million times.

South Korean pop sensation Psy's "Gangnam Style" has become the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, with the infectious music video approaching 1 billion views worldwide. The wildfire popularity of the four-minute song and dance video, uploaded just six months ago, represents an inflection point for the online video site, as YouTube's entertainment offerings expand beyond candid homemade videos such as "Charlie Bit My Finger" or such made-for-TV moments as Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream" performance from the show "Britain's Got Talent.

Popular YouTube video-game lifestyle channel Machinima is laying off about 10% of its staff as part of a reorganization. The company issued a statement Friday saying it is adjusting staffing to position the company to capitalize on its global growth. About 20 employees of the company's 200 were laid off as part of the reorganization, even as Machinima is hiring across key divisions including sales, marketing and product. The job cuts are in the L.A. area. "This is growing pains.

Online Latino lifestyle network MiTu has raised an estimated $3 million from a group of investors, led by former News Corp. executive Peter Chernin's media holding company, the Chernin Group. Other investors include Allen DeBevoise, chairman and chief executive of popular YouTube gamer channel Machinima, Juan Cristobal Ferrer of Ferrer Comunicacion, a Mexico City ad agency, and Advancit Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Shari Redstone. Founded by television veterans Doug Greiff, Beatriz Acevedo and Roy Burstin, MiTu seeks to address a void in programing for young Latinos -- especially Spanish-speakers who have limited options in traditional media.

The diagnosis for what ails the conservative group Concerned Women for America: Social anemia. Irony-poor blood. The group is devoted, as its website says, to bringing “biblical principles into all levels of public policy.” Now it and some other conservative outlets have evidently hoisted themselves on their own petard, so eager to complain that Planned Parenthood is encouraging domestic abuse because of a video that, in fact, does precisely...

YouTube is giving its website a fresh new look. The Google-owned video service said in a blog post that videos are now being pushed to the very top of the page -- below only the YouTube logo, search bar and nothing else. "In this new layout, you'll find the most crucial elements are front and center when you watch a video," YouTube said. Quiz: How much do you know about Google? Video titles and the subscription button are now shown under the video. The new look has also ditched YouTube's gray color used for all areas around videos and replaced it with a lighter shade that is almost white.

"Gangnam Style" is now the most viewed video on YouTube ever, with more than 880 million views. But has viral YouTube success translated into big bucks for Park Jae-sung, the Korean pop star better known as Psy? The answer is yes, although perhaps not as much as you think. According to recent estimates, Psy has made between $870,000 (according to the Associated Press' analysis ) and $1.7 million ( New York magazine's analysis ) in revenue from ads placed on the video.

YouTube has released an app optimized for the iPhone 5 and iPad, returning true, full-screen mode to users who have been without it since the launch of iOS 6 in September. With iOS 6, Apple removed the pre-installed YouTube app that had been included in iOS since the operating system launched as iPhone OS in 2007. That forced YouTube to launch its own independent app in September, but it was optimized only for iPhones and iPod Touches with 3.5-inch screens, not the 4-inch screens used for the iPhone 5 and latest generation of the iPod Touch.