Cross-posted on the YouTube blog . There seems to be no hotter topic for discussion among Internet watchers these days than concerns over online free expression — from the role of bloggers in advancing democratic movements, to sophisticated government censorship, to debates over how best to balance transparency with national security concerns. YouTube, Google and the Central European University will make our own contribution to the conversation at a major international conference we’re hosting in Budapest from September 20-22. We’ve invited grassroots activists, bloggers and vloggers from five continents, as well as representatives from NGOs, academia, industry and government to begin a long-term discussion about these issues and to form international working groups to promote practical change. But a conversation about online free expression would be nothing without contributions from you. From election protests to government whistleblowing to grassroots advocacy , we’ve seen YouTube users upload, watch and share stories that would’ve never received global attention before the Internet era. That’s why we’re inviting you to submit your own video that answers this question: “What’s the biggest barrier to free expression on the Internet, and what would you do to overcome it?” You can go to our Moderator series here to submit ideas and videos and/or to vote on your favorite contributions from others around the world. Please participate by September 7, and we’ll showcase many of your responses at the conference in Budapest later in the month. We’ll also offer highlights from the dialogue on CitizenTube . Posted by Bob Boorstin, Public Policy, and Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics

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How would you advance online free expression?

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog ) Do you ever look at a YouTube video and think, “That’s a work of art?” Yep, so do we—and now, so does the Guggenheim. In five years, YouTube has redefined media culture by changing the way the world creates, distributes and watches video. Online video is exploding not just as a medium, but as an art form, and we’re proud of the originality and innovation that YouTube has fostered among our users. Our community has produced some of the most creative and celebrated works on the Internet, videos that have been viewed by millions of people around the world. We want to celebrate phenomenal video-makers and recognize the creative potential of the medium. So today we’re collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to discover the most creative video in the world, and showcase exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of digital media: YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video . This global online initiative is presented in collaboration with HP. We’re looking for animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and entirely new art forms—creations that really challenge the world’s perceptions of what’s possible with video. We want to elevate the debate. This presentation, we hope, will garner some of the finest creative work from every corner of the globe—not only to showcase it on one of the biggest stages online, but also in one of the most iconic artistic venues in the world, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and throughout the Guggenheim network of museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. Participants must submit their videos to YouTube Play to enter. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, after which the Guggenheim will assemble a shortlist to be evaluated by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Up to 20 videos will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. The presentations will also be viewable to on the YouTube Play brand channel at youtube.com/play. As we did with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra , we hope to build an aspirational place for some of the world’s best artists to showcase their works and talents. For more information about how to enter, go to youtube.com/play. Posted by Ed Sanders, Senior Marketing Manager

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YouTube Play: searching with the Guggenheim for the world’s most creative online video

A year ago this weekend, Tehran erupted in protest at the disputed results of Iran’s tenth presidential election. In the severe government crackdown that followed, documented on cameras and uploaded by citizens to YouTube, no moment has been seen more than the death of Neda Agha Soltan, a young musician whose brutal killing by a sniper became the rallying cry for Iran’s opposition Green Movement. The anonymous videos of her death even won the prestigious George Polk prize for journalism last year. How has video become such an important part of human rights advocacy worldwide?  In the past, we mainly saw these kinds of images in the nightly news or in documentaries - and even then only occasionally. But now that access to the Internet is much more widespread (even in many developing countries), and billions worldwide have access to ever more powerful cellphones and digital cameras, we encounter human rights images much more directly - on YouTube, in Google searches, in Facebook feeds, through links shared on Twitter. Today the YouTube blog begins a series of posts exploring the issues around human rights and video in partnership with WITNESS , an international human rights organization that supports people using video to document and expose human rights violations. We encourage you to learn more. Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics, YouTube

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The power of human rights video

Want to Live Strong? You have to look strong. Start with a nice manly high & tight haircut livestrong.com/business_barber/ You have to be strong. Drink propane. 3 times daily. livestrong.com/propane/ You have to bulk up. Not steroids ! Feed the search engines their own search results. livestrong.com/business-don-and-tennas-hair-place_563-326-2277/ I think Google is getting the message on what the search results would look like in a couple years if they let the above continue. Sure they own the search category, but if they let the rot set in too much then people will shift to other modes of discovery . Google realizes that search may splinter - its why they bought Youtube, why the offer a mobile operating system, etc. Google may not be 100% responsible for the above trend . But they will be 100% responsible for cleaning it up . I won’t be surprised to see a lot more of this in the near future. Such a shame, as Jason is such a great guy.

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LiveStrong OR SpamStrong? You Decide!

Want to Live Strong? You have to look strong. Start with a nice manly high & tight haircut livestrong.com/business_barber/ You have to be strong. Drink propane. 3 times daily. livestrong.com/propane/ You have to bulk up. Not steroids ! Feed the search engines their own search results. livestrong.com/business-don-and-tennas-hair-place_563-326-2277/ I think Google is getting the message on what the search results would look like in a couple years if they let the above continue. Sure they own the search category, but if they let the rot set in too much then people will shift to other modes of discovery . Google realizes that search may splinter - its why they bought Youtube, why the offer a mobile operating system, etc. Google may not be 100% responsible for the above trend . But they will be 100% responsible for cleaning it up . I won’t be surprised to see a lot more of this in the near future. Such a shame, as Jason is such a great guy.

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LiveStrong OR SpamStrong? You Decide!

We’re kicking off June with the start of a new round of webmaster Q&A on the Webmaster Central YouTube channel . You submitted and voted on questions for Matt Cutts to answer, and Matt sat in the studio for a full day sharing advice for webmasters. For those of you who watch each video (and who doesn’t?), we’ve worked hard to keep things interesting. Not only did Matt wear different colored shirts, we changed the backgrounds as well! Just don’t submit any screen grabs to We Have Lasers , okay? To get you started, here’s the first video, which addresses a question about geographic targeting in Webmaster Tools: We’ll be posting links to new videos as they’re posted on our Twitter account , so follow us there or subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified of new answers. Posted by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team

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Grab bag videos are back!

During the Super Bowl, we ran a 60 second ad made simply with a few Google searches and a little music. We were humbled by how much some people liked it . And we’ve even seen a few parodies that have left us in stitches. Making videos out of Google searches isn’t exactly elaborate Hollywood film-making, but to help everyone get in on the fun, we’ve made a really simple video creation tool , which you can try today. All you need to do is type in your Google searches, pick some music and — presto! — you’ve got your very own Search Story to share with your friends or showcase on our YouTube channel. And who knows, if people really like your Search Story, it may end up in a place you never dreamed. Posted by Robert Wong, Google Creative Lab

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Make your own Search Story video in minutes

(Cross-posted from the Official Gmail Blog ) We’ve seen lots of people using Google Buzz to share interesting links from around the web. To do so, you had to copy and paste the link from one browser window to another — there weren’t buttons that made it easy to post to Google Buzz without leaving the site you’re on. Savvy sites like Mashable and TechCrunch quickly got creative and implemented their own Buzz buttons, using Google Reader as the backend. But not every site owner should have to hack together their own version of these buttons (and not everyone who uses Buzz also uses Reader), so this morning we’re making copy-and-paste Buzz buttons available for anyone to use. Starting today, you’ll see these buttons around the web on participating sites including: The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Glamour, YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, GigaOM, PBS Parents, PBS NewsHour, The Next Web, TweetDeck, SocialWok, Disqus, Vinehub, and Buzzzy. Mashable and TechCrunch have updated their sites to use these new buttons too. A number of sharing platforms, including ShareThis (pictured below), Meebo, Shareholic, AddThis and AddtoAny have also incorporated the Google Buzz button into their sharing functionality, so you’ll see Buzz listed as a choice when you go to share something on many other sites around the web as well. If you want to add Google Buzz buttons to your site, just go to buzz.google.com/stuff , configure your buttons with a couple clicks and copy a few lines of JavaScript. Paste this code where you’d like the Buzz buttons to appear and you’re all set. And if you’d like to promote your own Google Buzz account, we have a button for you, which allows people to follow you on Buzz right from your blog or website. Here’s an example using the Google Buzz team’s own Buzz account (clicking it will take you to the Buzz team’s profile page and from there you can easily follow our team’s posts): Follow on Buzz You can grab that button code from buzz.google.com/stuff as well. Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager

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Google Buzz buttons

Here’s some more stuff you should know about. - I did a monster-long interview with Eric Enge . I think the interview lasted an hour or something like that, and we covered several areas in depth. - Next, take a break and go read this post by Rhea Drysdale . Heck, maybe send her a donation by Paypal. Rhea took on a big fight for the benefit of the SEO industry, saw it through to the end — and won! In the process, she earned the sort of credibility that you just can’t buy. - We continue to answer webmaster questions over on the YouTube webmaster video channel . My recent favorite video is an eight-minute discussion of “What are some good link-building techniques ?” We now have over 200 videos live on the webmaster video channel , including topics such as “Is it worth spending time on tags and categories?” You might want to check out the video channel; there’s a lot of good material there. You can also follow me or the Google webmaster account on Twitter; we often tweet when new webmaster videos are released.

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More material for web site owners

(Cross-posted with the YouTube Biz Blog ) Mobile phones are rapidly becoming essential tools for surfing the web, connecting with friends, and sharing and watching video online, and we’re seeing these effects at YouTube. The YouTube mobile site is more popular than ever: site traffic grew by over 160% in 2009, and now millions of people all over the world are streaming tens of millions of videos every day on their mobile phones. The mobile space moves fast, so we’ve been working hard to roll out new features and functionality quickly, especially as more and more people adopt YouTube-capable phones. The increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone and Android is also making mobile advertising easier and more effective for advertisers. So today, we’re launching ads on the home, search and browse pages of the American and Japanese YouTube mobile websites (m.youtube.com from your mobile browser). This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms. In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters. We’ve already seen some early campaigns run on YouTube’s mobile site by advertisers like Sony (for the DVD release of “District 9″) and Kia, both of whom were able to easily reach their target audience, no matter where they were looking for video. Our first tests of YouTube mobile ads — with brands ranging from L’Oreal to Land Rover — showed strong results related to click-throughs, user experience and brand awareness, and we’ve learned a lot in the months since then. As a result, ads on the YouTube mobile website will be banner ads sold on a full-day basis (like with the YouTube homepage on the web), making a mobile buy an easy and valuable addition to any YouTube campaign. For example, today Mazda is running a homepage ad on YouTube.com, and extended their campaign to run ads on our mobile site as well. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out to your YouTube or Google sales rep, or visit youtube.com/advertise . Posted by Taylor Cascino, Strategic Partner Development Manager

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YouTube calling: Now serving ads on the YouTube mobile site