WELCOME TO (the new) CITIZENTUBE!

For those of you who've been paying attention to political content on YouTube over the past year, you may have spent some time on Citizentube - our official political video blog. We've been using that YouTube channel as a way to connect with you about our political programming both in the U.S. and abroad. Today, we're launching the new and improved Citizentube - a blog where we'll keep you regularly updated on the latest and greatest in YouTube politics as we see it.



Back when we launched Citizentube, "YouTube politics" was little more than 'gotcha' videos - like the famous "Macaca" moment, John Edwards feeling pretty, or Senator Conrad Burns falling asleep in committee meetings.

But since then, YouTube has become entrenched in the American political vernacular. While citizens have continued to use YouTube to make the political process more transparent, the candidates have followed them on to the site. Seven presidential candidates announced their candidacies on YouTube. Campaigns further down on the ballot have rushed to the site, creating campaign channels for national, state, and local elections. News organizations like the Associated Press and the New York Times regularly upload their political footage to Youtube, as do bloggers, activists, lobbyists and more and more everyday people who want to join in the political discussion. YouTube has, in some very real ways, become the 21st century townhall for political discussion.

We've barely been able to keep up with the pace of it all. We expanded our programming to include two presidential primary debates (we also took the format abroad to places like Spain and London); we broadcast voters' campaign trail videos in Iowa, New Hampshire, on Super Tuesday and most recently in Pennsylvania; and we opened up the World Economic Forum with "The Davos Question". But no matter what we or anyone does, political activity on YouTube has a life of its own. In fact, that's what defines it in the first place - YouTube is a platform for all political content and opinions.

So far we've been chronicling some of that activity on our video blog, but today we're launching Citizentube the blog to do a more timely job. What can you expect to find here? We'll link out to the latest and greatest in YouTube politics as we see it unfold. We'll keep you up to date with the programming we're running. And we'll point to political trends as they develop, highlighting YouTube users who are doing particularly innovative things.

We know from the start we'll be missing a lot - YouTube politics is far too large and chaotic a universe for anyone to keep track of - but we'd love your help in identifying the best content out there. If you have a tip for Citizentube, please send it to citizentube@youtube.com.

If you like what you're seeing, subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily update on what we're posting...

Yours,

Steve Grove

YouTube News and Politics