Google Leads the Way in Corporate Video

I’ve been impressed recently with Google’s efforts in the corporate videoblogging department. The company set up a regular old YouTube account and has posted a mix of newsworthy clips, product demos, and homemade commercials over the last four months. When Google’s Laszlo Bock testified in U.S. Congress about immigration policies recently, a video clip was up before the end of the day. When Eric Schmidt flashed his iPhone onstage recently, it was Google’s channel where everyone linked to the video. This week’s Paris press conference is up in easily viewable Flash, rather than the usual crappy streaming archive experience.

Google’s is the sixth-most viewed YouTube channel this month, drawing anywhere from a few hundred to a few million total views per clip.

Corporate blogging is generally boring, but it’s often appropriate and welcome. Corporate videoblogging would seem like the next step — what with video’s humanizing and storytelling abilities — but, as usual, the nut seems harder to crack. Google isn’t tearing down any of its walls or spilling any algorithms, but it’s offering more of a pulse on its activities than most other companies we’ve seen.

The Google channel’s less appealing offerings are a series of “Working at Google” video testimonials that come off as awkward bragathons. The food is amazing (and healthy!), and your coworkers will be smart, and there are lots of great opportunities. And you will stand in your standard-issue Gap outfit in front of a white background! In a tug-of-war between portrait of a day in the life and job ad, the latter usually seems to win (this is a cute exception).

I called up Robert Scoble, seeing as he wrote the book on corporate blogging, helped Microsoft’s foray into “amateur-style video,” and now makes his living doing a show about technology companies for PodTech.

“Nobody’s using video to talk to the web, straight to the web and with the web, and not repurposed from somewhere else,” said Scoble. By contrast, he said, the politicians are doing a much better job. Ford’s Bold Moves project, bringing cameras inside crucial meetings and Jetblue CEO David Neeleman’s YouTube apology were the few good examples of such work he could think of.

Yesterday we heard about VoIP startup Jajah’s new project to jump on the live-streaming craze with its own television channel (powered by Mogulus), JAJAH TV, a combo of news, features, customer-submitted content, and inside looks at the working of the company. Now that’s taking corporate video-blogging seriously, all right. We’ll be amazed if they can keep up that much content and also a business!