When looking for the best way to make videos go viral, too many marketers just upload their videos to YouTube and cross their fingers, hoping viewers like the content enough to forward on to their friends. Some try “guerrilla” tactics by repurposing social tools like Digg or Stumbleupon, marshaling a small army of friends and co-workers to drive up traffic, and hoping the effort makes a big enough splash to build momentum for their “video campaign”. Unfortunately these rudimentary practices are outdated and far from effective, so their video campaign is much more likely to flounder along with everyone else’s unwatched videos.

Rather than forcing social behavior into a publishing platform and putting all their eggs in the YouTube basket, forward thinking marketers are weaving video into truly social platforms like Facebook because they can take immediate advantage of existing behaviors and tools that are built into these networks. For example, Facebook users are already accustom to sharing links with their friends: they comment, send invites, post items to public places and talk about what they see – it’s a much more engaging experience for the audience than watching a video on YouTube. This behavior has a monumental impact on video campaigns, and from my experience, savvy marketers are excited about the early results they’re seeing.

Beyond traffic and word-of-mouth perks, using Facebook has other benefits for running a successful video campaign. It lets you better control, target and measure your campaign with an incredible level of detail, and has the openness as a platform to build custom functionality that cannot be built into a YouTube campaign. Things like custom players can have interactive options, deeper analytics or data collection features, and rich immersive user experiences. With the Facebook news feed, you also gain visibility and exposure to the entire network when users interact with your content. It’s also easier; you only have to learn one system, instead of learning how to stitch together multiple solutions to fit your needs.

No matter how you slice it, the experience on Facebook is inherently more social purely because of the users’ intentions when they are there, and that’s why savvy marketers are migrating their campaigns to these sites. If you have wondered how to improve your campaigns and generate virality for an engaged, participative, targeted audience, it might be time to think about using social networks.

Tyler Willis is Head of Marketing at Involver, a video marketing platform designed specifically for Facebook. Involver gives companies the opportunity to build, promote, manage and track video campaigns to targeted audiences.

Are you an avid user of Joost, the new web based t.v. on demand service? If so, there is a great new plugin for Joost that enables you to view all of your recently played shows. The application also displays your entire show history. While this application provides little to no interactivity within the application aside from displaying what applications you have seen. While this application has launched it appears that it still has some bugs as I was receiving time out errors while testing out the application.

Aside from that, the application is a great idea. What would be even better is the ability to view Joost directly in Facebook. While I’m not quite sure what added benefit this would provide, it would definitely be slick. If you haven’t downloaded Joost yet I highly recommend that you go try it out. Joost has created partnerships with MTV, Comedy Central, CNN, CBS, Paramount Pictures and a number of other large media companies.

As Erick Schonfeld highlighted a few weeks ago, Joost will have some heavy competition in the near future. In the meantime, you might as well enjoy the free on-demand television and let all your Facebook friends know what you are watching. If you want to share your viewed shows with your friends go download the Joost plugin and install the JoostBook application.

The online media company Revision3 has just launched their official Facebook application. The application appears to display absolutely all of Revision3’s shows via the application. The only interaction among users within the application is a wall for each episode. While I think this is a great feature for interaction, the application is limited to the amount of interaction between users. I’d like to see things such as what are my friends’ favorite shows? What are the most recent episodes viewed by my friends and by people using the application? What are the most popular shows and what are the most recent comments? The addition of a rating system would also be great.

I think that the many organizations have decided to limit their feature sets and simply port over their existing websites. This is a bad choice. While I’m sure Facebook would like to see absolutely everything on the web end up within their site, I don’t see this happening. Ultimately, websites need to encourage interaction among the users of the site, otherwise their application will fail. The only applications that can survive without significant user involvement are widgets that express individual affiliation groups (Barack Obama supporters, Stephen Colbert supporters, favorite sport teams, etc).

While the Revision3 Player is significantly limited, it does what it claims to do: plays things. While I didn’t expect much more from this application, it would have been nice to be pleasantly surprised. If you want to check out some of the Revision3 videos then go grab the Revision3 player. For your viewing pleasure, I have included the most recent version of the GigaOm show which features my good friend Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. Check it out!

BlogTV, a website which allows you to stream yourself 24/7, has just launched their Facebook application. The application brings a lot of the features of the main website to Facebook. There are featured channels, which include Jeff Pulver’s TV show. You can also view each of the live shows that are currently on BlogTV.

In order to gain some traction on Facebook, BlogTV has launched a “Win a trip to the Bahamas” contest for the month of September. The person who is able to attract the most number of visitors to their show within a day will win the trip. The only challenge to winning is that you are going to need to get a camera set up and start shooting. It is great to see another application which has chosen to bring the majority of their features directly in to Facebook.

In order to launch a successful application, I always recommend incorporating as many of your site’s features as possible. BlogTV has done this and in turn have created a great application. The only downside for them is the lack of viral components which will most likely hurt growth. Aside from that this application is great. If you want to watch other people’s web TV shows or want to make a show of your own, go grab the BlogTV application.

PodTech has a short interview with Dustin Moskovitz, the co-founder of Facebook. While he doesn’t reveal much in this interview, Dustin states Facebook’s intention to continue operating as an independent company even five years down the road. Another interesting thing is the girl who seems to laugh about everything that Dustin says. Perhaps she is trying to laugh herself into some stock options?

One of the biggest complaints about Facebook is the inability to embed videos in other places outside of Facebook. Thanks to Michael Medley, the creator of the Facebook Video greasemonkey script, that is no longer a problem. The script adds a small textbox to each video page which enables users to place the video elsewhere. I have embedded a video below of myself speaking at the first Washington, D.C. Barcamp about the Facebook platform using the script. In case you are interested I will be posting all of the D.C. Barcamp videos on my other blog. I wonder if Facebook is going to ban this. If Facebook decides to embrace this feature, they will become more of a competitor to MySpace, who’s video platform has become one of the largest on the web.

The immensely popular MetaCafe which was rumored to be in acquisition talks back in December, has just launched their Facebook application. While I prefer YouTube over MetaCafe, this application has robust integration. You can view the most popular videos overall and within your network as well as search through all the videos on MetaCafe.

Additionally, you can come up with your own custom MetaCafe channels. One thing that seems to be missing from this application is the upload feature. I would also like to see the ability to display your custom MetaCafe channel within your Facebook profile. That would provide more integration into the social side of Facebook. Aside from that this is a relatively simple yet highly functional application. If you are in to MetaCafe videos, go grab the MetaCafe application.

Cruxy, the site for digital media creators to promote their media, has launched their Facebook application. I have to be honest, I’m extremely surprised that it took them this long to launch. Cruxy was one of the applications that was discussed back at the first Facebook Developers Meetup in New York. At that point they were speaking with authority about the quirks of the Facebook platform and stated their intention to launch within a short period. Two months later, they have launched.

The Cruxy application is relatively simple. I don’t have a Cruxy account so I didn’t experience the full force of the Cruxy application. It allows you to add your own media to your profile. If you don’t have an account, the application simply displays some of the recent users to upload media to Cruxy. While I think adding media to your profile is an extremely valuable feature, Facebook already offers a number of features to allow you to do that. Ultimately, Cruxy seems like a competitor of the Kyte.tv application or other similar media based applications. Cruxy offers a simple method for uploading your custom media. The one thing I would suggest is allow users to easily register from within the application in order to upload files. If you want to upload your custom media, go grab the Cruxy application.

Stickam, the webcam based social network (who is also apparently run by pornographers), has just launched their official Facebook application. While not as flexible as UStream.tv, the concept of putting your webcam on your Facebook profile seems pretty interesting. While it may stream 24/7 it won’t have the capacity to follow you around. This is definitely a great opportunity for Stickam to increase their user base by building a webcam network on Facebook. It’ll be interesting to see if this application is adopted by many users. One thing that is interesting to note is that the UStream application which was launched 4 days ago still has less than 100 users. I realized that UStream may not have the mass appeal that it soon will but under 100 users is pretty pathetic. It makes me wonder if many of these applications have come up with their application marketing strategy. It doesn’t seem like it. Oh well! If you want to show off on your profile in real-time, go check out the Stickam application.

I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while. UStream, the site that allows you to create your own live streaming internet station, has just launched their Facebook application.  While I don’t think this is the official application (it looks like Derek Ivey developed it), it functions just as well.  Suddenly, Facebook has now gained the capabilities of all the other webcam social networks such as Stickam. Now you can browse through people’s profiles, view their pictures, their videos and now their own UStream channel. While I don’t think that everyone on Facebook will take advantage of these new features, I am willing to bet that this will certainly attract the younger crowd in addition to those that are trying to dramatically increase their self-promotion. UStream became popular when Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang streamed themselves from the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year. I have personally been talking with some friends about setting up our own UStream channel as well. UStream (and alternative streaming video sites) are the future of media. I may be a little crazy but I think that UStream will be the end of cable access. What do you think? If you want to stream your UStream channel from your Facebook profile, go grab the UStream application.