ThemTube
YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley are practically swimming
in Google shares, but as the site gets increasingly commercial what
is the future for the YouTube YouTubers?
Ian Phillips examines the promotional degradation of an internet phenomenon.
The problem with popular things is their popularity. They attract a
lot of attention and quickly get ruined. Commerce loves to go where
the people go, and if we all de-camped to a large deserted plain for
a while, you can be sure they’d start erecting billboards. The
internet has so far provided the world with a number of huge-interest
user-centred community based sites.
Unfortunately you can’t have an internet society these days without
big business - unless perhaps you’re trying to set up a web community
for Amish folk… but frankly that just wouldn’t work! Before
long the initial beauty of the concept becomes tainted and the reason
the site grew to be popular is lost. Kiss goodbye to the good old days
of YouTube.
It is doubtful that it’s news to you that the swelling behemoth
that is Google has recently paid $1.65-billion (£883m) in stock
for YouTube. Much like Myspace, now in the grubby hands of Rupert Murdoch,
what began as an interface website thriving upon user-created content,
will now surely be devoured by the commercially merciless [‘commerciless’]
extremes of capitalism. Since the much hyped Myspace successes of Arctic
Monkeys and Lily Allen, companies have increasingly turned to these
‘community’ based corners of the internet to tout their
brands and activities and generally get in on the action. With a number
of notable exceptions, most people aren’t fools and this cynical
approach to the expanding opportunities provided by the good ol’
www is sure to leave a sour taste in the mouth.
There’s no denying that YouTube has been a tremendous success;
having not yet reached its second birthday it should be rightly proud
of its claim that 100 million videos are viewed through the site each
day. Take that with a bucket of salt of course as we all know how reliable
people’s web stats can be, particularly when the stats they tout
are inevitably boosted by self-promoting content providers heightening
their own popularity with simple tricks and tactics.
YouTube has attracted attention from the big players in the same way
that peer-to-peer sharing has for downloads. Whilst there is a tremendous
amount of original user-created content from home videos and webcams,
a great deal of the videos on YouTube contain re-formatted or re-edited
copyright material from films and television programmes. Just as Napster
and Kazaa suffered at the hands of the huge multi-national media companies,
YouTube was expected to meet the same wrath. Indeed it would if it hadn’t
been so very canny.
October saw what must be one of the biggest mass removals of YouTube
content in its short history; the video sharing site pulled 29,549 clips
after demands from a group of Japanese media companies. The group claimed
that TV, music and movies had been uploaded without permission from
the copyright holders. The swift reaction by YouTube surely avoided
what would have been an enormous legal action.
But it’s not simply rapid action to moguls’ complaints that
is working for YouTube, there are a few other cunning ploys up their
cash-laden sleeves. Two similar video sharing sites were sued this month,
at a time when many expected YouTube to be biting the bullet for the
content users had uploaded, but mysteriously YouTube wasn’t hit
with the same legal action. It’s a pretty shallow mystery though
as the answer becomes quickly apparent. On the morning of the YouTube-Google
acquisition, a collection of deals with record labels were announced
- as it turns out, the events weren’t entirely separate. Universal
Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG each received a small stake
in YouTube, and collectively stand to make up to $50 million from the
sudden jump in the company’s value.
Universal was one of the most likely candidates to sue YouTube before
the deal was struck, with chief executive Doug Morris saying MySpace
and YouTube owed them tens of millions of dollars. According to a report
in the New York Times, Warner Music was the first to make an agreement,
followed by Universal and Sony BMG. The record companies doubtless knew
that the site’s value was about to skyrocket. YouTube likely saw
the equity stake as another deterrent to legal action - remember that
the companies will also get an ongoing revenue share from their content.
TV companies are now also getting in on the act. The site has announced
an agreement with American telly heavyweights CBS to offer news, sports
and entertainment clips on a daily basis. YouTube and CBS will share
revenue from the sponsorship of CBS Videos. What’s more, CBS will
be the first to test YouTube’s new ‘content identification
architecture’, which allows the company to track down unauthorized
use of their copyrighted content - CBS will then have the choice to
remove the clips, or let them stay up. But interestingly: if they decide
not to remove unauthorized content, YouTube will share the revenue from
any ads placed around those clips. In other words: YouTube is now providing
an incentive for the TV companies to leave their content on the site,
even if a user put it there without permission. A remarkable solution
to the copyright quandary.
Viral advertising is nothing new and businesses are becoming ever more
cunning in their use of the form. Ever since The Blair Witch Project’s
directors made clever use of the web to spread the myth of their movie,
promoters have been keen to embrace the medium. It also often entertains
viewers with a bit of unexpected detective work to uncover the sly miscreants;
as there is often something to promote, offenders rarely fool people
for long.
It became reasonably clear by September that YouTube’s rising
starlet, Lonelygirl15, was more than just a girl with a video camera.
‘Bree’, a home-schooled, 16-year-old, received masses of
attention for the clips supposedly filmed in her bedroom. However, there
were so many irregularities (or rather such a lack of them) - near-perfect
video editing, a professional soundtrack, a contrived storyline involving
a religious cult - that few people believed it to be genuine. With a
bit of sleuthing it transpired that Lonelygirl15.com was registered
in advance of the videos appearing on YouTube, and that emails from
Lonelygirl15 were actually coming from a Beverly Hills office. Furthermore,
the name ‘lonelygirl15’ had been trademarked. Eventually
the creators came forward (or got run out of their hole) but it did
turn out not to be a promotional activity, other than to promote themselves,
despite the assumptions of a suspicious many. Lonelygirl15, who is actually
19-year-old aspiring actress Jessica Rose, is now ‘open to promotional
offers’ and has moved to Revver, a similar site that shares advertising
revenue with its content creators.
One other YouTube rival that also pledged to share revenue with video
posters lasted a very short time indeed having called itself GreedTube.
Barely more than a week after the site was launched it disappeared again
and now, hinting at the reason for its sudden departure, its URL redirects
to YouTube.
One of the most distasteful YouTube abuses to date (rest assured there
are worse yet to come) is the arrival of DiddyTV. In a deal between
P. Diddy (Sean John Combs, Puff Daddy or whatever his current ‘nom
de folie’ happens to be) and Burger King, YouTubers saw a personal
message from Diddy, and ‘enjoyed’ tracks and clips from
his album approaching the release date. The sickeningly commercial channel’s
debut clip shows the Diddyman talking about ‘buying’ a channel
on YouTube and talking in his usual self-important idiotic fashion.
“I’m the king of music and fashion, and when two kings get
together you know they’re gonna do it in a special way”.
The intro video shows ‘your man D’ in his ‘local’
Burger King, with the Diddymeister repeating the company slogans as
many times as possible between passing rude comments towards the staff
and complaining that he’s actually expected to pay for his Whopper.
The YouTube users still regard it as their space and it didn’t
take long before regulars uploaded their reactions to the two kings’
encroachment upon their community. Other ‘celebrities’ of
debatable integrity have taken similar steps and received similar responses.
YouTubers weren’t too fond of the Paris Hilton channel appearing
on the site, feeling that it was too commercial and that Paris was the
polar opposite of YouTube’s ideology - taking an unknown but talented
individual and making them a star.
There will always be a backlash to this kind of abuse of the site and
its origin; Lisa Nova, a YouTube regular, announces her new channel
in association with her local fruit stand in one of the best responses
to the Diddy disaster, and it’s well worth a watch. But as more
and more channels pop up with dubious intent, YouTube will never be
the same again, the battle will continue and the ‘real’
people will fight back, but now that the ‘big boys’ are
in town - what hope is there for the ‘little people’?
October 2006
