Is YouTube Risking A Creative Exodus? ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community.
It’s getting hard for many of them to make the money needed to fund their production efforts based on Youtube ad revenue, alone.
Musicians make their money primarily by selling their music outside of Youtube (e.g. iTunes) – and use Youtube for the promotion of the music.
For others, the “stars” are branching out with sponsorships and paid product placements (a lot of videos now have hidden ad placement – some like the endless fashion/hair/makeup videos targeted at tweens through age 20 or so feature products the star was paid to show), merchandising and the latest is books, movies and even TV deals. Others, like Devin Graham, do sponsored videos that get shared with his millions of subscribers, featuring people having fun with products and services. He just announced he’s off to Istanbul courtesy of Turkish Airlines (and then probably other destinations as well).
Youtube is rapidly turning into something other than what it has been. Whether it ends up in a good place only time will tell. Obviously, Youtube and its content creators cannot sit still.
Yahoo might use Tumbler as a way to compete with Youtube. Hmmm.
Category Archives: Business
YouTube to open its 4th production studio
Youtube Studios adds New York City to its existing studios in Tokyo, London and Los Angeles – accessible to any Youtube channel with at least 5,000 subscribers:
It will be chock-full of expensive equipment wired for collaboration all over the world, and it will all be available at a cost of exactly zero.Creators can easily gain access to the space. YouTube artists need a minimum of 5,000 subscribers to their channel and must be part of the company’s Partner Program, in which ads are hosted and revenue is shared.
Partners are given access to better cameras, production spaces and editing facilities as classes train them not just in shooting video, but also in makeup, design and anything else that might make programming pop online.
via YouTube Takes Manhattan – NYTimes.com.
Perhaps more importantly, the new studio is located near “Madison Ave” advertising agencies as Youtube content increasingly turns into smaller versions of what you watch on cable TV. Indeed, Youtube stars are already using the same agency, management, talent lawyers and agents as Hollywood. (I was amused, recently, to learn that one of the Youtube “stars” that appears by himself, is actually supported by a team of about two dozen people now!)
Some Youtube creators are complaining that Youtube takes 45% of all ad revenue and it has become very difficult to make a living creating content for Youtube.
However, some Youtube “stars” will also soon be adding books to their revenue streams.
Personal note – Youtube has coalesced into an increasingly “winner take all” market place. With so much content uploaded every minute, my own videos, which once had at least thousands of views, are now lucky to get tens of views. With their recent dropping of the 3D video player, I am contemplating ending uploads of video to Youtube. Youtube has become saturated and it is difficult for new offerings to get viewed.
Flickr, on the other hand, has been incredibly successful for me.
No wonder 3D has faded: not enough 3D porn
How to get more photo views on Flickr
Researchers used a computer-based system to analyze millions of photos for various characteristics and how they may correlate with total views on Flickr.
Where your photo appears within a page of photos (e.g. upper left or middle) can impact its viewership. Of course, so too does the content of the photo.
The presence or absence of certain objects is effective “for predicting popularity”.
“Some of the most common objects present in images are: seashore, lakeside, sandbar, valley, volcano”.
They note their classification of image objects may be incorrect at times, but arrive at the following “impacts” of various objects in photos:
- Strong positive impact: miniskirt, maillot [swimsuit], bikini, cup, brassiere, perfume, revolver
- Medium positive impact: cheetah, giant panda, basketball, llama, plow, ladybug
- Low positive impact: wild boar, solar dish, horsecart, guacamole, catamaran
- Negative impact: spatula, plunger, laptop, golfcart, space heater
via www2014_khosla.pdf.
Other recommendations, from other sources, are to post 1 to 5 photos each day (photo streams show 1 or 5 photos only), and make the last photo uploaded in a group as your best, most eye catching photo (due to how photos are arranged in the photo stream). Tag all photos with search terms and add descriptive text. Cross post photos to groups. And of course, add descriptive texts.
Lisa Bettany made a blog post saying that #1 is to have an out focus background, #2 is to have lens flare, #3 is to have “hot chicks”, #4 is cute animals, #5 is close ups of flowers, and #6 is interesting photos with “interesting and tragically bohemian titles”.
After DailyMotion’s meltdown, they deleted my old videos
As noted in this blog post – Bad week for online video support – Youtube, DailyMotion | 3d.coldstreams.com. – DailyMotion suffered a system failure that resulted in videos uploaded between September 2013 and April 2014 being unable to play.
I logged in to DailyMotion this morning and found that DailyMotion has deleted my videos from that period.
About 10 days ago, Youtube ended support for their 3D video player.
Should I continue shooting and posting videos? We can no longer trust the cloud for anything.