Here’s a news blurb that being passed around the various web video communities:
YouTube sees user rebellion
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) – Hypergrowth comes with
hyper-growing pains — just ask YouTube. The online video-sharing site
is facing a rebellion among the formerly faithful. Yesterday, blogger
and longtime YouTuber Miel Vanopstal lost his cool
in a post titled "Screw YouTube." Vanopstal complains that YouTube’s
recent upgrades have made the site significantly slower, and that new
efforts to enforce copyright and delete otherwise questionable material
strike him as arbitrary. He is particularly galled that a single alert
notice from a "puritanically minded" fellow user can result in a video
being deleted. "I’ve had it with these random rejections," he writes.
Vanopstal is hardly alone. A bitter Nathan Weinberg at InsideGoogle says that he was kicked off YouTube two months ago. Weinberg chronicles his dissatisfaction with the free (and reportedly money-losing)
service, ultimately deciding that he has only one thing left to do:
"Ruin YouTube" by systematically reporting all of the site’s
traffic-generating but copyright-violating videos. Microsoft’sResearch) Don Dodge, who formerly worked at Napster (Research), adds a been there, done that postto the fray, noting sagely: "User-generated content is very difficult to manage and control."
(Article by Owen Thomas, Business 2.0 Magazine online editor and Oliver Ryan, Fortune reporter)
It’s not surprising to see YouTube in this difficult position. This new web service made it incredibly easy to post video on the web in easy-to-watch Flash format. YouTube became extremely successful, jumping to "one of the most popular web sites" in less than six months, using the tagline "Broadcast Yourself".
But many people havn’t been broadcasting themselves. YouTube has quietly encouraged its users to upload obviously popular copyrighted material. TV shows, music videos, viral videos. This is what people are watching in droves, while costing YouTube $1,000,000 a month in bandwdith charges. Behind the scenes, there’s talk of how content companies are threatening to sue YouTube for hosting all this infringing material. Now that they are a well-funded company, they need to play ball with the powers that be. The copyright infringement must now come down.
But what will users think? As the article points out, users are pissed since YouTube is changing the rules. It’s obvious that they used people to create buzz and get funding…and now want to keep their users while getting cozy with the big media companies.
When you lie to people, it’s going to bite you back. You cannot publicly say you are for the people’s content…then brag about your enormous downloads that are driven by copyright infringement.
If you really want to build a video service that encourages regular people to publish their own video…then you must truly stand behind this ideal. You must support video that isn’t "popular". You must help teach people how to tell stories and make their videos better. You must create a space where people feel safe to express themselves and talk to each other.
Eric Rice said yesterday that the more a company brags about "user generated content"…the less the company probably cares about its "users".
There is TV-on-the-internet(IPTV), and then there is the video people make for their own reasons. If you want to make easy big bucks, make deals with Disney or the porn industry to distribute their content.
But "user generated content" is an unknown wilderness. Most people are not going to make the viral video of the monkey-washing-the-cat…or the-kid lip-syncing-to-a-funny-song. Who knows what people will be making? Humans have never had the ability to produce and distribute video globally. If you really want to build a service around the video that people make, you must fall in love with the girl talking about her feelings in her bedroom, and the family moments only important to that family, and the weird bits of art that people make. This love cannot be lip service. Your words cannot be marketing. You must have an honesty that lasts through time.
No one will remember YouTube in 10 years. The barrier to entry to video hosting is simply a big server. There are already 160 other video hosting sites and counting. Its the people who make video that matter. Be comfortable growing a slow, sustainable community where people will share their video throughout their lifetime. Think years. This is how you build relationships. Money and everything else you think you want will come.
