YouTube Becoming a User Contributed Video Blogging Platform

If YouTube truly scrubbed all copyrighted material from their site tomorrow, what would be left? Would there be ANYTHING left interesting enough to draw an audience? I believe the answer is yes, in the form of video blogs.

The Blogger's Platform Dilemma

Bloggers, regardless of format (written, images, podcasts, or video) all face a similar decision point early in their lifespan: Should I host my own blog, or use a blogging platform? It's not an easy question to answer since there are many variables to consider in this choice.

Additionally, one should consider whether they're better off joining an established network of bloggers or going solo.

Looking specifically at video blogging, two key factors that can't be ignored are storage and bandwidth. Due to the relatively large file sizes involved in online videos, a successful video blogger can essentially put them self out of business if they're too successful due to bandwidth and hosting costs. If that's the case, self-hosting a video blog may not be the best approach.

But more importantly, how does a video blogger gain an audience?

YouTube to the Rescue

YouTube provides a compelling solution for video bloggers by:

1. Solving the bandwidth and hosting issue. YouTube covers those costs - for free.

2. Delivering an audience. Rather than building a site from scratch with zero visitors, content uploaded to YouTube is immediately available to their millions of viewers. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll get millions of views, but you'll probably get more than you would on a separate site.

3. Creating a community. Community contributions can take many forms, from video ratings, marking videos as favorites, blogging videos and sharing them with friends. However, the killer community feature on YouTube is the Video Response features that allows members of the YouTube community to contribute their own videos in response to videos that have inspired them. Similar to blog comments, responders contribute content ranging from quick web cam comments of the original video to sophisticated parodies. This turns the primarily one-way communication platform into a true two-way medium.

One Example - YouTube Rights

Below is one example of a YouTube conversation between members. A guy going by the name Zen Archer posted a video lecturing YouTube members about the fact that they gave up some of their first amendment rights when they decided to participate in YouTube's community, where they set the rules. The combination of topic, delivery, and style of Zen Archer's presentation led to many follow-up videos including the few I've included below:

Will this type of community generated content - real conversations between real people about things that interest them - become more popular than professionally produced video content? If YouTube becomes the place to be for video bloggers looking for each setup and access to an audience, what will the second most popular video blogging service look like?

Actually there wouldn't be videos like this if the users were happy with YouTube. Some copyrighted video get removed while others are allowed to stay. This feels unfair to alot of users. And like Mp3.com, Napster,etc, users are waiting for the corporate world to monetize and ruin a good thing. Sites like dave.tv at least offer the users something in return for their efforts while youtube simply uses people to gain wealth.

Every good business needs to make money, but when you depend on the people to supply you with entertainment in exchange for nothing but harsh judging of your content, something will boil over. Zen Archer reads the lines, I read between them. And from my comments, it appears others are with me. The blog is the next step but the only way for a company to be successful is to include the creative minds in the rewards.

With so many sites popping up everyday, youtube needs to be more user-friendly. And speaking of copyright videos, did anyone know about youtube before the Lazy Sunday video? The press from that is what made them.

Thanks for the comments, truefd. I don't think the using is entirely one-way. Users use YouTube for free bandwidth, hosting, and an audience, so there is something of value for content contributors if not directly financial (at least, at this time).

I just discussed the Lazy Sunday moment with someone earlier today. That was the first YouTube experience for millions of users, which makes me believe that YouTube gets a tremendous benefit from the copyrighted material on their site.

Fascinating. I think Youtube gained household name recognition with the help of copyrighted material but at this point the core of the users are in it for much more niche market purposes, beyond just viral vids. Interestingly, the biggest draw besides that of copyrighted material is discussion concerning the youtube community itself. The video response feature is what spawned this and is, primarily, I believe what has made youtube more succesful in community growth than other sites.

Way less than 1% of the videos currently on Youtube would remain there if they deleted all the ones that infringed someone's copyright.

Comments

1. Posted by: Gary Bourgeault on July 23, 2006 11:09 PM:

I agree that the draw of YouTube and sites like it, aren't the so-called professional or copyrighted stuff, but rather the empowerment to be able to communicate.

Conversation through video is indeed a fast growing phenomenon across the web, and that is more compelling than simply watching movie trailers and advertisements by marketing firms. You can get that anywhere.

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