Cheating YouTube October 31, 2006
Posted by Nalts in : YouTube , trackbackLittleLoco identifies some “YouTube” cheaters. Gaming the system by downloading software that replays their own video over and over. Creating multiple identities and rating yourself. And somehow getting 100 subscribers a day even with no new videos.
Things that make you go “hmmmmm….”
(LittleLoco’s video courtesy of Matt from EndlessEurope.com).
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Um, can some one explain how to download one of them click counters? Because I could use me some instant internet celebrity. Also, did we see the story in the New Yorker about how LittleLoco is, in fact, an actress herself?
online cheaters? no way…..yes way.sorry thats so early nineties!
i did that few times lol
LOL. In the interest of fairness and balance, you must also refer to this video from RIGHTBACKatYOU2 in response to Littleloca’s video. I’m not positive, but I believe it’s the rebuttal from LisaNova’s crew, illustrating quite clearly how Littleloca has also “gamed” Youtube. Also, Littleloca is an actress named Stevie Ryan.
I’ve seen criticism of these cheaters in various blogs and elsewhere, but the blogs I see fail to point out two things. Firstly, examining many of the top personalities and vids on youtube will reveal the same “gaming” patterns. Youtube undoubtedly knows this and has clearly made a business decision not to do much about it (this may change, but obviously not before the were bought for $1.65B). Secondly, the vids that made Youtube the phenomonon it is in the first place are copywrited material e.g. Lazy Sunday, Stewart’s interview on crossfire, etc. Youtube clearly used Safe Harbor to it’s full advantage, i.e. happy to show copyrighted content and forcing the content owners hand to see if they would do anything about it - knowing that this content was a huge driver of its success. So to criticize those that are gaming Youtube, without acknowledging that it’s Youtube that unleashed the beast in the first place seems a little unbalanced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAmmVmHImPU&mode=related&search=
I agree totally with copperswigg’s point. The YouTube model has been set up from day one to encourage gaming. Those outside the YouTube world that criticize those that game miss the point that everyone does it, and it’s the only way to get to the level where people legitimately come accross your videos, watch them, and pass them on. If you want to criticize the cheaters, criticize the model…or as my urban counterparts would claim, ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game.’
As for Little Loca, she reminds me of that kid in 5th grade who after farting looked to the chubby kid and said, ‘Brian Farted!’. It’s nothing more than shameless delegation of blame…only in this case Brian actually did fart, along with the rest of the class.
To Mark Day, and others that are interested in following this topic, My company has decided to officially try to game the YouTube system. After months of our independently-professional videos (that I like to think are better than the average YouTube video - http://www.endlesseurope.com) going no where, we’re fed up and have decided that the only way to get some attention on there is to submit to the game. We have started running scripts, and we’re going to follow the strategies that Little Loca and other’s suggest work, to see if in fact we can grow to the featured level. We will be giving updates to our progress at http://www.likidi.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=41 , and hopefully Kevin will mention any big steps that we take. Hit us up and let me know what you think. I don’t know if it will work, but it should make for some controversy and give me some interesting things to blog about.
Btw- I’m the Matt that Kevin referenced the video clip to.
[...] Cheating YouTube [...]
question from a new guy:
what’s the general perceived opinion of small companies that try to use YouTube to gain a bit of brand recognition?
Does everyone basically have an aversion to that, because they want to try and preserve the DIY side of the site?
I’ve never been able to tell, even though i’ve seen some great indie vids and some great larger brands doing their thing there as well…
Marketing on YouTube is absolutely fair game. It’s how you do it. Stick an archived commercial and nobody will complain because nobody will see it. Try something hokey and it will be popular as a farce. But create something entertaining and subtly brand… you’ve got yourself a winner.
Hmm…sounds like what i’m working on will be a huge disappointment to both my company, and viewers.
ack…guess that’s the price i pay for having no budget.
Budget not required. Just make it funny and not over commercial. And make the ending funny instead of ending with some “call to action” that’s promotional. You don’t need money to make a kickass viral video. It doesn’t hurt of course.
well, what i meant was - since we had no budget, but needed to brandbuild a little bit, we had to grab various home videos of people doing stuff that were already up, and add text to it to angle it to our services, plus adding certain sounds and music.
so we actually do make a call to action, so i guess i broke the cardinal rule already.
so, we grabbed the N64 Xmas kid, the screaming german videogame kid, the roof jumper who fell two stories, the old lady who punched the other one, etc, and wrote a short script around it.
i don’t know..maybe i need to rethink what i’m doing…
That sounds funny- you’d get decent views and a lot of positive comments. You’d also get a lot of complaints that you’re ripping them off to sell your goods.
[...] D’après Kevin, il semblerait bien que certains petits malins aient trouvé le moyen d’augmenter le nombre de lectures de leurs vidéos via un petit logiciel. Son fonctionnement est relativement simple puisqu’il se charge de lire en boucle la vidéo fraichement publiée. Une méthode plus artisanale consisterait à s’abonner plusieurs fois sur le service (sous des pseudo différents) puis noter ses propres vidéos.”Et alors ?” me direz vous. [...]
maybe - we’re not really “selling” anything - we’re a site that provides a free service to help people find degree programs, online studies, community colleges and stuff. there’s nothing to sell them - we just want to be an online resource to help people.
so nalts - say this is my first vid.
is there anything ethically wrong with featuring unapologetic rednecks basically attempting to kill themselves, and appealing for people to get an education to avoid behavior like this?
Billy Bob Tell
can you see where i’m going with something like this?