YouTube Changes: Gremlin Enters Pupil Stage

The Gremlin after his pupil stage

YouTube Changes: Phases, Winners, Losers & Gremlins

While preparing for an article for ReelSEO, I happened to be watching Gremlins (1984). I couldn’t help but see the parallels between YouTube changes and the cute and fuzzy Mogwai’s mutating into the entertaining but deadly Gremlins (pictured here). We’re about to see YouTube go “pro” in an extreme form, and that’s one of the biggest changes the video-sharing site has made in its history.

Don’t get me wrong. I like change. Even if it involves some interim puss-oozing pods during the “pupil” stage. And while I mourn for my RIP and decaying fellow independent creators (and my own channel), I am excited to see how YouTube/Google becomes a cable network despite the significant battles by studios, networks and serious content producers. It’s inevitable progress… even though I’ll miss the community (but they’re there somewhere, right?).

This post will be somewhat jumbled since my thoughts for the ReelSEO piece are still sorting themselves out. I would also value some input from people who’ve been watching YouTube’s transitions even more closely than me.

Some facts & phases of YouTube’s evolution (with considerable help from Urgo6667‘s ugly but robust SocialBlade data repository)

  • Phase 1: YouTube in the 2009-2010 placed considerable emphasis on an exclusive and select pool of YouTube Partners. These independent content creators were rewarded with preferred placement throughout the site (driving views), advanced channel features, and premium monetization (sharing the income from higher yield advertisements from brands that feared consumer-generated content).
  • Phase 2: Just as some governments reportedly destabilize other countries by introducing currency, the income caused new behaviors. As Archfiend laments in this video, the advertising income helped fuel desperate habits like faking thumbnail images, begging for comments and asking for 5 stars or thumbs up.
  • Phase 3: YouTube, once the home of free speech and cat videos, began to become increasingly commercial. Once subtle ads soon blanketed the homepage. Optional prerolls became mandatory. The lines blurred between popular content and what was “featured” (based on advertising dollars or preferential content placement for select creators).
  • Phase 4: Some prolific YouTube pioneers left the site jaded. These include Renetto, Pipistrello, and Comedian SeanBedlam (see his frustrated video posted in August announcing he’s quitting).
  • Phase 5: As a great magician distracts you from his slight of hand, YouTube introduced the NextUp program. It gave $35K checks to a new crop of YouTube Partners to fuel their content.
  • Phase 6: Now YouTube is going after cable and investing $100 million in professional content

But as 2011 progressed, YouTube changes resulted in views spread out in cryptic ways. Some YouTube channels have taken significant hits from these changes in which videos appear in powerful areas such as search results, “related videos” and “spotlights.”

I’ve shared my own sharp decline since September (in October I averaged 64% fewer views then 3 months ago), but this chart from once-popular HotForWords tells a typical story…

HotforWords decline is happening to many once-vibrant content creators

Fall of Pioneers… The decline of solo creators is not unlike the fate of Indie singers online… as viewers shifted to mainstream content that arrived late to the party. But check out some non-trivial examples:

  • TheStation, which was launched by top YouTubers, went from more than 272,000 views October 2010 to under 110,000 in October 2011.
  • Smosh, one of the most subscribed channels, is down 94% last month relative to 6 and 3 months ago. They were once the darlings of YouTube with frequent sponsors.
  • SMPFilms, an early pioneer of YouTube meetups, is down 56% from 6 months ago… getting about 63,000 views currently (the drop is almost identical to the decline of Google’s channel on YouTube). MysteryGuitarMan (MGM) took a similar hit, and so did MediocreFilms.
Obviously there are few caveats to these declines:
  • Some (but a minority) of the decline could be the creator’s diminished productivity. For instance I posted less frequently. But this seems unlikely given that MGM and Smosh are still rolling out new videos that get significant views.
  • The decline is, perhaps, simply a return to normal. Most Partners saw a dramatic “artificial” lift in monthly views that were not dependent on their new content. In effect YouTube throttled creators and then stopped.
  • More than 50% of my own views comes from related videos. Some of that might be based on an algorithm that attaches similar videos, and that’s presumably less likely to change. But YouTube may continue to “throttle” my videos as related videos, meaning I’ve got further room to drop. Here’s hoping the Wizards of Al don’t decide to beat me down again for this post.
So where’d all the views go? And why my lip all bufted up?
  • YouTube has not seen a decline in viewers, so the views are being spread out to the new “mini Partners” and other creators.
  • Here are some of the fastest-growing Channels according to SocialBlade analysis: Vevo (which took a 1900% growth relative to 3 months ago), HollywoodTV, StanfordUniversity, and PlayStation with a remarkable 500K views a month.
  • Stay tuned… working with Urgo I might publish a list of the biggest losers/gainers.
Thoughts? Observations? Insights? Bring ’em. And thanks mystery man (you know who you are).
WVFF remembers YouTube solo artists, represented by Gizmo... 2006-2011

55 thoughts on “YouTube Changes: Gremlin Enters Pupil Stage”

  1. So what you’re saying. Is now Freddie W, and Freddie Nalts. Will get all the views?

    BC

  2. I will always rely, on the people I am subscribed to, to inform me of new channels they like. I will collab with others.I will video respond more. I will make a mini community within what is left of You Tube. As a very small fish, I have the ability to respond to comments. This was what made You tube so fun at the begining. The content creators NEEDE our interaction, to validate their vision as video makers.

  3. I can feel the depression coming every time I read a new post, Nalts.

    God! Who decided to feed it after midnight I’m wondering.

    BTW is there a way I can find all 1000lurker comments? He is showing a whole new face of YT which I wasn’t aware of.

    1. 1000Lurker gave me loads for this post…. he posted comments a few posts ago, and it got stuck in spam due to links. I released it, and it’s saucy.

  4. Whether you acknowledge it or not, this history of whipping the little amateur pony goes way back into the past, into a time before the YouTube Partners program. The lure of potential income was too big for the fluffy adventurous Gizmo to see that.

    YouTube had its course charted long before 2009-2010, it just didn’t have the muscles to swing the pro-hammer yet.

  5. No, you can’t find all my comments InfographicGuy, some get deleted, but most of the comments I write never even get submitted because I know they will get deleted.

    For instance, you shouldn’t hop on Nalts recent post about YouTuber’s first videos and point out that MysteryGuitarMan’s first video was a pirated video of a car crash that he used to get views (gone now), its just not polite.

    You can point out that RayWilliamJohnson’s first videos were him reading oddball news scraped from the Internet in an attempt to steal sxephil’s gig, but you can’t say that “he got no love from the staff at YouTube because George from YouTube was already grooming sxephil as the oddball news show”. Its not polite. Sxephil was known by the entire community as “the douchebag” and nobody could understand why he was the only person allowed to post (copyrighted) headless boobshots as thumbnails and breach the community guidelines without consequences. It was George’s doing, but you can’t say that. Its not polite.

    I’m only saying that because George gave up his part time job at YouTube to manage his sxephil and Nigahiga hobby fulltime and its all completely out in the open now.

    Its not my intention to highlight shortcuts on YouTube. All I can do is stop people wasting time trying to copy YouTube celebs whose autobiographical account of how they got popular on the site is a complete fiction.

    As far as YouTube is concerned, the best way to win the game is not to play. If you do decide to play anyway, then ignore all the rules. If you have not been suspended at least once on YouTube then you really haven’t been trying.

    Anyway I don’t think the stats for Smosh are right. Doesn’t matter though, in my opinion it is only a matter of time.

    I cannot fully figure out the new algorithm. Ignoring the the first set of related vids which belong to the channel owner, it is easy to see that and the next set have vaguely related meta data and the last set have contrived metadata aimed at matching the metadata of the target video exactly.

    Reversing the related video selection output in this way helps prevent related videos being gamed. Gaming related videos is so profitable that new PARTNER channels have been created (eg thereplygirlsreviews, meganspeaks) which respond to featured videos from other channels using matching metadata and proceed to give a worthless description of the video that adds nothing to the original.

    Keyword/Brand exploitation experts such as yourself Nalts, HotForWords (HorForkeyWords?) and WHATTHEBUCKSHOW have taken a very significant hit. This cannot be simply explained as the new algorithm making some of your videos lose rank. Other keyword exploiters on the site are actually gaining views as fast as Nalts and HotForWords are losing them.

    Take Blunty3000 for example. Almost his entire income depends on his “Nude” and “Lesbian Love but Fag Fear” videos being related to debatebly pornographic videos on YouTube. His views are increasing very rapidly. So are Kicesie’s views. Kicesie squats the Sex and Oral keywords. A couple of weeks ago Sxephil attempted to take Kicesie’s Oral way but she clung on to it.

    I can understand why YouTube would pick particular content creators and weight their content to prevent real porn gaining rank on the site, but what happens if these new TV channels are being weighted so that they can squat tamer keywords in a similar fashion? What happens if HotForWords considerable inventory of keywords was simply handed to a new content provider?

    This is all conjecture and I am happy to wait and see if every channel, including Blunty3000 eventually gets crawled by YouTube to eliminate keyword squatting videos that cause the viewers to immediately “bounce”.

    You have access to some inside information Nalts. You can go to the videos that used to send you traffic and see who is getting that traffic now.

    You can also use a wordpress plugin on this site to post an anonymous survey that asks content creators for facts and figures in return for the resulting composited data (create a post requesting poll questions maybe?).

    It is impossible to know exactly what is happening on YouTube while the process is still underway unless you have someone inside YouTube leaking you that information (in the same way George was leaking information to sxephil since early 2009, long before Carls Jr and Fullscreen).

    Ultimately I don’t think that the final outcome of the process is important. The overall flow of traffic into or out off a content creator’s channel will soon become more important than the gross inflow of traffic.

    A content creator’s financial contribution to YouTube Inc. needs to be more accurately accounted for and the rewards be more appropriately distributed than is currently the case.

    I detest YouTube’s acceptance that its staff are instrumental in creating mega-channels on the site and the unwritten policy that channels which compete with the mega-channels can be ignored or blacklisted if doing so allows the mega-channels a better environment in which to grow.

    At the same time I can understand why YouTube thinks it is fair. Any publisher can walk through their doors, tell them what they want and map out a route to get it. If YouTube thinks that it it will make them money then the publisher will get what they want no matter what the consequences to other YouTube partners. If a YouTube employee came up with the idea for this new publishing business/strategy based on information only available to YouTube employees and the new business is going to be run by his next door neighbor, well, that’s YouTube, its always been that way.

    It is my opinion that the existence of these private businesses, secret strategies and unwritten agreements make YouTube far too complex a place for content creators to establish what they personally are providing to the site and what they are entitled to in return. I think that ordinary YouTuber creators need to step back from YouTube and look upon it as a blackbox with an input and an output. That way YouTube employees can pull all the shady crap they want inside the box and creators will only care if their output from the box diminishes (be it money or traffic or whatever).

    Since ordinary content creators don’t wish to walk through YouTube’s doors and tie themselves to a company (of unaccountable individuals) that can/will pull the carpet out from under them on a whim, those content creators have to stop seeing themselves as a part of the YouTube blackbox and instead they have to define where the work that they do crosses the blackbox interface and have that work tallied at that interface.

    I’ll explain what I mean in a different comment, just to put a blackbox around this nest of known unkowns.

    1. Thanks- love your comments. ANd I’ve never deleted any. Some get clogged by WordPress. I don’t go through the spam ones because they’re almost never a real comment. Never ever have deleted a comment here. Only comments I’ve ever deleted are ones on videos that call my kids names or get perv.

  6. If these changes mean that annoying one-trick whore, HotForWords, and that deformed doofus, sxephil, disappear, then I say it’s all for the best.

  7. My comments should have appendices with sources. This is just something to chew on, the YouTube blackbox doesn’t exist so there are no sources.

    Consider how YouTube advertising revenue calculation really works right now. YouTube delivers impression based advertising that spreads brand awareness. You can click the adverts, but the chances of you actually wanting whatever the ad is selling right at the moment you see it is very, very, very small.

    Unfortunately YouTube was once beset by a terrible breed of people who spammed the views on their own videos and no one had any idea how many real impression an advert had received, so YouTube paid for these impression adverts by pretending they were cost per click adverts (CPC).

    The reason YouTube can get away with paying per click instead of impression is because for every 100 people that see an advert there is one idiot that will click it. That idiot rule is pretty much universally accepted throughout the Internet. I consider these “1 per 100” clicks to be background Internet noise. The main with problem with using the idiot rule is that it can only be trusted for campaign assets that don’t matter like impression based adverts that have a low CPM. To get a higher CPMs YouTube started using trueview invideo adverts, but these are comparatively rare.

    In short YouTube advertising revenue calculation works by guessing and it only pays out to the person who had the clicked advert on their channel.

    This is my prediction for the year 2050 when YouTube catches up with every other adserver on the web;

    Using an ordinary computer open up any YouTube Partner’s video watch page and count the number of adverts that you see. If your count comes to less than 5 then you need to look again.

    1. The YouTube banner is an advert for the YouTube home page and all the content on it.
    2. The browse link and movies link are also adverts.
    3. Each related video thumbnail on the side of the page is an advert for a piece of content.
    4. The “Response to” link is an advert
    5. Each video response thumbnail is an advert
    6. Each comment’s channel name link is an advert.

    Then there are the things people normally call adverts;

    7. If the video title contains the name of a famous artist it may have an ad-link to to a playlist by that artist.
    8. The may have an “as seen on” ad-link
    9. The vid may have an iTunes link for its soundtrack

    Lastly,
    10. The vid may have an invideo advert
    11. The vid may have a side panel advert.

    If your YouTube watch page was an ordinary webpage and advertising affiliate technology was applied to it then every time a visitor left your watch page using one of those links, you would be entitled to a percentage of the revenue that that YouTube visitor went on to generate for YouTube after following that link. Once the visitor leaves your watch page they enter YouTube’s blackbox. Whatever trickery, favoritism and deception went on in there would be none of your concern because, if revenue was generated, you would get a cut.

    To give you a simple example, if someone came to YouTube to watch a Nalts video (due to clever Internet marketing elsewhere) and they didn’t click a crappy Nalts advert, but clicked a FreddieNalts thumbnail instead, and clicked a premier-delux-make-you-laugh-high-cpm advert on the FreddieNalts channel then a percentage of the FreddieNalts revenue should go to Nalts for hosting the FreddieNalts Thumbnail and delivering the traffic.

    The average YouTube visitor watches about 10 videos (its 8, but sssh). Imagine a visitor watched 10 videos and then clicked an advert. If that affiliate percentage of possibly 50% of the ad-hosting content creators share were divided among those 10 links in the chain that would still give each one 5% of the content creator revenue. As it stands right now, 9 of the people in the chain that delivered the consumer to the seller get nothing.

    That is all crazy talk of course. Entirely possible to implement, but crazy.

    How does all this tie in with Nalts doomsday posts about mega-channels and TV networks on YouTube?

    There is a very simple truth that MySpace found out to its cost. Mega-stars may be easily monetizable and carry higher CPMs, but they don’t generate significant traffic. Real traffic (and revenue) is generated by 100 million people with 100 million things to say and 100 million things they need to buy.

    So YouTube has created a few mega-channels? That is nice. They did that before. The channels tend to die as soon as the strings are cut.

    So YouTube is going to bring in some easily monetizeable TV channels. That is nice. They won’t be able to generate their own traffic. We all seen how hard the episodic TV shows rammed down our throats on every home page failed.

    So YouTube is going to give the TV shows the traffic we Whatever-We-Are-Now generate? That is nice. Are they going to pay us for that traffic?

    Maybe YouTube consider hosting our videos is payment enough for the traffic we generate and we should be happy with the few dollars that background Internet noise generates. Are they holding enough cards to take that gamble?

    I can’t help but think that YouTube was sleeping when Twitter replaced every public messaging system on their site. I think YouTube was sleeping when facebook replaced YouTube’s subscription center. I think that by losing control of the grapevine upon which videos where shared, YouTube has left itself very vulnerable to being replaced.

    Not replaced by Revver though. If blip.tv raised its server speed then it would be a very nice site. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles YouTube has, but then, we all migrated to using twitter and facebook for those while YouTube was sleeping.

  8. @1000lurkers, I hope you are lurking behind seven proxies because Nalts is going after your identity.

    Those are madly knowledgeable words for somebody outside the black box… unless you’re a part of it yourself.

    Do you think YouTube is just prolonging its long-term death sentence or is it safe now that the big wheels are running smoothly?

  9. @1000lurkers, your point of view on ad revenue it’s fair but bloody advanced, is it any other website using it that way, or am I naive enough to not realize that is already how it works?
    I agree that is a whole process to induce the user to click an ad, and if that process involve an intricate web of jumping through videos, there should be some kind of revenue sharing amongst the different creators.

    I’m also starting to get why YouTube wanted the mega-channels in first place, however I gotta say that some of the channels “chosen” are questionable.

    I feel like becoming a web-celeb is not that different from becoming a real celeb, and for most people where the prize is the goal, every way to reach it, is allowed. I have no respect for misleading tags/title/thumbnails, i.e. although I like vlogbrothers for instance, seeing that their most watched video shows two giraffes having sex, saddens me. I, on the other end, can recognize the cleverness of people like RWJ, they cracked the code before others and they did it with style, in this case I blame the game. YouTube made it that way, and that is what they get.

    Thankfully there is a new generation of legit YouTubers that smash their butts to create good content, Freddie Wong and Corridor Digital are few examples (or is there something I haven’t seen yet).

  10. maybe the most important article one could read about the changes occurring at youtube. you da man nalts! shame u bring such bad news close to the festive season

  11. I am not too keen on what is afoot with youtube and these big changes. it’s going away from the indie film and video maker to more overly produced studio made crap. so long are the days of the daily vlogger. youtube is no longer going to be YOUtube but now CASHtube. On well i guess it was a matter of time. right?

    1. How many vloggers are really necessary though? Isn’t there already a massive choice in terms of video blogger?

      In terms of indie films and video makers, how many are worth watching though?

      I hope this change will also push content creators’ improving their stuff. Even MysteryGuitarMan became a bit boring and uninspired lately.

  12. 1000 Lurkers- my understanding is that most of the ads are based on impressions not CPC (especially the big branded campaigns). Historically most of the ads were via adsense and probably cpc irrelevant stuff…. but lately we’re seeing display/preroll combos from bigger brands that are awareness oriented (not designed to drive immediate purchase).

  13. Why are you people always moaning about the “good old days” of YouTube? Things change. Things change rapidly. Especially in this day and age. Adapt and deal with it and move on.

    1. There never were “the good days” of YouTube. Even before transitioning into a trampling dinosaur, YouTube was an infestation of bugs and exploit bandits. In return for the lawlessness we got to have all the “fun” we wanted. But now that the sheriff’s in town, you’re either one of them few crooks who gets to buy his way through everything or you’re only dust on a dirt road.

  14. This is all the talk here in Japan? Youtube over here is already filled with tv programs;) But I still wanna do MHM…

  15. If you buy adverts on YouTube via Adwords you only pay for the adverts that get clicked on and consequently Partners only get paid for the adverts that get clicked on.

    You already posted an article about bidding low to get almost free impression advertising on YouTube. If you spend $100 on a real 20 cent-per-click campaign, you will get about 50,000 impressions before the idiot-clicks exhaust your $100.

    Any decent YouTube partner can knock out 50,000 views without breaking a sweat, which is why you don’t see many of them trying to buy brand awareness in this fashion on YouTube.

    If you are simply trying to figure out if I have a YouTube Partner channel or which tier I am then the answer is muahahahaha.

    Incidently, smpfilms isn’t a very good example for a put-upon YouTuber. His channel was built upon YouTube exploits and Features. He currently has a (2010) Halloween cat video spotlighted by YouTube and his girlfriend Katers17 (Katersoneseven) was browse page featured a few days ago. All this probably makes him look like a tier1 Partner but its mostly down to lazy YouTube Editors who have 2007 on repeat. “Halloween? What is the scary-bunny-mask dude doing this year?”.

  16. I kind of wandered off the point there. I have no reason to believe that anyone gets paid for showing a preroll unless that preroll is clicked on.

    That leaves prerolls open to abuse by advertisers who can use them as impression ads that they don’t have to pay for (except for idiot clicks).

    It is Google’s job to screen adverts to ensure they provide an appropriate incentive for people to click on them (tricky when you can’t actually include a call to action if I remember right).

  17. Yes, the in-stream video ads are charged only per click, not per view.

    I suspect that is why YouTube wants to expand its viewing capacity, transform it into a single stream (instead of little pieces called videos) and justify the use of CPM model through it.
    In other words – it’s imitating the business model that the TV has discovered a long time ago.

  18. 1000lurkers, Why don’t you just reveal who you are? If you cannot, for employment reasons, I understand, then just STATE that. If not, why play? Your knowledge suggests an insiders view that others would like to tap. Why not just speak openly instead of in this cryptic fashion?

  19. I don’t know why you’re upset Nalts. You helped usher this in.
    You were the one consulting for a company that had Caitlin Hill sitting in front of a camera, telling companies that HitViews had dozens of YouTube stars with thousands of fans that trusted them, and were more than willing to abuse that trust to hawk whatever crap they’d be paid to shill.

    Where is she and her fake award HitViews bought her to give her credibility now? Slumming it at some restaurant back in Australia. Where are your friends that just wanted to be a part of the online community on YT? Gone.

    Where are you? Getting left behind.

    But you should be happy Kevin. I see Smosh in that list of Pro Content with a cartoon coming out backed by a company that specializes in getting brand messages to tweens. You helped blaze that trail.

    Reap what you sow.

    Oh and if we’re playing guess who 1000lurkers is, I guess fallofautumndistro. I remember him once wanting me to expose ShayCarl for paying DeFranco $100 to get views/subs to his channel when he just started out. Alan didn’t like rocking the boat either, image to maintain and all that. Since he works with the Green Bros. now I’d imagine he has a pretty close ear to the ground.

    1. He’s upset because he believed in what he was selling. It’s easy to convince yourself that a novelty like a meritocratic platform for amateur & pro content creators alike can work. Lesson learned, capitalize on it and move on.

      The case of Caitlin makes me wonder where all the other former YT stars are. It would make for good “based on a true story” drama material if they were tracked down and asked about their YouTube loop. I bet Weinstein would produce it.

      (Oh and Nalts, my comment got auto flagged for spam, look into that because other commenters complained about the same issue.)

  20. Just because I don’t include notable people in a comment when they obviously belong there, that doesn’t necessarily mean I am those people.

    fallofautumndistro – financially motivated person who uses social engineering to get privileges that he does not deserve and launches scathing attacks on anyone strong willed enough to say “no”. You think I am him? Thats creepy. You win Halloween.

    The Green Bros. – Proto-Charismatics working on their full cult leader status (DFTBA). Expect them to act like Jesus and amass a huge following right up until the intervention where people teach there children about other Charismatic cults such as Hitler’s inner circle , Manson’s family, the Moonies, Scientology etc. Do you think I’m joking? Do you see a smile on my face?

    The Green Bros Education channel. – Set up to give them greater access to children’s minds. A YouTube employee is responsible for the so-called success of the KhanAcademy channel (feted by Bill Gates, constantly promoted by YouTube, yet smaller than Nalts). Massive amounts of money are involved in the possible redundancy of thousands of teaching staff if they are replaced by online schooling (I’ve seen an education link added to high profile YouTube pages, this has become a critical path for the YouTube site). The Green Bros are hoping to run a similar set of exploits to the KhanAcademy channel with their educational channel. The most notable exploit is being allowed access to children in a teaching environment which would otherwise require a government approved pedagogy (1 year of teacher training so you don’t let your personal view of the world to fuck up the little mites’ minds).

    If you allow the Green Bros or their flunky fallofautumndistro anywhere near your children you deserve to be put up against a wall and given a severe talking to.

    Me – I’m just an observer. I would not be foolish enough to think that I possessed anything to tap.

    YouTube Content Creator success is based on fraud, hype and spin. As long as that remains the case then no one on YouTube has anything to tap except for access to the (dirty) employees themselves. To put it in a context more familiar to ex-city trader Mr Khan, imagine if an analogous online traffic exchange version of the SEC existed. The manner in which YouTube’s inside information is shared and the flow of traffic is controlled to the benefit of a few YouTubers/studios would not be permitted.

    All that bullshit belongs in the YouTube blackbox (and I hope they all suffocate inside it).

    If any mutation has occurred is hasn’t been from Mogwai to gremlins (we were always gremlins wearing Mogwai skin). The mutation is from individual farmers to Mafias (studios) to Warlords. We currently exist on a YouTube ruled by Mafias who “make” their new members. If YouTube pumps new money in then there is no reason to spend that money on making content when a better return can be made from purchasing heavy artillery (adverts, backroom deals, gimployees) that can used to wipe out the competition.

  21. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

    Go to your browse page on YouTube. Click the Education link. All the video on the page are featured. You will find 5 featured amateur videos on the page you are presented with made by KhanAcademy (many are several years old). The are sitting beside videos made by recognized teaching establishments.

    Now watch this video;
    Shishir Mehrotra, VP of Product Management of YouTube, talks about witnessing his classmate and friend Sal Khan gain popularity and change the world of education through YouTube.

    www[dot]youtube[dot]com/user/lifeatyoutube#p/u/3/0NIYT-Pel6E

    Sal Khan did not invent distance learning. Sal Khan was not the first person to upload educational videos to YouTube. Sal Khan in his own promotional videos talking about his company acts as though books and homework were never heard of in the current educational establishment.

    The dynamics of real-world relationships would dictate that Shishir Mehrotra took an active role in Sal Khan’s “success” from inside YouTube, even though he passes his friend’s success off as being completely independent of himself and his role within the company.

    What if every single YouTube employee has a pet project of their own that they guide and assist from within YouTube? How much room does that leave for other unassisted Partners to make a living from the site?

    When YouTube Inc. hand you a list of things that you should do to “make it” on the site, spit in their face, because they are wasting your time and time is precious.

  22. 1000lurkers, YouTube can promote whichever happy tree friend of theirs it wants as long as they don’t try to sell me their lies.

  23. Sukatra, if Nalts ever gets around to checking his s-p-a-m filter, you will discover how Sal Khan turned a YouTube channel half the size of Nalts’ channel into $7 million dollars.

    $7 million dollars.

    The silence is deafening.

    1. What I would like to know is how many More Partners have been Disabled. AND is this part of YouTube/Google Cleaning House. Adsense says it is “Invalid Activity” but is it part of “Unwritten agreement” within YouTube and Google for some other unknown reason.

    2. 1000lurkers, you think he’s going to collect the cash and run?

      Yes Nalts, check out your spam folder already and change the plugin you’re using for intercepting it. It’s catching all the wrong things right now.

  24. ‘idiot click’ – love that term. I sent a partner who is doing well this link and they said:

    “Very interesting theory but really wrong.

    There are two types of ads and one subtype. One is the TV ads that pay per impression – so Hollywood and video game companies are paying me to show their ads… at a cost per 1000 or so impressions. The click to skip ads are paying 10X (a premium I don’t know) but a huge premium to guarantee a view and probably track a viewer… over the normal forced 30- 2 minute view… so that’s a premium view… with premium targeted audience who didn’t skip the commercial – thus they pay huge extra for that.

    The other Ads are CPCs on the pop ups and on the sides… those vary in cpc based on time of year, product or whatever…

    Also, both youtube and google and in fact everyone amazon, Facebook, etc… are TRACKING YOU. The default on Youtube in your account is “SERVER YOU ADS THAT YOU WANT” that means they are tracking you… “

  25. @Mark

    The new Adsense interface contains a “bid type” link that breaks ad revenue down by CPM and CPC.

    If Nalts is getting mainly CPM rev then he is right (from his POV). If I am getting mainly CPC rev then I am right (from my POV). Neither of us is saying it is an either/or situation. If we are going to get an accurate overview of what is really happening on YouTube that would take a large anonymous (due to NDA) poll/survey of YouTube Partners to uncover. No one person has the whole story.

    There are more than two or three types of adverts and the new Adsense interface has a detailed breakdown for each type.

    The point I was trying to make was that these specially arranged high CPM video adverts may be reserved for the new Premium channels and ad spaces resold by “studios”.

    If this happens then it takes no account of the work by non-Premium YouTube partners that went into generating the traffic that was ultimately force-fed to those Premium channels by YouTube employees.

  26. Reposted in parts from 5th Nov 2011 due to being trapped by link filter, even though doing so makes it look as though I believe what I have to say carries an unwarranted sense of self-importance.

    It turns out that Shishir Mehrotra’s assistance on YouTube secured a $2 million dollar grant from Google and another $5 million dollar grant from “elsewhere” for his school friend Sal Khan.

    (Article posted 3 days after my observations were posted in the comment above).

    The O’Sullivan Foundation Grants $5M To Online Learning Platform Khan Academy.
    (Article posted 3 days after my observations were posted in the comment above)
    t i n y u r l . c o m /3w5tl23

  27. Nothing about Sal Khan’s channel stats add up. His views come from traffic siphoning by his gimployee within YouTube. That has given him 92 million views (compared to Nalts’ 241 million views). The article claims khanacademy[dot]org has 3.5 million uniques a month. Internet Traffic analysis sites say that he was getting a constant 200k uniques a month until February when it suddenly shot up to 400k uniques a month. Anyone paying attention to this blog will know that February was when the algorithm was supposedly changed. It obviously was a beneficial change for Sal Khan.

    If khanacademy[dot]org was really getting the traffic the article stated his video view count would be much, much higher. Someone is lying and it only takes a cursory scan of Sal Khan’s video inventory to see that it is him.

    The article states that Sal Khan has obtained a further grant of $5 million from The O’Sullivan Foundation. Can someone help me out here, what the hell is The O’Sullivan Foundation? They seem to have sprung up out of nowhere for the singular purpose of providing this grant. If I was a suspicious person I would think that “The O’Sullivan Foundation” is just a front name for the real organization that is investing in the business and that organization thinks it would be bad if people knew who they really were. I am a trusting soul, so I won’t go down that road. So who are they?

    The most telling part of the article is this quote;
    “The O’Sullivan Foundation’s support will be used to grow the faculty of the Khan Academy; extend the content to include crowd-sourced contributions”

    “Include crowd sourced contributions” is a fancy way of saying build a YouTube “studio” that hoovers up popular content by other YouTubers and monetizes it through the studio.

    If you are an educator that wants to use web video as the medium in which you work, you are now going to have to sign over your content to the SalKhan/ShishirMehrotra studio in order to have your content promoted on YouTube. Otherwise you are on your own, just as every other YouTube Partner without a gimployee is on their own.

    If you don’t sign over your content, YouTube Inc will simply take your traffic and send it where their employees want it to go.

    $7 million dollars is a lot of money. If someone would like to try and convince me that YouTube employees won’t bend/break the site to get their hands on that kind of green then go ahead, I’m listening.

    What is of more interest to me though, is whether or not YouTube Partners realize what that money is buying. It isn’t Sal Khan’s little channel with his incomplete video series. It isn’t Shishir Mehrotra’s hands on YouTube’s traffic levers.

    The money is buying the traffic that YouTube Partners and non-partners as a single entity generate. That traffic is neither Sal Khan’s nor Shishir Mehrotra’s to sell. Or at least it should not be, but they are taking it by force and selling it anyway.

    t i n y u r l . c o m /d4b4h2d

    Too bad for the future of creators of educational videos on YouTube, right? What happens if the same process is repeated for every category on YouTube? Too bad for YouTube Partners?

    Remember remember the fifth of November
    Gunpowder, treason and plot.
    I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
    Should ever be forgot…

  28. Nothing about Sal Khan’s channel stats add up. His views come from traffic siphoning by his gimployee within YouTube. That has given him 92 million views (compared to Nalts’ 241 million views). The article claims the khanacademy website has 3.5 million uniques a month. Internet Traffic analysis sites say that he was getting a constant 200k uniques a month until February when it suddenly shot up to 400k uniques a month. Anyone paying attention to this blog will know that February was when the algorithm was supposedly changed. It obviously was a beneficial change for Sal Khan.

    If khanacademy was really getting the traffic the article stated his video view count would be much, much higher. Someone is lying and it only takes a cursory scan of Sal Khan’s video inventory to see that it is him.

    The article states that Sal Khan has obtained a further grant of $5 million from The O’Sullivan Foundation. Can someone help me out here, what the hell is The O’Sullivan Foundation? They seem to have sprung up out of nowhere for the singular purpose of providing this grant. If I was a suspicious person I would think that “The O’Sullivan Foundation” is just a front name for the real organization that is investing in the business and that organization thinks it would be bad if people knew who they really were. I am a trusting soul, so I won’t go down that road. So who are they?

    The most telling part of the article is this quote;
    “The O’Sullivan Foundation’s support will be used to grow the faculty of the Khan Academy; extend the content to include crowd-sourced contributions”

    “Include crowd sourced contributions” is a fancy way of saying build a YouTube “studio” that hoovers up popular content by other YouTubers and monetizes it through the studio.

  29. Nothing about Sal Khan’s channel stats add up. His views come from traffic siphoning by his gimployee within YouTube. That has given him 92 million views (compared to Nalts’ 241 million views). The article claims khanacademy[dot]org has 3.5 million uniques a month. Internet Traffic analysis sites say that he was getting a constant 200k uniques a month until February when it suddenly shot up to 400k uniques a month. Anyone paying attention to this blog will know that February was when the algorithm was supposedly changed. It obviously was a beneficial change for Sal Khan.

  30. If khanacademy was really getting the traffic the article stated his video view count would be much, much higher. Someone is lying and it only takes a cursory scan of Sal Khan’s video inventory to see that it is him.

    The article states that Sal Khan has obtained a further grant of $5 million from The O’Sullivan Foundation. Can someone help me out here, what is The O’Sullivan Foundation? They seem to have sprung up out of nowhere for the singular purpose of providing this grant. If I was a suspicious person I would think that “The O’Sullivan Foundation” is just a front name for the real organization that is investing in the business and that organization thinks it would be bad if people knew who they really were. I am a trusting soul, so I won’t go down that road. So who are they?

  31. The most telling part of the article is this quote;
    “The O’Sullivan Foundation’s support will be used to grow the faculty of the Khan Academy; extend the content to include crowd-sourced contributions”

    “Include crowd sourced contributions” is a fancy way of saying build a YouTube “studio” that hoovers up popular content by other YouTubers and monetizes it through the studio.

    If you are an educator that wants to use web video as the medium in which you work, you are now going to have to sign over your content to the SalKhan/ShishirMehrotra studio in order to have your content promoted on YouTube. Otherwise you are on your own, just as every other YouTube Partner without a gimployee is on their own.

    If you don’t sign over your content, YouTube Inc will simply take your traffic and send it where their employees want it to go.

    $7 million dollars is a lot of money. If someone would like to try and convince me that YouTube employees won’t bend/break the site to get their hands on that kind of green then go ahead, I’m listening.

    What is of more interest to me though, is whether or not YouTube Partners realize what that money is buying. It isn’t Sal Khan’s little channel with his incomplete video series. It isn’t Shishir Mehrotra’s hands on YouTube’s traffic levers.

    The money is buying the traffic that YouTube Partners and non-partners as a single entity generate. That traffic is neither Sal Khan’s nor Shishir Mehrotra’s to sell. Or at least it should not be, but they are taking it by force and selling it anyway.

    t i n y u r l . c o m /d4b4h2d

    Too bad for the future of creators of educational videos on YouTube, right? What happens if the same process is repeated for every category on YouTube? Too bad for YouTube Partners?

    Remember remember the fifth of November
    Gunpowder, treason and plot.
    I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
    Should ever be forgot…

  32. Yay for butchered and reversed comments due to spam filters.

    The article states that Sal Khan has obtained a grant of $5 million from The O’Sullivan Foundation. Can someone help me out here, what is The O’Sullivan Foundation?

    They seem to have sprung up out of nowhere for the singular purpose of providing this grant.

    1. Well the O’Sullivan Foundation giving a grant to Khan Academy sounds a lot less tacky than SOSVentures, a venture capital fund.

  33. Ariel

    I wish Sal Khan would just collect the cash and run. That way it would only cost every YouTube Partner $100 each (in possible Google reinvestment in the content creator’s YouTube environment) and it would be over.

    Millions of dollars are being given to businesses that cannot possibly pay that money back (directly as a loan or indirectly as an investment that increases YouTube’s perceived worth).

    This foolishness mirrors the idiocy that caused the 2008 credit crash. As an ex-hedge fund manager, Sal Khan knows that his place is to ride out the rise in the value of his company as investors pump in money. That money will probably be used in advertising and the acquisition of smaller businesses (all expenditure) that boost the company’s profile in the minds of the general public. Once the company has rapidly achieved a high valuation simply by being perceived as being successful (without ever being profitable due to the ridiculous amounts of expenditure required), then it can be quickly sold to Investment Companies that represent the general public’s pension funds and the like. A this point the bubble bursts and the public find out what was real and what was just hype.

    Since Google is an investor in a business which (any Partner of a comparable size will tell you) is not worth millions of dollars, Google is committed to driving the success of this business via hype. If this assistance takes the form of every “free” promotional means at YouTube’s command being put at KhanAcademy’s disposal, then other Partners competing for access to those promotional utilities are hurt, to the aggregated sum of millions of dollars.

    Repeat that process for each one of these new GooTube backed businesses and you have a new YouTube where the most insignificant below-the-fold thumbnail on YouTube has to be so heavily mined that the “viral-lift” for ordinary content creators from appearing on the YouTube site becomes no greater than can be gained from any of a dozen other video sites.

  34. Another comment caught in the spam trap for no reason. Get someone to teach you to use CAPTCHA Nalts.

    Ariel

    I wish Sal Khan would just collect the cash and run. That way it would only cost every YouTube Partner $100 each (in possible Google reinvestment in the content creator’s YouTube environment) and it would be over.

    Millions of dollars are being given to businesses that cannot possibly pay that money back (directly as a loan or indirectly as an investment that increases YouTube’s perceived worth).

    This foolishness mirrors the idiocy that caused the 2008 credit crash. As an ex-hedge fund manager, Sal Khan knows that his place is to ride out the rise in the value of his company as investors pump in money. That money will probably be used in advertising and the acquisition of smaller businesses (all expenditure) that boost the company’s profile in the minds of the general public. Once the company has rapidly achieved a high valuation simply by being perceived as being successful (without ever being profitable due to the ridiculous amounts of expenditure required), then it can be quickly sold to Investment Companies that represent the general public’s pension funds and the like. A this point the bubble bursts and the public find out what was real and what was just hype.

  35. Another comment caught in the spam trap for no reason. Get someone to teach you to use CAPTCHA Nalts.

  36. So, we’re getting out of businesss….No more YouTube advertising…:D

    No problem, if YouTube doesn’t love anymore “broadcast yourself”, guess who will be the next one (beside blip.tv & revver)?

Comments are closed.