Amateur Versus Professional Video on YouTube: What’s Next?
Slowly the top 100 YouTube “most subscribed” channels are professional content providers. But sxephil (a YouTube amateur who blogs about daily news) maintains that the amateurs “are the future” and YouTube should pay more attention to them, rather than become a Hulu.
I explore this debate in my video today… Also note a new trick I’m experimenting with at the end of the video. I run a few seconds of black and then add some links to other videos that are related or that I want to promote. You won’t see those unless you have “annotations” turned on.
A few of the links at the end of this video aren’t mine. But this technique is a smart way to keep people viewing your content, rather than selecting the random video that might appear over the player as “related.” One of the easiest things to do when you’re lost in a YouTube binge is select the next video it recommends.
So whatya think? Amateurs versus Pros. What’s ahead?
Congratulations on finding yet another way to whore yourself out.
This is how I see it:
To begin, ameteur vs. professional is very different from corporate vs. indie.
Ameteurs are doomed unless they become professionals, be them corporate or indie. A person talking to a camera cannot POSSIBLY be the main attraction of a website that allows for literally any type of recordable entertainment, so in that respect, Phil is wrong. In fact, I believe his channel’s days are numbered.
As you said in the last post, well-produced comedy… or rather, PRODUCED comedy is going to take the limelight. And people don’t care where it comes from. Corporations will have money behind them, but anyone can make the next big thing. Grassroots stuff is very, VERY possible and always will be.
But things like Hulu are definitely going to be the leaders. Family Guy automatically beats Peter Coffin’s cartoons, because Fox made them and they already have both the Fox animation audience and their own built-in audience.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room at the top for the little guy, but the little guy has to mature a LOT. Our quality has to go up as a community and we have to come up with some sort of broad network to connect us (perhaps a comedy network, a drama network… etc), so that things we approve of can be brought to our more specific communities of viewers.
Amateurs will be phased out through institutional attritions such as featuring and promoting.
But we will continue to have indie content.
@ 1 LOL! What she said! Remember the coffee cup back in the old days, as it would slowly come into frame, it was cute when he was a nobody…well okay, maybe it’s still cute!
My biggest fear, when people become too polished, too professional, too mainstream…I lose interest. I don’ think that will happen with you Nalts, cause I’ve been around too long as it is. I’ll just stick around and make fun of you more! :o)
Truthfully, I think that if you weren’t so upfront with all that you do that I would have stopped watching you years ago. It’s your honesty that keeps me around, (plus a whole lot of other things) but you know what I mean.
^ This year several video-hosting sites eliminated amateur content uploading to their sites. BrightCove comes to mind. More sites will follow.
I’m Bill Curtis….and I’ve just found……the internet!
@8 Does this mean Nalts’ popularity is going to die? Is it a cold case file already? Seesh! I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it!
I made 2 comments on the Dangers of cell phone driving video and neither showed up. I’m so depressed right now! You must have blocked me Mr. Nalty! Hmmm, that reminds me, whatever happened to “stalkerofnalts” I loved his/her comments!
Anyway, I said I was glad to see Sammy the snake and I loved how you were reading while passing 2 cop cars. You never let me down! :o)
Where did you place the camera while zooming in from the back? Oh wait, maybe it was Sammy the snakes friend, the snake tripod?
hm, I should integrate that with my “best videos” thing.
meaning instead of putting related video, put my best videos or most viewed videos
@7 – more sites will certainly follow. These sites are just completely unable to capture a community of people like YouTube has. Brightcove, for instance, created a great back-end for professional video hosting but the community generated was unable to really become a sustainable entity.
YouTube, on the other hand, would piss off about 70% of it’s userbase if they went all-professional content and stopped user uploads. They know that and will not do it.
Also, they have an infrastructure set up (and a community to utilize it) to literally have a buttload of new content every second. If that changes, it becomes those 16 new promoted videos a day and whatever is on the charts. That isn’t enough to keep interest, as all these other sites that have gone or are going to go all-pro content or become a backend for hosting.
OMG Jason knew the name of Sammy. Did we go to school together, or did I fess up to him on a video I don’t recall? And yeah- the zoom was a remote control I found in the back of the car. The trick was pointing it over the left side of my head (so it wasn’t in the shot).
Nalts, to answer your question of what the future of youtube is, I’ll tell you.
Me, Reubnick. I am the future of youtube,
HAHAHAH! I’m just kidding! Nobody will ever care about me! I bet I tricked you guys, though. You thought I was serious! But I wasn’t! I’ll be lucky to ever get over 1,000 subscribers by the day I die!
@13 You signed him in my Nalts hat and told me in my video I made for you! :o)
Kevin totally wants to do sxephil… and not just for the subs
Nalts, be patient. Let the market mature a bit more and I think you’ll find there is plenty of room for the amateurs. The reality is that viewership drives the media industry, and while one or two ‘blockbusters’ on Hulu can earn high views, it’s still small in comparison to the views generated by the amateurs. One can’t blame the ‘established’ media distribution entities for wanting to control how things are done on the web. Thankfully the internet is pretty efficient (as the music industry learned) and these controls can’t really last. As long as there is an audience, there will always be a place for amateurs.