The Nerdfighters have spoken. We need our pioneers, our forefathers, our world desuckers… on Oprah. It’s a story beyond stories. Two brothers uniting a world via online video. It’s the highest altruistic use of social media. They’re fascinating. They draw, sing, write, perform, entertain. They’re the vlog brothers. And I’ve never seen so many comments as my initial post about them (except when I was giving away free cheese for the best comment).
Tag Archives: oprah
Oprah: Get Hank and John on TV to Show the REAL YouTube
You know who you should have on your show, Oprah? Hank and John of Vlogbrothers, who became popular when they communicated for a year strictly through alternating “video blogs” (vlogs).
Here’s the pitch, Oprah producer (or someone who knows them and will forward this on). The two guys have a loyal following of “Nerdfighters” who use online-video to reduce world suck. They’re smart, talented, and nice guys… and are helping promote a new YouTube volunteer program. Their fans proudly wear the Nerdfighter badge, and rally the community in funny and life-enhancing ways. It’s not cats and skateboards. But it’s indicative of the power of social media (and video, its most visceral form) to influence masses… in positive ways.
If I was promoting an important cause, I can think of no greater honor online than having John and Hank lend their influential voice.
In fact the only thing they’re not good at promoting is themselves… because it’s not ABOUT Hank or John. It’s about improving the world.
And that’s why I’m pitching you for them, dear Oprah. I would like to be in the green room as they prepare to enter the stage. Because I’ll totally moon one of them before they join you on TV to help improve the world.
P.S. If you’re a nerd fighter, join the cause! Get Hank and John on Oprah, where they can maximize their reach beyond the inner YouTube community!
Oprah’s YouTube Channel Has Flesh-Eating Virus
Oprah may be a media machine who recently helped Twitter go mainstream, but she runs a YouTube channel that suffers from a flesh-eating virus. At 55,000 subscribers, we’d expect to see her average video fetching at least 10-25,000 views.
But her last 20 videos average just 6,750 views each. If you remove the two most popular, the average is 3,690. That means fewer than 10% of her subscribers are watching her videos.
Her subscription base of 55K was primarily due to a surge when YouTube and her television show promoted the channel… and has grown only moderately since.
What explains Oprah’s grand success in television and publishing, but failure online? For starters, her audience may be moving online but the money isn’t. She likely makes more for a one-page ad in O magazine than she’s made on YouTube to date.
She’s also seemed to delegate her online-video strategy to some poor temp who studied communications undergrad, hoping to be the “next Oprah.” I’m not kidding- Sophomore year I switched majors from communications to psychology because three people said that’s why they chose the major.
We do love our Oprah. Her warm smile, her self-depricating humor, and her knack for tapping the American psyche. But instead of vlogging via her channel (maybe showing us who she is off set) and communicating with her audience, she’s dumping trailers on it… mostly commercials for the show.
But, sorry Oprah. I think the engaged online-video viewer was hoping for more. Until the monetization model works for you, we’ll just have to get used to “flesh eating virus” promos.
I’m More Popular Than Oprah (on YouTube)
I tend to be rather self critical, and focus more on the people better than me. So it was briefly comforting to see this VlogBrothers video where Hank celebrates being more popular than Oprah.
Indeed, I too take some comfort in knowing that the queen of all media, for the moment, has fewer YouTube subscribers than me.
Oprah: 41,469
Nalts: 56,797
Now this battle is officially over if she ever decides to tell her television audience to subscribe. Seems I don’t have a medium that can put an unknown author on the best-seller list in 30 seconds. And I make less on YouTube than her makeup artist. But still.
Oprah- if we did a collaboration video, I’m pretty sure you’re golden. How about it?