Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Most of us knew that eventually YouTube would face some type of backlash from its original, core group of users as they continually embraced the large media companies. It seems like the beginning rumblings are starting to happen. Some users are going so far as to upload protest videos to the site talking about their displeasure with the way things are going.

"It is starting to appear as though the regular guy doesn't have a chance on YouTube anymore," said Paul Robinett, who posts videos under the "renetto" moniker. "The majority of the content on YouTube belongs to people like me, yet they seem to be cutting deals with everyone that owns content but us."

While we knew that YouTube had to develop a revenue model with the cost of bandwidth getting higher, many of the people that made YouTube what it was are now saying that they should get a piece of the action as well; and why not? YouTube would probably ensure itself of a steady stream of users if they developed something like the Amazon.com model in embracing a network of affiliates that pull people to the site, while sharing in the profits.

In the case of video, they would do the promoting while taking in a share of the advertising proceeds. It's not that hard to do from a technological standpoint, and would build in a huge loyalty factor that would be hard for other companies to penetrate the marketplace.

If they push too many people aside to please the big media companies, they could have a permanent backlash that would be hard to overcome.