The way Chad Hurley and YouTube (GOOG) are spinning it, you'd think that they were a bunch of heroes offering video creators a piece of the monetary pie.
Talking about and quoting Hurley, the BBC said, "YouTube founder Chad Hurley confirmed to the BBC that his team was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would 'reward creativity'".
John Battelle was even impressed with the spin saying, "But the way it was spun really struck me as impressive. Instead of 'YouTube to Run Ads,' the headlines were 'YouTube to Share Revenue With Creators.' Well played, my man!"
The BBC article also added that Hurley said the reason that YouTube was so successful was because they didn't have a revenue sharing model. According to 
Hurley that allowed the business to focus on their strength of creating a video sharing site that was easy to use.
What does all of this mean? YouTube is simply doing what I and many others have said they would have to do from the beginning: they would have to offer ads to monetize the site. Call it whatever you like - and they can offer the ads in many different ways - yet an ad is still an ad.
I don't know if anybody will remember all the things said that implied this never would happen, or even if they will care. One thing that will probably help is that like MySpace (NWS), the average age of the user is increasing, and that means there will be less resistance to ads the older users get.
Another thing that can't be changed, is that YouTube is going mainstream and will become that which they professed they weren't and wouldn't. I think they've got so many people hooked on its ease of use, that most probably aren't going to care.
There is the lingering question that many marketers have of what type of content their ads will be appearing next to in, I haven't heard that specific issue dealt with yet.
So when you see the headlines articles saying that YouTube will "reward creativity" and "YouTube to Share Revenue With Creators," just realize that it's only another way of saying that the era of monetizing their site with ads is upon us.
Will it take away from the way things have been and what made it so popular? There can be no doubt that it will. The question is to what degree and how far. Another question will be whether amateur videos will diminish and professional begin to take its place in the new YouTube.
How far will you be willing to let it go before you find something else to upload your videos to?
» YouTube Going Mainstream - Never Was a Doubt from BizzBites.com
Even though Chad Hurley doing a good job of trying to spin it as a revenue generator for video creators, in the end it's just another way of saying that YouTube is going mainstream will is going to be putting up a whole lot of ads in the not too distan... [Read More]
Tracked on: January 29, 2007 11:25 PM | Permalink to Trackback