(2013-03-10) Youtube Futures

Jeff Klima lists 5 possible scenarios for the future of YouTube: network of Creator Space-s; Free Mium model (start charging for some content); Soft Porn; merchandise; starts Record Label.

Mar11: survey of variety of Social Video projects, including YouTube itself and YouTube-founder-ChadHurley's new venture.

Mar18: Harry Mc Cracken sat down with YouTube Director of Product Management Shiva Rajaraman to talk about how YouTube is evolving to reflect where Internet video is in 2013, and where it’s going. Executive summary: The company’s vision involves it being irresistibly easy to find and watch YouTube video, on every video-capable gadget you’ve got.

Mar25: Hank Green on some lessons from YouTube's Original Channel project: *

• Spending more money to produce the same number of minutes of content does not increase viewership. Online video isn’t about how good it looks, it’s about how good it is.
• People who make online video are much better at making online video than people who make TV shows. This probably seems obvious to you (it certainly is to me) but it apparently was not obvious to the people originally distributing this money.
• When advertising agencies tell you they want something (higher quality content, long-form content, specific demographics, lean-back content, stuff that looks like tv) it’s not our job to attempt to deliver those things. In a world where the user really does get to choose, the content created to satisfy the needs and wants of viewers (not advertisers) will always reign supreme (thankfully.)*