YouTube Will Pay You For Your Videos
YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, speaking at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, says YouTube is going to start paying for user-generated content. Of course they won't be the first -- other sites that pay you for uploading videos include Revver, Brightcove, LuluTV, Break.com, MetaCafe, and Eefoof. Of course what YouTube has that those other sites don't have is a huge viewer base, and a lot of people uploading their own videos.
Why is YouTube just now getting around to "sharing the wealth"? Hurley says:
But the big questions are, will there be an influx of uploaders who are only in it for the money, and if so, what impact will they have on the established YouTube community? Oh yeah, and how much YouTube SPAM will I get from people trying to con me into watching their video so they get paid?
Joe at Dygitiscape compares it to Jason Calacanis' move to pay users for generating content at Netscape.com but I don't think it's all that similar. First, Jason was interested in poaching the top submitters at Digg, Reddit, NewsVine, etc. Second, he was only interested in hiring a few of them. Third, he did it all Calacanis style, which tends to make a lot of people think he deserves a good hard cockpunch. I don't see any of that happening with Hurley and YouTube.
Nicholas at Rough Type says that making a clear connection between revenue-sharing and the expansion of advertising will help minimize user revolt, and that "rewarding creativity" will encourage competition among YouTube uploaders to provide better content, get more views, and generate more earnings for themselves. I hope he's right, but I worry that a lot of uploaders will be more interested in the views and the dollars, and not too worried about the quality of the content they provide.
Tony Pierce at LAist shares my concern (a several others, most of which involve lots of lawyers), predicting that revenue-sharing might result in "an unending amount of LonelyGirl15 wannabes, not to mention worse fakes, and just plain dumber videos whose only intention was to get visits, thus money."
In any case, I think it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Here's a YouTube clip of Chad Hurley's announcement at Davos:
Why is YouTube just now getting around to "sharing the wealth"? Hurley says:
We didn’t want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We wanted to really build a true community around video. When you start out with giving money to people from day one, the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider who’s paying more. We’re at a scale now that we feel we can do that and still have a true community around video.I don't really believe that particular spin, but in a way it makes sense. If they'd paid for content from the beginning, they would've attracted a very different "community" of uploaders.
But the big questions are, will there be an influx of uploaders who are only in it for the money, and if so, what impact will they have on the established YouTube community? Oh yeah, and how much YouTube SPAM will I get from people trying to con me into watching their video so they get paid?
Joe at Dygitiscape compares it to Jason Calacanis' move to pay users for generating content at Netscape.com but I don't think it's all that similar. First, Jason was interested in poaching the top submitters at Digg, Reddit, NewsVine, etc. Second, he was only interested in hiring a few of them. Third, he did it all Calacanis style, which tends to make a lot of people think he deserves a good hard cockpunch. I don't see any of that happening with Hurley and YouTube.
Nicholas at Rough Type says that making a clear connection between revenue-sharing and the expansion of advertising will help minimize user revolt, and that "rewarding creativity" will encourage competition among YouTube uploaders to provide better content, get more views, and generate more earnings for themselves. I hope he's right, but I worry that a lot of uploaders will be more interested in the views and the dollars, and not too worried about the quality of the content they provide.
Tony Pierce at LAist shares my concern (a several others, most of which involve lots of lawyers), predicting that revenue-sharing might result in "an unending amount of LonelyGirl15 wannabes, not to mention worse fakes, and just plain dumber videos whose only intention was to get visits, thus money."
In any case, I think it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Here's a YouTube clip of Chad Hurley's announcement at Davos:
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