I recently delved deep into the abyss that is Youtube. While in this gloriously filthy, disturbingly intriguing, fantastically strange realm of the world wide web, I discovered quite a few interesting facts about the age that we live in. Youtube recently celebrated its 8th birthday, and as a part of the festivities that this internet enigma threw was a week called “Comedy Week”. For the whole week there were youtubers famous and sundry uploading funny videos to commemorate the week. One of my favorites was “Start a Mumford Band” from the Key of Awesome:

So  now that Youtube is a second-grader, and shows no sign of going away, slowing the amount of content that is being shared with it, or able to be wished away, it is time that people really started paying attention to it. I don’t mean you knuckleheads, I mean the people who pay money to make art and movies and TV shows and whatnot. Producers and production studios. Obviously, the general population of the internet has gotten a glimpse of what Youtube can do, and has done, but the people who are living in the big houses in hollywood are not really buying into this videos on the internet thing. There are some problems that I see looming because of this. One of them is of couse, history.

History has shown us, or at least me, that those who underestimate technology will have a bad time. For a short example- take those who did not count on electricity making a huge impact on the world, or those who did not understand understand motorized automobiles. Those people had a bad time because- surprise surprise- those technologies ended up being hugely important, even to this day. Who knows why some people don’t tend to foresee the long reaching affect of these technologies, but simply put, it happens. Too bad for them. Now Youtube may not be an innovation of that scale, but it is important nonetheless. And it is being ignored as well. Studios are dismissing, or at least overlooking the importance that Youtube has.

Studios want to make money. Just like most companies, they have a product that they want to sell. Theirs is entertainment, more specifically, movies, and television shows. They make their money by having people pay to watch their product. The people give them their money for whatever type of entertainment that they desire. In the most simplistic explanation, more people watching equals more money. Here is an equation to help you to understand this:

Views = Money

As like any good company, they want to make the most money possible with their product. This entails lots of different finagling that needs to take place inside their business, but the easiest way to make money is to get more views (or viewers). Because:

MORE Views = MORE Money

The problem with this is that if you are a TV production company, you don’t really know why people are watching your show. You just know that they are, and to maximize your profit, you should continue to make that TV show. What if you could know what your viewers wanted?

If you are on Youtube, you can know that. If you are making a video you have people commenting on it, and liking it to tell you how they feel, and what they want you to do next. You also have a very tangible counter that tells you how many people have watched your videos. An actual number, not just an estimate, or best guess, you can see how may times each of your videos has been watched. There is not that for TV shows. Sure you can see what the ratings are, and you can see how may people bought DVD copies, but you do not know how may people have really seem it through other means. You also have a quite poor way of gathering information on why people watched what you made.

Youtube is a part of what is being called “New Media” and it is one of the integral members of this group. Little understood, yet full of potential, it is slowly on the rise as what coud be one of the primary mediums of producing and viewing content. This has the members of the “Old Media” running… only slightly frightened. Frustrated to be sure though. Technology has advanced enough that to produce content of the same caliber of that of the big production companies is not really that difficult. And people are taking advantage of that. One example of that is Freddiew. If you look at a lot of his work, he has really great content that did not take all that much money to produce, but still is really good. Another facet of Youtube, and other new media is that people can pick and choose what they want to watch, and they show this by subscriptions. One of the most famous youtubers, is Jenna Marbles who has a ridiculous about of subscribers, at over 9 million. That is more people that those who watched the 24 series finale live. Just in subscribers. Her most popular video has 52 million views. That is just about as many people as watched the Friends series finale. The most viewed video, the song that introduced the universe to K-pop- Gangnam Style, just cracked 1.5 Billion views. There are 7 Billion people on the planet right now. Clearly this Youtube contraption is something to be reckoned with.

What the old media should fear is the versatility of new media. With subscribers, people can pick and choose what content they want to see, and which they don’t. There is a choice of weather or not you will be updated when some new content is added. If you want to catch up with DailyGrace each day, you can. Perhaps there is a new literal trailer you want to see from Tobuscus. You can do that if you want. For content creators, this is amazing because you can make whatever you always wanted to make, and people can tell you if they like it or not. The people who want to support you can be the ones who support you continuing to create your content. That is really cool. You can support what you want to see. And you can be the one dictating in a literal way where your dollar is going. This is a future that I like. This is the future that I see.

This interview with Chester See, famous for his Bromance video with Ryan Higa, explains a lot of what I talked about pretty well:

It is fairly long- of you dont want to spend too much time on it.

Sorry for the rambling, and any confusion I caused with this post.

I also apologize for the long gap in posts… no excuse really, I will make an effort to put one up each wednesday.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.