YouTube To Share Revenue With 20-year-old Filmmaker

destinyland writes "YouTube just has signed a deal to share ad revenue with 20-year-old Brandon Fletcher. YouTube had already said they'd implement revenue sharing this summer, but this indicates they're willing to put their money where their mouth was. 10 Zen Monkeys has a funny chronicle of Brandon's enviable march to YouTube money. 9 weeks ago he flew to California to demand YouTube feature his video on their front page. A security guard refused to let him off the elevator — but he made crucial contacts which helped seal the deal 9 weeks later. Taking this business to the next level makes sense in the here and now, when some 70 percent of internet users are streaming video."

Global figures?

[Kangburra]

70 percent of internet users are streaming video

No, this is just USSA users, not the whole Internet.

Re:

[Cal Paterson]

It's probably a tongue in cheek reference about how similar the USA is to the USSR.

Re:

[Choedius]

It's probably a tongue in cheek reference about how similar the USA is to the USSR.

In USSA, cheek in tongue... you?

Sorry, that's the best I can do being a second born child and all.

Re:

[igny]

USSA, is it United Soviet States of America or United Socialist States of America?

Re:

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Cue screed re: Bush was only elected once.

Re:

[Jeremy_Bee]

In addition to being US only, if you read the New York Times article referenced, (hard to do since it's so poorly written), the "70%" of internet users stream video" claim should actually be "70% of internet users have accessed streaming video lately" i.e. - they have clicked on a link. These are not necessarily bleeding edge internet-video adopters. This is your grandmother clicking on a video link to a news story or teenagers swapping camera-mugging webcam videos.

There is also no backup for these claims,

Re:

[Durf]

Well, according to my email in-box, 70% of Internet users want to sell me \/1@gr@ . . .

YouTube are NOT doing this the right way!

[babbling]

They're picking and choosing who they share revenue with as though the traffic they receive from some videos is worth more than the traffic they receive from other videos.

Google should implement this in the same way they do for Blogger. Just let people use their AdSense accounts on YouTube.

Re:YouTube are NOT doing this the right way!

[petrus4]

It is a bad way to do it.

The single main reason why is because the people with the most traffic on YouTube are also usually the people producing the worst actual content; they're populist attention seekers producing mindless drivel, purely for the sake of their own self-promotion.

There are people on YouTube producing material that is genuinely worthwhile, and that isn't purely superficial...but such people are never who you're going to see on the front page, and thus they also aren't the people who YouTube are going to pay. Thus, the erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio actually becomes a self-reinforcing negative spiral.

Re:

[destinyland]

This story has YouTube's reponse to that [blorge.com]. YouTube originally said they'd wanted their users to be motivated by passion for sharing their videos -- and not for money. Now they're selectively offering the money as a way to "incubate" those projects that they think have potential.

Re:

[rtb61]

More likely google is just trying to get more users to post to you tube by offering revenue sharing as a carrot, goggle sharing revenue, I don't know why but the term micropayments immediately springs to mind, with a different connotation to the standard definition ;).

Re:

[ForumTroll]

The single main reason why is because the people with the most traffic on YouTube are also usually the people producing the worst actual content; they're populist attention seekers producing mindless drivel, purely for the sake of their own self-promotion.

You couldn't have described the "20-year-old filmmaker" from this article any better... His show is basically a terrible MySpace version of Blind Date. Come to think of it, it's actually quite the feat since I was unaware that it was possible to make a

Re:YouTube are NOT doing this the right way!

[Seumas]

What is a MySpace version of Blind Date like?

Is it just some eleven year old girl meeting some 48 year old gym teacher in a hotel room, followed by an hour of Nancy Grace talking about shutting down the internet to save the children?

Come to think of it, why in the hell would you date someone who uses myspace?! What could be a bigger and more consistent sign of being an attention whore? It should be an enormous warning flag to run the other way.

Re:

[toddian]

mod parent up, true and funny

Re:

[jb.hl.com]

Come to think of it, why in the hell would you date someone who uses myspace?!

A huge percentage of people under the age of 25 do now. You'd be a little lonely (although I doubt this affects most Slashdotters ;).

FWIW I met my last girlfriend over MySpace, and she wasn't an attention whore. She thought I was an arsehole though, hence why she's my "last" girlfriend...

Re:

[petrus4]

You couldn't have described the "20-year-old filmmaker" from this article any better...

I've had a YouTube account since last November, and have spent at least a certain amount of time watching the material that gets produced there.

Although there are a lot of people who, I believe, genuinely are motivated by a desire to be creative, there is also a particular group of individuals (the organisers of the "As One" events are actually the best example of this) who are motivated purely by a desire for popularity

Re:

[kubrick]

Thus, the erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio actually becomes a self-reinforcing negative spiral.

Sounds like a reflection of wider popular culture to me. It's certainly nothing peculiar to YouTube.

Re:

[PMBjornerud]

There are people on YouTube producing material that is genuinely worthwhile, and that isn't purely superficial...but such people are never who you're going to see on the front page, and thus they also aren't the people who YouTube are going to pay. Thus, the erosion of the signal-to-noise ratio actually becomes a self-reinforcing negative spiral.

If it's really that awful, why don't you make your own version of YouTube and capture that market segment?

If the majority of people want mindless drivel, obviously some site should take care of that segment. If there is another segment wanting genuinely worthwhile material, and youtube does not deliver it, that it an untapped market. The start of a businessplan. Why are you so negative?

There are countless video sites springing up everywhere. One simple change would be to introduce a moderation system inste

And where exactly will AdSense get its context fro

[melted]

And where exactly will AdSense get its context from? It's not like it can analyze video to show contextual ads. Not yet at least.

Re:And where exactly will AdSense get its context

[Mr2001]

Tags and descriptions, presumably the same way YouTube finds "related videos".

Re:

[Wellington Grey]

Google should implement this in the same way they do for Blogger. Just let people use their AdSense accounts on YouTube

This is a problem that I have with may websites that make money off of user summited content: the company should share the money with those producing the value. Particularly annoying is Flickr. A little while ago they added a feature where people can buy prints of photos but they do not share that money with the person who took the photo. It's terribly annoying because I know so many

Re:

[mindstrm]

Semi-pro photographers should pony up for a SmugMug account. Easier to use than flickr, faster than flickr, completely unlimited, with photo ordering & revenue sharing under the uploaders control, and absolutely no claims of ownership to your data.

http://www.smugmug.com/ [smugmug.com]

Re:

[jibjibjib]

That's not an "oddity". The whole idea of advertising is that you get paid for someone looking at something other than your content.

Does Youtube generate revenue yet???

[CPE1704TKS]

I don't recall seeing any ads on Youtube, so how can they share revenues that they seemingly don't have?

As well, I fully expect them NOT to have ads, at least not in the near future. Once Youtube actually starts making money, it will make them even more vulnerable to lawsuits from copyright holders when users upload infringing material. The fact that Youtube could generate revenue from copyright-infringing material will make the case stronger that they are encouraging users to flaunt copyright rules, and make them more vulnerable to lawsuits. I think that's the only reason why Google hasn't posted ads there, because they are trying to figure out how to protect themselves from getting their asses sued.

Re:

[datapharmer]

Actually youtube does have ads on their pages just not on the videos themselves: example of a video page that has ad revenue sharing enabled [youtube.com].

While I can't go into the details of a deal that I am aware of, one might want to note that the headline says "Share Revenue" and not "pay for ad-clicks".

I agree that they are being very selective with who they decide to pay, but there may be more to it than meets the eye. Promoting content creators who submit regular high quality videos to youtube certainly couldn

why not just...

[mikesum]

use a site that pays you to begin with, like revver ? [revver.com]

Re:

[Flentil]

Metacafe pays anyone with enough views as well, so long as it's original content. I think YouTube needs to start sharing more fairly like these sites do. It's not like they can't afford to share a little on all popular videos. These smaller sites are doing it already.

Re:When will they share revenue with Viacom, et al

[someone1234]

In a year this 'kid' might produce commercially owned content :) In 5 years, he might have an own studio.

Re:When will they share revenue with Viacom, et al

[timmarhy]

who the fuck watches anything much on youtube except for short clips? tiny low res movies anyone?

Re:

[Seumas]

Hollywood produces movies to appeal to the population at large in an attempt to make money. Idiots on websites produce videos to satisfy their deprived ego and to substitute for the mommy and daddy they never had and take the place of friends they can't manage to make. I don't know about you, but I prefer to consume content that was at least made with the intention of entertaining or educating me (in turn for a buck) than content that was produced to coax me into posting a "OMG LUV DAT ASS MOMMA - HOOK ME U

Promotion

[niceone]

A security guard refused to let him off the elevator -- but he made crucial contacts which helped seal the deal 9 weeks later

Eh? Was the Secutiry Guard promoted to Head of Revenue Sharing in the intervening 9 weeks?

Re:

[destinyland]

That's one of the details in the funny story [10zenmonkeys.com].

...he wrote back cheerily, saying that an employee "took me out to eat, gave me some YouTube shirts and told me to come back!" But when he went back to camp in YouTube's lobby, a security guard stopped him at the elevator...

Is it just me?

[edittard]

Am I the only one who detects a distinct odor of hype around this story? Tries to force his way into the building ... and then they make a deal with him? Sounds like something from a (bad) movie.

Re:

[DDLKermit007]

This guy wreaks of wanting so very badly to be more than he really is. This is allot of smoke, but will probably just fade in a few weeks once the /. and Digg hordes stop looking for his Blind Date tripe. At least I hope so anyways. One Blind Date show is bad enough.

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[lastchance_000]

This guy wreaks of wanting so very badly to be more than he really is.

You've just described everyone in the tv and film industries.

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[iamhassi]

"Am I the only one who detects a distinct odor of hype around this story?"

yep... how come no one else realized this though? There's tons of Youtube videos on there that get hundreds of thousands of views, why aren't they getting a percentage too?

I don't see this going well. If youtube gives this guy a few bucks for his stupid "show" then 99% of all future videos will be people trying to make a quick buck. Every video will be either something shocking or barely dressed teen girls shaking their ass.

The internet's last gasp.

[Seumas]

I think we can officially say goodbye to the real internet. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a time when people produced content and communities on the internet for no other reason than they cared and enjoyed doing it. Even before the internet, people would spend hundreds or thousands of dollars putting networks of computers together in their home, ordering a dozen or two dozen lines from the local phone company and feeding that trunk into a bank of modems so they could operate a free dial-up community.

People didn't plaster advertising on every page of everything they created. People didn't write articles in their blogs with the sole intention of drawing readers who would boost their ad revenue. People didn't produce self-involved videos in the hope of becoming the next big thing.

There was a time when people created and consumed out of simple interest and passion. Now, everyone from six years old to ninety years old wants to get rich off advertising on their blog, their website, their stupid pointless youtube videos, their comments on other people's blogs, their half-assed website ideas that they hope will get bought up for half a billion by Yahoo! or Google.

Want to see what putting ad banner revenue at the top of the list for encouraging you to find *something* to post on your blog every single day does to the net? Go look at the top ten or twenty RSS feeds. Especially the tech related ones. They are all copies of each other. On a given day, they simply commit blog-incest and rape each other's ideas and posts. By the end of the day, you'll see the same stupid story (usually about a new product, of course) twenty times on twenty of the top RSS feeds. Why? Well, you have to post SOMETHING. Anything, to draw people back to look at more ads while they're reading through your copy and pasted (and often poorly worded) material.

There are days where I wonder why any of us bother to care about "saving the internet" from being overrun by commercial entities and corporations and governments who want it to be nothing more than another commodity or another pipe through which to funnel products and purches into our homes. Why bother? The average Joe and his little sister and his dad are doing just fine turning the internet into one giant ad-plastered cess-pool of sell-outs.

Re:The internet's last gasp.

[destinyland]

You forgot to say: "I am aware of the irony of using the internet to decry the internet's over-commercialization..."

Re:

[Seumas]

First, I don't think that fits the definition of irony. It doesn't even fit the definition of hypocrisey. Perhaps the phrase "it is fitting that one would decry the internet's over commercialization by posting on the internet".

Also, I didn't make or desire to make a buck doing it. So . . . no.

Re:

[FFFish]

There is absolutely nothing ironic in it. You might wish to consult a dictionary or S&W.

Re:

[pimpimpim]

It's like music bands singing songs about how bad the record companies are. You remember, like the ones for sale at your record store for $20, under the Colombia label. Better get used to it, mate.

Re:

[X.25]

The original Internet crowd was primarily made up of human leftovers of a number of different kinds; sexual deviants, social rejects, the autistic, and the terminally mentally ill. They were people whose main incentive for coming online was due simply to the fact that nobody offline wanted to be reminded of their existence. It was a means for them to achieve some degree of dubious social interaction with others of their own kind, while at the same time, mercifully sparing anyone the unspeakable horror of be

Re:

[4D6963]

Your a looser! LOLOLOL

Err, are you kidding, or not, or french? I'm confused..

Re:

[foniksonik]

The "real internet" never existed... not the way you're imagining it. There was a time when ISPs were small and had a few servers to support, 2 or 3 guy operations with a T1 connection... and there were Universities with T3s and a lot of computers hooked up to them... and of course dialup, Geocities, AOL and wait for it... Starcraft discussion boards on Compuserve....

Sure that all existed but it was an industry in it's infancy trying to tread water until some real money could be made... and letting people d

Youtube proved once and for all -

[Shohat]

YouTube (and Digg actually) proved once and for all, that "Web 2.0" is NOT about user generated content, but commercial-grade content being selected by users.
As a blogger, it's hard for me to say this, but honestly almost nobody reads (or shoud read) blogs but bloggers (and journalists, etc...), almost nobody watches vlogs but other vloggers, and in the end of the day, these are probably barely 5% of the Internet users. Regretfully, Google with it's idiotic blog fetish constantly sticks blog links into the result page, and I, like many others have already learned how to avoid blog-looking URLs. The ridiculous thing, is that too often the results are actually short stories that just link to the content users are looking for.
YouTube's "most watched" top 100 are a clear indication to that - the top videos are generally news, Sport clips, music videos, show episodes. Out of top 100, there might be 4-5 original user-made videos, everything else is pretty much "The best things that were on TV today". And if you aggregate total Blogosphere's/Video sharing /Bookmarking sites/ output into some top-topic list, you will see that the content is dictated daily by CNN, NYT, BBC, Wired, Cnet, etc... The user generated "content" is just the middleman in 95% percent of the cases.

Just from Ads

[briancnorton]

70% of users streaming video? I guess that includes me if you include the annoying ads on slashdot

Youtube is way behind the curve

[rh2600]

I find it a little silly that we get news items about how YouTube will be implementing revenue sharing with contributors - like that makes them somehow amazing and benevolent. Other sites like metacafe and revver have been doing this for ages.

Case in point, my silly wii-mote fatality clip [revver.com] has earned me ~US$900 so far...

Re:

[pimpimpim]

That is a smart way to advertize your video! But then again, with such a title I have a lot of troubles trying not to watch it.

Re:

[Nicolay77]

And how that works?

I did not found adds in the page you linked. So how revver makes any money at all?

Why can't YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

Why can't they make good on the revenue sharing amongst everyone else?! Me thinks they don't wants to??