YouTube – Turning Its Back On The Little Guy?
By Anna Johnson on April 7th, 2009Remember this date: April 15, 2009. It may well be the last time YouTube is known as the place for anyone and their video. According to ClickZ, on April 16 YouTube will unveil a new website skin that separates – and favors – premium, professional, long-form video content over user-posted content.
By now it should be obvious that YouTube is positioning itself as something akin to an Internet television network.
I called it a ‘uber-network’ here (YouTube Becoming a Uber-TV Network, Lets Major Content Partners Sell Their Own Ads) and I think I was pretty much on the mark in that article.
According to ClickZ, YouTube will soon unveil a redesign that clearly separates its premium and long-form programming from the user-posted videos that account for most of its activity.
The new design will replace the current navigation scheme based on Videos, Channels, and Community with tabbed navigation divided into Movies, Music, Shows (all for professional content) and Videos (for, as Clickz, puts it, ‘amateur and semi-pro’ content).
Why is YouTube doing this? To make money of course. YouTube can’t make money off user-uploaded videos because advertisers won’t advertise on them. Advertisers will, however, flock to placing their ads on movies and television shows. In turn, various television networks are providing their content to YouTube in order to share the ad revenue.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘amateur and semi-pro’ videos will be shunted aside, or that they can’t still achieve massive popularity on YouTube, but it does mean YouTube is de-emphasizing that content. So while these videos may still find their audiences (or their audiences may find them) it’s likely to become harder as YouTube parades its premium (income-earning) content.
And remember, YouTube has, to date, been a cash-burner rather than a cash-earner. Now more than ever, it has to ramp up revenues. For better or worse, that means going where the money is: appealing to big brand advertisers.
Perhaps ‘turning its back on the little guy’ is too strong, but is it just a matter of time before the value of that ‘videos’ tab becomes so high (in terms of webpage real estate) that YouTube won’t replace it with something else and shunt the amateur and semi-pro videos further into the background?
Or will YouTube consider another revenue model for user-posted videos e.g. pay-per-view (‘we’ll host your video if you pay x cents each time someone watches it’)?
And will YouTube’s move into the premium space actually be an opportunity for competitors to move into the user-generated video space with a revenue model that works?
Interesting times…
Source: Zachary Rodgers, “YouTube Plans Redesign to Highlight Premium Content,” ClickZ, March 30, 2009
