Last week, YouTube held a Content Creator Camp — its first — at the Google Manhattan Offices. During the camp, winners of a talent show sponsored by the Google-owned website got to hear expert advice on viral-video creation, audience-building, and brand-strengthening. The camp comprises an important element of YouTube’s latest effort to amass a big heap-up of novel video content of quality. Margaret Healy, a lead for strategic partnerships at YouTube, summarizes the effort’s direction: “We would like it if everyone who had the talent, interest and potential to gain an audience to come on YouTube and start a channel and make original content.”
Currently, YouTube uses its Partner Program to share advertising gains with video content creators with big audiences on the site. It’s reported that the Partner Program garnered 100 billion views and multi-million dollar profits in the last year alone. Next New Networks, a video production company bought by Google in March, has been tapped to provide production support to video content generators working under the Partner Program.
Although the last quarterly report showed a doubling of YouTube’s profits, the site remains well aware of the competition posed by its rivals like Hulu and Netflix, to name a few. Thankfully, for YouTube’s big effort, Samantha — real name still unknown — has just posted a viral video of a Bigfoot sighting in Spokane, Washington that’s got even the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization speaking out to the media. In a bit of a discredit to Samantha, however, they proclaim the sighting’s location to be historically unlikely.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/business/media/30youtube.html?ref=technology#