Niche content is finding acceptance and appreciation on the long tail of the Internet, especially the user-driven social sites. Google’s popular video-sharing site is going ahead with its plan announced late last year to spend about $100 million. Keen to back up video programming, the company is funding aspiring filmmakers, writers, artists, and proven online hit makers with grants in the range of few hundred thousand to a million dollars and more.
Video content gets more professional
A case in point is Gotham Chopra, the son of renowned spirituality author Deepak Chopra. He is currently busy in a cramped studio In a ubiquitous industrial arena, just south of downtown Los Angeles, recording a series of short videos funded by YouTube – to guide viewers through certain more unlikely elements of the spiritual sciences like ability to recall things from past lives and exploring the trend of many people informing census takers Jedi as their religion. He acknowledges the fact that the show, slated to go live on the social site in July, would have struggled in finding a home offline and its concept would have been rejected straightaway.
More options for advertisers
Google has just made its first appearance during upfronts, the annual television industry ad sales ritual, highlighting progress made by YouTube. Its confident executives revealed that they had signed up filmmakers like Black Swan producer Jon Avnet, rapper Jay-Z, and actors like Rainn Wilson and Amy Poehler to create channels. There would be roughly 25 hours of new original content on the site each day, by the end of this July.
YouTube vice president & global head (content partnerships), Robert Kyncl, has been quoted as saying: People are definitely spending more and more time here. And if you’re an advertiser eager to reach people, this is just the right place to be.”
Web-exclusive content
Meanwhile, YouTube’s competitors are concentrating on Web-exclusive content in order to lure both the viewers and advertisers. They are eyeing the major studios. Netflix is already streaming ‘Lilyhammer’, its mob drama, apart from having new shows in the offing. It also got the rights to original episodes of ‘Arrested Development’, the cult TV hit.” On the other hand, Hulu is coming up with a faux-documentary sitcom, set in the realm of Wisconsin politics. Amazon Studios, Amazon.com-promoted creative development arm, recently stated it would back the best proposals for children’s and comedy programming.
More user friendly features
Aware of the stiff competition that it faces, YouTube is constatly fine tuning the technology to help users find relevant channels and videos through an enhanced Topics on Search to narrow search results, using most commonly-used phrases. It has further auto-generated entire channels of topics contained in the ‘Top YouTube Collections’ tab, offering uniquely-focused and constantly updated channels. Now, users will start seeing them more broadly available, like in ‘Recommended for You’ section of its channels page as well as on a video watch page.
As top video hosting and sharing sites jostle to attract advertisers, it’s a perfect situation for users and video makers to leverage for their own gains…
