Nalts has a piece on Renetto becoming discontented with YouTube:
For months, YouTube Cewebrity Paul Robinette (Renetto) has been posting video blogs (vlogs) about his discontent on YouTube. He has criticized the site for how it handles the small but vocal video community, and has stirred up drama with the grace of an Olympic gymnist.
In the past few weeks, Robinette quietly launched Vloggerheads.com with 250 plus fellow vloggers. I previously reported that he was launching RenettoTube (see site), but apparently he had some help from branding experts.
This is inevitable. We stopped actively posting on YouTube in 2006. We stopped because we had to figure out a way to survive and make money in the days before the partner program.
But there were those in the community didn’t like our decision because they only wanted to watch videos on YouTube. Understandable, but those people weren’t going to pay my bills.
Now some other early pioneers on the site are looking for greener pastures. This is a natural part of the cycle. New things become old. Cool places to hang out become corporate institutions. Successful people become outdated and unneeded.
By pouting that you going to take your ball and go home, you just make yourself look bad. Like the homecoming queen that returns to high school into her 40s. Move on with grace and dignity or reinvent yourself into relevance on the YouTube scene.
YouTube is no different than any other sort of fame or public attention. People get bored. They move on.
That’s why you as a creator need to be ahead of the curve. You cannot become complacent. Look at Madonna, she’s collaborated with the new young hotness producers for her albums going back 20 years. She changed before she was irrelevant.
That’s what we all need to do if we want to achieve any sort of longevity.
You have to continually set your sights higher. Try to reach more people and succeed in different forums and formats.
15 Comments
August 18, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I agree. There was a time and a place for the “Tube”, but now there are other options that allow people to expose their brand identity, rather then the providers. Giving content creators the leverage they deserve. If you have something worth watching, those who love your content will follow!
August 18, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’m limiting the vids I put up on Youtube to events that draw alot of people or might find it through a search engine. The quality sucks, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Youtube still get’s me the most views.
August 18, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Well said, Kent. This is my favorite part:
“YouTube is no different than any other sort of fame or public attention. People get bored. They move on.”
It’s so practical. The novelty of online video has faded. It’s here. Make good stuff.
Der.
August 18, 2008 at 1:54 pm
“Community” is a buzzword which can be exploited by sharpies just as easily as by corporations. Remember the article in the Wall Street Journal asking if eefoof was going to be the David who slew Goliath YouTube? “Community” was their ‘call to arms’ too.
August 19, 2008 at 1:29 am
Amen brutha.
August 19, 2008 at 3:50 am
And that’s not to mention the fact that YouTube’s video quality is one of the very lowest online!
Also, YouTube creates a whole “small fish in a big sea” thing for newish video creators. Because I create how-to content, if I were to post anywhere other than my site, I’d probably use something like Howcast, which is more niche-oriented. Then I’d have a chance at being the big fish…
Nice post, Kent!
August 19, 2008 at 7:23 am
I hardly use YouTube anymore. Qik is where it’s at:
qik.com
…if only there were live Ask A Ninja shows via Qik!
August 19, 2008 at 7:38 am
@Todd: an Ask A Ninja Qik episode could be quite epic. But do Ninja cell phones operate under normal cell phone “rules?”
Staying ahead of the curve looks to be a full time job, I’m noticing.
August 19, 2008 at 10:33 am
[...] also: Kent Nichols of Ask a Ninja’s take: Now some other early pioneers on the site are looking for greener pastures. This is a natural part [...]
August 19, 2008 at 11:49 am
Great post as always, Kent. I keep thinking that I should film myself singing “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” in full operatic glory during rush hour in Times Square or something to get a part on your film…
August 19, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Just like a plague. Consume everything you can and move on. Stick around to long and you’ll have nothing to eat but bones long picked clean.
August 20, 2008 at 4:37 am
“By pouting that you going to take your ball and go home, you just make yourself look bad. Like the homecoming queen that returns to high school into her 40s.”
Does this mean I should stop writing “Miss December, 1986″ on nametags?
August 20, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Well put on the “madonna” requirement on YouTube. I wonder if there are any examples of online-video creators that keep fresh without drifting from their core audience.
August 21, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but feel if this whole “Community” business is blown way, way out of line. Even if there was any singular collective of people that could be called a “Community,” it definitely doesn’t exist on YouTube. If Tera Patric were to start a porn-based vlog on RedTube, it would get about as many hits as a vlog on YouTube does in contrast to videos about things like Soulja Boi dissing Ice-T. Vlogging itself is just something most people are not into, and the reasons why are fairly disputable (Vlogging is more or less the epitome of narcissism online). These same people who talk about “Community” have views that are stark in contrast to clips from National Geographic, even. So, as much as I do appreciate the vloggers who consistently make me want to watch them, saying that they’re major contributors to a site is just not matching up with the numbers. If anything, this “Community” is nothing more than people who’re pissed off because, quite frankly, people are more concerned about what old cartoon or commercial they want to watch, rather than x person talk about the correct way to make a sandwich.
Not to mention, I find it particularly funny that the only people who respond to my replies as if I’m a person are people who’re constantly under the eye of the “community” as “haters”, people Vloggerheads are ultimately trying to filter out. These specific people are some of the nicest, funniest, and most down-to-earth people, but Vloggerheads would never allow them on the site. Immediately, just because whenever something appears, they raise an eyebrow and vlog about it. Do I want to go to a site where people aren’t allowed to point out what annoys them? Absolutely not.
By all means, do something new with the YouTube archetype, but so far Vloggerheads is seeming like an incredibly dubious foray into waters infested by amazingly dramatic sharks with a mind-numbing lack of humor.
November 20, 2008 at 4:38 am
nothing does related like youtube, you can surf it. Stage6 was nice for a while. Youtube are too copyright policing, too. By all video I mean ALL video ever made should be in a database.