FastForward Revisits YouTube - Page 4 - Yours, Mine, and Money

Yours, Mine, and Money

Although YouTube has grown exponentially over the past seven years, they cannot possibly sort through all the videos that are uploaded, which leaves the job of policing to the community. Members are expected to report content that is potentially offensive. More than 800,000 people visit the site every month.

"YouTube is based on the idea, anybody can capture anything. This idea has changed the world." YouTube is always looking for more ways to create revenue, which they call “monetizing.” It’s important to find a balance between keeping users happy and keeping advertisers happy. They created “True View,” which is the name for pop-ups that appear on the screen. True View gives users the option to either skip an ad or choose a different ad they want to watch. This saves money for advertisers because the companies only get charged if a user actually watches their ad, and hopefully the ads are shown to their target audience. Ultimately, Reddeker said, a good ad should be entertaining, so users will actually want to watch. Kavanaugh and Alston, both part of the legal department, have separate issues to address. Most of the users don’t know anything about copyright laws for example. So if they use a song by Chris Brown in a home video, and they do not have rights to the song, then Chris Brown’s music agency can have the video removed. They have to deal with all these issues on a regular basis, but now they have created a way to alert the copyright holder, and they can post ads to buy the song, while the song is playing in the video. This has been very successful, Kavanaugh said.

Just as we were about to leave, the surprise arrived. It was Salar Kamangar—the CEO of YouTube. He walked into the room smiling, and was very friendly. We asked Salar what his favorite YouTube video was, and he replied he couldn’t just pick one—it always changes. This is so true; inspired by the boundless energy of this group, we’re psyched to start shooting video tomorrow.<p.?