Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, Pete Cashmore at mashable, and the bbc are all reporting that Chad Hurley (one of YouTube’s founders) has hinted that YouTube will be rolling out a way for its users to share in ad revenue generated by their videos. (it’s worth noting that paidcontent.org is referring to this as “vaporshare”) Clearly this is going to be a bit of a concern for Revver who’s only differentiator was it’s ability to help users cash in on advertising placed at the end of their videos.
You might call it YouTube 2.0 but I think if you put together the ability to share your videos with millions to actually generating some cash as well I think you’ve got a winning formula for sustainable growth. I had written about “talent following the money” and noted folks like Ask A Ninja, Ze Frank, lonelygirl15 and even the Eepy Bird folks behind the diet coke were putting their videos on Revver to generate some cash from their immense popularity. Revver of course could not match the traffic on YouTube, but it seemed that YouTube would grow the talent and once they had a following they would head of to make some money. If YouTube does this right it will surely consolidate it’s already enviable position.
In the end social media sites depend upon a motivated userbase, or at least a motivated base of the one percenters, and companies that figure out how to reward participation in a way that is congruent, and doesn’t undermine trust will prosper.
