YouTube Opens Partner Program to All, Pinterest Expands Video & More (The Reel Web #35)

This week’s look at the Reel Web, YouTube is apparently opening up its partner program to just about anybody so we’ll look at some of the controversy surround that. Also there’s some record breaking statics happening around the whole cable industry and we’ll talk about what that means for online video and a whole lot more this week at our look on the ReelWeb.

Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of the Reel Web where every week we just highlight for you guys some of the online video news from the week before, and this week let’s start with the big stuff.

Starting with YouTube’s recent announcement that they are opening up their partner program to tons more people and this has created a lot of controversy. A lot of YouTubers have worked very hard for their partner status, saying hey, wait a minute, we worked hard for this, it just feels like you’re cheapening this for us. Now I totally understand that, I get that, I understand those feelings, but I don’t think YouTube’s really changing anything here, they’re just kind of making a formalized announcement now. It’s been a very well known fact that YouTube has been monetizing tons and tons of accounts, more and more easily, in fact pretty much all of my accounts are monetized now and I have like 5 YouTube channels I use for different stuff, and they’re all monetized, which I think YouTube is now saying, if your videos are monetized, at least one of them, you are now a partner. But what most people associate with partner status is being able to customize your own thumbnails, branding your channels, having your access to all this cool stuff. And while that is true, I think now they’re making two different tiers of partners. Now everyone who is monetized is technically a partner even though they were before, now they are just calling it that and the other level partners are the ones who have access to all the custom thumbnails and the branding and the different analytics and all the cool stuff that goes along with that. So they’re going to be rolling out, apparently, some of those other partner features that people seek after so desperately and even are willing to hack their videos to do it as we’ve seen in a different video of ours, but those are coming so I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. YouTube has been doing this for a long time and just officially labeled it partner status now.

Speaking of YouTube, last week was YouTube Live’s first anniversary, and to celebrate they released a whole bunch of cool stuff, including software now that you can use to make a really professional live video stream and with more and more Google Live Hangouts coming on air to more and more of us, I cannot wait to get YouTube Live and On-Air Hangouts and all that stuff cause I really want to start doing live Hangouts and events with you guys. And I asked this in last week’s video and didn’t get a whole lot of response, so I’d like to ask you guys again, what kind of show would you like to see ReelSEO do for you guys live between me, and Mark Robertson our founder and president here at ReelSEO, and some of the guys we have access to here through ReelSEO.com. What kind of show could we do best for you guys that would benefit you guys the most? So let us know. Comment below. What kind of live stuff should we do? I want to do a live show so bad, it would be so much fun to actually interact in real time with you guys rather than just shooting this in my basement and uploading it to YouTube and waiting for a while for you guys to comment.

I want to talk to you guys about some things that I read recently about what’s happening to the cable industry. And to do so I’m going to summarize about four different articles for you here, and if you want to see any of this in more details as always, the links to all that stuff I’m talking about and more is in the description below on YouTube or on www.ReelSEO.com so go check them out for more information, but real basically, what is happening is that right now the cost per month for an average cable TV subscription is $86. But if things continue to progress in the same path that they have been, by the year 2020, that monthly price will be around $200 and the question is, are people like us, consumers, willing to fork over $200 a month for access to cable TV? Already a lot of people are saying, no, we’re not willing to pay $86 a month for cable TV and they’re cutting the cord and just doing online subscription based services like Hulu Plus and Netflix and even just resorting to YouTube which is what I do actually, I don’t watch any TV. All of my video consumption is from YouTube.

So you can couple that with the fact that cable TV stocks has pretty much flatlined, and in fact just last week it has been reversed from being a must buy to being just a neutral stock which is indicating to the whole financial world that cable TV is not worth investing into any more. Given these trends and the way everything is going it looks like cable TV will eventually become a thing of the past. An old school technology that we will talk about with our grandkids who have no concept at all of what cable TV is.

Except for one thing, and this is a huge but, if Hollywood continues to have such incredibly high licensing fees that the online services can’t afford it, kind of like Netflix here is losing stars and all the programming that goes along with that and a lot of people are projecting that Netflix is going to have another mass exodus of subscribers and if that kind of thing continues to happen then Hollywood might put cable TV and us in like a death grip choke and say you’re only able to have access to our content if you’re willing to pay $200 a month. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Some of us would be like, no way! I’m not even paying $86 a month. But if you want high quality professional stuff that is not yet available on YouTube, it might be that that is the only way you can get it. However, I’m banking on the fact that between now and then a lot of us amateur people are going to be popping up on YouTube and doing shows and movies that are on par with the high professional quality television shows except for we’ll be doing them at a much lower production cost here on YouTube and building audiences around us, so I’m thinking that it’s just going to be a whole shift in shows and media and consumption and we’re just going to have to see how it all plays out. But it’s really interesting stuff and I encourage you guys to go read more about it if you’re at all interested in this, which you should be! Cause if you’re making content on YouTube, you need to know about this stuff.

So Pinterest, one of those websites that most of us just kind of relegate to the ladies and bridal pictures and stuff, but more and more guys are signing up for it and it’s definitely more artsy type of creative crowd that is using Pinterest, and Pinterest has lately integrated video into their service. They’ve had YouTube integration, what I mean by integration is that you can take a YouTube URL and pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest and people can re-pin it and share the same way they do a picture, except with a video, now they’ve added that same ability with Vimeo as well. That means for those of you guys who are creating online video content for the more artistic crowd, the more creative people and you are not utilizing Pinterest to help promote and spread and seed your videos, you might want to start thinking about that especially now that Vimeo is there as well, there might be more and more video sharing happening and people will become more and more used to seeing video on Pinterest. At least Pinterest is hoping it goes that way cause they’re enabling more and more videos. So use Pinterest if you’re not. I’m on Pinterest but I don’t really use it, cause the dudes aren’t posting cool stuff.

Two quick things to wrap things up for you guys this week. Number one, YouTube made a licensing deal with MGM. You know like in the beginning of the movie they have the lion come on, those guys, 600 of their movie titles are becoming available on YouTube Movies. We talked a little bit about how that’s influencing us in last week’s Reel Web episode. You can check that out, we talk about it there and find out more. So I’m not going to address all that here, I think that’s really cool.

Number two, on www.ReelSEO.com we featured a business that is using online video and they shared seven ways that online video has really affected and influenced their business. We’re not just talking about some Angry Birds webseries that has natural characters and everything built in, we’re talking about a company that does bar code scannings for business and how they turned that into an online video business and all the ways it’s been affecting their strategies and their income, so if you are a business and you say, I don’t see how I could ever make online video work for my business or my niche, go check this out, I think it will be very surprising how they are making it work and some of the influence and impact it’s having on their business. So go to the link below.

And guys thanks for hanging out with us for another look at the Reel Web. If this is your first time hanging out with us please subscribe by clicking on that button above this video here on YouTube, we’d love to have you join us every week and I will see you all again on Thursday for our Creator’s Tip video. And we’re going to do a follow up to last week’s Creator’s Tip video where we talked about seeding your video. You guys had a lot of great questions and I know we didn’t fully address the topic, there was a lot of different niches and stuff we have to address, so I’m going to follow up on that this Thursday, so make sure you subscribe so you get that. Guys that’s it for this week, thanks for hanging out with us and I’ll see you again on Thursday. Bye!