Time Magazine Calls Out Youtube

Image from Newteevee.com

Time magazine named Youtube one of the “10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade” citing the fact that it hasn’t been able to generate enough profits to break even since it’s inception.

Newteevee.com makes a good point in that Youtube is a cultural institution that has managed to “democratize access to content production and consumption.” Beyond that, I wonder if marketers are partly to blame for not being able to find creative ways to use Youtube and helping make it a better marketing platform.

Obviously, a lot of us still rely on impressions through banner ads and the occasional viral video as our main tools on Youtube. Some more advanced marketers may create a brand homepage to house videos and others may have contests. But all in all, there seems to be a “if you build it, they will come” attitude about using the platform - which is the opposite of what you should be thinking if you want a quality marketing program to come out it.

Marketers tend to set their objectives to quantity over quality – meaning they want to see thousands of views and submissions. But to aim for those goals you run the risk of ending up with small, fleeting moments of engagement with a lot of people. Because you can’t ask all of Youtube to upload a 5-minute long masterpiece – most likely way to involve that many people you’ll have to ask them to do something incredibly easy.

I don’t think we as marketers have a strong grasp of users on Youtube either. We tend to think of them as “young creative digital people” or some other (perhaps more clever) segmentation. I think we should actually examine them as a whole – the Youtube community – and then segment the audience based on participation level (lurkers, raters, commentors, producers, etc.). That way we can leverage learning from the Obama social media campaign and build ways in for everyone in the community to participate.

As much as people cringe when marketers get involved with social media, everyone seems to have an understanding that it’s not free. Right now, they tolerate us because we’re helping to pay for some of it. But we still have the responsibility of making interesting programs for them to get involved with because ultimately that’s how we’ll get the most for our money. And from there Youtube can offer to help produce the programs since they have the expertise.

UPDATE: There is also an interesting conversation happening on Techcrunch.