YouTube Push pay channel: professional film and social media grafting

The development of the Internet has upended many industries, with online music services such as itunes and Pandora failing, and Amazon Kinde changing the book publishing industry; mobile devices, represented by Apple, have pushed the Wintel pc camp back. But only the video industry is burdened with too much anticipation and no revolutionary change. While companies such as Netflix and Hulu beat the blockbuster, the studios are still in the hands of Hollywood and cable giants, from program sources to channels.

YouTube, Google's video-site, is exploring the possibility of video charges and opening a pay channel later this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The "free video" era is coming to an end. In fact, YouTube's route is quite different from the fee-based video services such as itunes and Netflix: It tries to change the entire video industry from content creation.

In recent years, the voice of intelligent television is more than one round. Many internet companies and home appliances companies have released their own smart TVs, but neither "set-top box pie" nor "built-in Oneness" has been successful. No company, including Apple, can successfully grab the living room.

According to emarketer, 2012 video ads in the United States amounted to 2.93 billion U.S. dollars, while media research agency Kantar Medium estimated television advertising amounted to 68 billion dollars in 2011. Online video advertising and TV commercials are just a fraction of the amount.

Online video faces the same dilemma in terms of subscription fees, which, while itunes is a solo performer in the music world, is flat on the video business and Netflix has long been in a loss. Almost all video sites that offer professional television programs are struggling to survive on the margins. Although the video site occupies a certain market, attracts a large number of users, but can not earn the matching income.

Taking the music industry as a mirror, Apple has seized the hardware portal with a powerful ipod experience, forcing content providers to work with them. But this success story is hard to replicate in the powerful film and television industry. Unable to control the content provider, Apple simply amateurs the Apple TV set-top box without going deep into the video industry.

Even if Apple no longer has its hands on television, the revolution in smart television is always coming. Faster speed and sophisticated low-cost embedded systems have removed technical barriers for the Internet to enter the living room. YouTube is now the leader in online video, but if it does not take the initiative to seek breakthroughs, the industry will face the risk of shuffling when it arrives. So YouTube's choice is to introduce more professional paid video content.

YouTube's positioning is significantly different from the video services such as Netflix. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime offer professional film and television programs that not only bear huge royalties, have no control over their content, but also compete fiercely with each other.

Although these video sites are in the original program, but it is difficult to change the pattern of the industry. Netflix, for example, invested 100 million of billions of dollars in its exclusive original TV series, the card house. First of all, the creation of large-scale film and television drama is capital-intensive and high-risk industries. Because of the limited funds and talent, even if a TV play can be successful, it is difficult to guarantee future success. More importantly, several TV dramas are hard to form an ecological circle, and most viewers will not pay hundreds of dollars annually for this.

YouTube, on the date of its birth, has been targeted as social media, focusing on creating content for users. This allows YouTube to quickly accumulate a large number of users and grow into a high-quality advertising platform. YouTube is characterized by social and mobile, and accumulates a large number of grassroots and semi professional creators, as well as MV and advertising videos, mobile end app share is among the top. YouTube broadcasts quickly and is suitable for debris time viewing.

In designing pay shows, YOUTBE also used this tactic to avoid direct investment in professional television programs, allowing small and medium sized studios to offer original or aggregated programs, and YouTube provides a platform for communication and advertising. Doing so has the advantage of being a social platform, spreading the risk of investment, providing opportunities for small producers who are not able to squeeze into the cable TV, and preparing themselves to enter the living room.

YouTube's goal is not to create original programming like Netflix, or to prop up one or two channels, but to become a cable network in the Internet. As Salar Kamangar, YouTube's executive director, Sala Kamange about the possibility of drawing on the two or three-wire cable network, these networks have great difficulty accumulating enough users to meet the subscription costs of distributors. and online distribution can provide a more direct platform for these networks to push content to the audience at lower prices.

In addition to external production companies, YouTube has a number of mature channels, and quickly switch to the potential of pay channels, such as the broadband TV coverage of 11 million users. The company, which started by removing infringing programs, does not produce anything, but instead digs out good programs for packaging, integration and promotion. The company has accumulated more than 6,000 video producers over the past five years, ranging from the introduction of games to fans to original comedy clips.

Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of Broadband TV, said, "The strategy we implement is more like that of the early Comcast (Comcast): It's not about producing content, it's about republishing the content." Processing video is not technically the most powerful, we have to do is let them play their greatest strengths at ease to make their video, as to make money and improve the flow of the problem, to our good. ”

"Weak creation, strong editing" is an important feature of social media operation, it may also become the trend of the film industry. With the screening and packaging of broadband TV, YouTube's pay channel not only attracts two or three-line studios, but also goes directly to grassroots creators.

Kelly, a science and technology writer, said in his book, "not to obliterate innovative modelling and evolutionary space and to guarantee the quality of products and services, the answer is to build two hierarchies: the lower level is full of dynamic" swarm "collaboration, the top of the product or service to the final quality control.

YouTube's pay channel, compared with the direct investment programs of Netflix and other companies, avoids risk, with the lower layers of the eco-chain working in the upper-level control model and the likelihood of sustained success.