Quantity vs Quality. Which do you think YT cares about?

[Dutchie Abroad]

Good answer!!! Did you say in another post that you study marketing?

I'm studying International Hospitality Management, so I had my fair share of marketing, business economics, statistics and business strategy. Next to this I grew up in a family restaurant, so I've been involved with brainstorming for the company since I was quite young

The SMALL creator is the backbone of youtube.

I don't agree with this. The small creators are Youtube's future, absolutely, but their backbone are their (semi) large creators. Creators that have been on Youtube for years and have an large amount of loyal subs. THey create the desired watch time Youtube is looking for.

Or Microsoft. Microsoft was once the only game in town. Now, it is in a destant third place in some markets and not even a player anymore in the smartphone market.

Microsoft is a WHOLE different story. Gates is a puzzling person, helping his own competitors (because, you know, he did save Apple from bankrupty) all the while growing his own business.

And yess, businesses fail. Absolutely. The fact that Youtube is still here is thanks to their non stop development. Just look at the platform 10 years ago, or even 5. They are always, ALWAYS tweeking their interface, their algorithm, their strategies. And that is why Youtube will continue to grow. Because they have also shown to change strategies when they are not delivering the desired result. And yes, this desired result might not be what we as small creators want, but we are but a small cog in the huge machine that is Youtube.

 

[MutantCreeper36]

What youtube is probably trying to do is make it a "job" for you. If you don't post often its hard for youtube to keep watch time, which is what they are after. The more videos the more possible watch time. Thats why channels that post very bad 30 second videos or channels that have poorly recorded 30 minute lets plays don't get many subscribers. I don't edit, but the quality of my videos isn't that bad because I use raw footage, so the whole series is seen. I do some stuff off camera, but relatively keep lots of the stuff recorded. Anyways if you don't take youtube seriously then they will try to kill your channel on purpose. You have to remember that youtube is a business. They want to get as much money as possible, which means get rid of people who aren't doing anything to help youtube. AKA the people who do stuff like record their game through a camera on their phone instead of using a recording software.

 

[Dutchie Abroad]

Anyways if you don't take youtube seriously then they will try to kill your channel on purpose.
They want to get as much money as possible, which means get rid of people who aren't doing anything to help youtube.

Both these things are absolute nonsense. Youtube is not 'killing channels on purpose'. They don't have people or AI that are purposely seeking out low performing channels and shutting them down. They will only terminate an account if it is violating the rules. Most channels that aren't favorable to the algorithm die because the creator stops, not because YT manually shuts them down. And yes, because the algo is against them it might feel like YT is 'killing them', but they are not. The creators kill their channel, not YT.

 

[MutantCreeper36]

Both these things are absolute nonsense. Youtube is not 'killing channels on purpose'. They don't have people or AI that are purposely seeking out low performing channels and shutting them down. They will only terminate an account if it is violating the rules. Most channels that aren't favorable to the algorithm die because the creator stops, not because YT manually shuts them down. And yes, because the algo is against them it might feel like YT is 'killing them', but they are not. The creators kill their channel, not YT.

You clearly didn't understand what I meant. Because when I say youtube is killing channels I mean the algorithim. Also as you said the algorithim just kills people who are unfavorable to the algorithim. Next time try and understand what someone says before you go calling people nonsensical.

 

[Dutchie Abroad]

You clearly didn't understand what I meant. Because when I say youtube is killing channels I mean the algorithim. Also as you said the algorithim just kills people who are unfavorable to the algorithim. Next time try and understand what someone says before you go calling people nonsensical.

Well, is it strange for me to misinterpret your post? This is written language after all and when you write Youtube, I read this as 'Youtube the company', not as 'The algorithm'. A simple difference in reference, no need to start calling names. It actually seems we are on the same page on this, so why so hostile?

Personally, I always find it a bit weird when people feel personally attacked by the algorithm. It isn't like Youtube doesn't like your content, or doesn't acknowledge your hard work. It is just that your content appearantly doesn't fit the current business strategy that Youtube is handling and thus you won't be picked up by the algorithm. Nothing personal. It's your own choice if you want to bend to the will of the business strategy or if you just want to do what you love for a hobby.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

@Dutchie. Again, you say a lot of truth. But there are a lot of creators that have seriously begun to look for alternates to youtube as a result of what they are doing. I think largest factor here can be boiled down to "Lack of Transparency". Whether intentionally or not, youtube is alienating themselves from their creators. They are rolling out changes that are causing serious financial pain to the people that fuel youtube channel and their basic answer to all of us is, Bend overy and take it. Not a good business policy.

Take this for example. Youtube has been marking milions of videos as Not Advertiser Friendly. But when they do, they provide no information as to why this decision was reached. So, the creators are left scratching their heads. When they go to the forums for answers, all they get is quotes from Youtube's very unclear ambiguous policies, and unfounded opinions from people like you and me that are really just guessing at what is really going on. For the most part, youtube is completely silent, and when they do issue a press release, it completely ignore all our questions, as if there is not a crowd of us screaming for them.

Here is the truth. Youtube will fail if they alienate their base. I say that the small creator is the base. You say it is the big channels. Let me ask you this. What percentage of youtube content is created by the big channels, vs the small channels? I would venture to bet that 95% of the content on youtube comes from the tens of millions small channels, not the few thousand big channels. So, I will say that overall, the small channels draw more viewers to youtube then the big ones. I know that me personally, I never watch any of the big channels. That is not what I come to youtube to see. I want to see the common man's opinon.

Youtube is not alone. Facebook and Twitter are in the race too and youtube had better get it's act together and stop treating it's base like mushrooms. They need to be COMPLETELY transparent with us and give us the information and tools we need to adjust to their new methods. A Yellow dollar sign is not information. Telling us exactly why they gave us the yellow dollar sign is. And they are not doing that.

As far as the quality question goes, my own personal experience has been the opposite of what you guys are saying. My best performing video is one that I filmed on a cheap smartphone, with no prep, research or script. It is the subject matter of that video that drives it. I have started watching many HD super high quality videos that I clicked off in seconds because they were made by idiots (but very popular idiots). You can give a $5000 guitar to a person who does not know how to play and it will still sound terrible, but you can give a $100 guitar to a professional and they can make it sound like a $1000 guitar.

We all want youtube to be better, but not at the expense of youtube treating us like mushrooms. We are not a mushrooms. We are creators, and we will take our content to a competitor if youtube does not start treating us small creators with the respect we deserve. We are not asking for free money. We're are willing to work for it, but we need a fair shake in the game. Placing burdens on us that only big channels can meet (releasing daily content) is not giving us the fair chance we deserve as the backbone of the business.

 

[TYTD]

With the best in the will it takes me 2 weeks of evenings (6pm till midnight Sunday to Thursday) to turn around 3 episodes of my show (Not including update videos and other extras which I just have to squeeze in where I can) While I cant claim my videos are of "Quality" as thats subjective; I try my best to research every film I talk about in depth in order to put across the most complete history of each film I cover as best I can...I cant in any way imagine being able to do this daily even in the scenario that I quit my job to take on youtube full time. the absolute most I'd probably be able to produce is maybe 4 videos a week and im pretty certain my quality would suffer as a result of that due to simply not having enough time to do my work properly.

The algorhythm at the minute is a self learning programme and what its currently learnt is that casting a wider net (I.e: uploading 3000 videos covering multiple topics with eye catching titles and thumbnails and content thats on the border of tolerable) is much more effective in getting people to watch than having a sharp and focussed channel (I.e: uploading 1-2 videos a week of unbelievably brilliant content on a very niche subject) that will attract a smaller dedicated audience. Im not saying those focussed channels cant make it big (Nor am I saying that casting a wider net is guarenteed to get you rolling in subs, views and algorythm preferences) but the current system does seem set up to favour "Just about acceptable" channels that upload 100 videos a day over the channels that take time to craft and build up a brand. now youtube may choose to tweak those preferences in the future if this continues to be problematic...but I think there thinking is "If 1,000,000 people click on a video that consists of shakey footage of a bloke spinning a fidgit spinner on a channel thats just 3000 re-uploads of the same video; who are we to tell them there wrong?" which...I mean...I suppose they arnt wrong...but it will only work to push genuinely good content to the bottom of the pile.

 

[Gamayun]

Youtube care about projection for it's profits and brining this to life.Main source of my views coming from suggested videos. To improve current situation on my channel I start making shorter videos than I did it before to improve Average view duration stats. Survival is my goal till 01.01.2018.[DOUBLEPOST=1508720944,1508720752][/DOUBLEPOST][QUOTE="
The SMALL creator is the backbone of youtube. YouTube's anti-small creator policies are creating a hole, and someone will step up to fill it. You simply can't start a business around the little guy and them forget the little guy and expect to well[/QUOTE]
100% agree with you on that.

 

[KatyAdelson]

Let's make sure we stay on the topic of quality vs. quantity...

I think the ultimate goal is to upload quality content 3 times a week, not rubbish content 3 times a week. I'd imagine we would be better off uploading 1 good video every week vs. 3 sloppy videos a week...but we would become YouTube's golden child if we could upload 3 awesome videos a week.

I understand it now! No wonder they have Casey Neistat on the trending page all the time. We're all supposed to look at Casey Neistat for inspiration. So, let's all run 12 miles every day, own our own multi-million dollar business, AND upload daily (kind of). LET'S GET TO WORK! What are we doing debating on here - time's money!!???!?!?!

I'm so SOL. I upload like..once a month. hah.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

In a perfect world quality would always be king, but we do not live in a perfect world. I watch a lot of review videos. I might go through 20 videos before a find one that is something more then some person reading the technical specifications on the box, much less any real hands on testing in the field.

The question is, why are there 20 or 30 poorly produced videos for every good one? The answer: YouTube's policy of rewarding quantity instead of quality. Why does it do this? Simply because they cannot program an algorithm that can judge quality. Not quality of footage, but quality of content. It takes a human brain to analyze that. So the best the computer can do is measure the quantity and let the viewers judge the quality.

The problem with this system is that, at the end of the day, youtube only cares about making money. So long as a video does "Well Enough" to make them money, they could care less if it is a video made of some idiot that does not know his head from a hole in the ground ranting about something useless. As long as it is entertaining.

I am not saying that there is no place for these kinds of videos. Everybody enjoys a good stupid cat video every now and again or some dingbat cry "Leave Brittany Alone!". But when serious creators, who are willing work hard and devote themselves to producing a well thought out video that has real value, cannot compete because the system is geared to reward people who are just out to make buck; that is when we need to take a step back and reevaluate.

I will continue to make my videos the same way I always have. But it is not fair that just because creators like me who do not placate to a system that values quantity over quality, we get punished by low exposure. It is just not fair.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking. America's got Talent, is a great example of unfairness. Why? Because they allow singers to compete against people who have real talent. To be able sing great is not a talent, it is a gift you are born with. I get so angry when I watch that show, I littlerly scream at the TV. Take this example.

AGT requires each act to do a different improved act each week. Now pretend you are part of a 20 member dance group. What does this entail for you? It entails massive amounts of practice, rehearsing, unique invention, choreographing, scripting etc, etc. This is not to mention years of training to develop your skill and muscles to do it all. Now pretend your a singer who was born with anmazing voice. What do you have to do to prepare each week? All you have to do is choose a new popular song that someone else wrote and made popular and practice it.

Now I ask you, how often is a whole dance troop beat out by a lone singer? All the time, every season. No dance troop has every won AGT, but many singers have. Whether it be a dance troop, a magic act, a balancing act, a dare devil act or any other act that requires tons of work and preparation, a singer who has to do nothing but choose a new popular song each week can beat them all out. Is that fair? No!

So why does AGT allow singers to compete? Because fair or not, music is powerful and effects people at an emotional level. A singer can move you to tears or make you feel great. Watch you favorite blockbuster movie with the sound turnd off and you will understand how much music plays a part in how you feel. That is why singers are on there. It is entertaining.

So what I am saying here is that I feel like that is what is going on YT. I feel like the dance troop that commits tons of work to each video, trying to produce a useful product that is actually helpful to people, but I am being beat out by a creator who makes 20 product reviews a week of him reading the technical specifications off the product box, or some idiot crying about Brittany. Why? Only because they can produce 20 of their stupid videos a week, while it takes me a week or more to make one, and youtube wants the 20, regardless of what they are.