This blog has moved, you can now find me at:

viralvideowannabe.com 

My channel is the third most watched Comedian channel on all of YouTube today! The two channels beating me out are WhatTheBuckShow and Nalts, two of my good friends on YouTube. After months of hard work and interaction on the site and even offline with the community, it feels great to finally start placing on the YouTube lists.

Most of the views can be attributed to my latest collaboration video, “Now That’s What I Call Emo“. The mock commercial features a voice over from DIY or DIE film director, Michael W. Dean, along with cameo appearances from numerous YouTube vloggers, including Speedy Con Kiwi, Ben Robot, Nalts, Mandarific and Lindsay Bradley.

This week Oprah created a YouTube channel. After only five days of having an account she was made the Guest Editor, taking over the front page features, including featuring three of her own videos. Unheard of for a Guest Editor. And the community took notice.

As the YourTubeAdvocate for the month of November, I created a video utilizing clips from numerous YouTube vloggers, ranging from popular partners to channels with under 500 subscribers. The video was to show a united voice among the active users of the community, and to celebrate YouTube eventually removing Oprah’s featured videos from the front page.

YouTube just spotlighted the video I made in the People & Blogs Category (as seen above). I wrote the category editor to thank him and he replied: “We wanted to acknowledge the community was reacting. I hope the Oprah situation will smooth out soon.” It’s good to know the community is still in control. Viva la resistance!

YouTube users taking back the Most Discussed list! In my latest video for the YourTubeAdvocate channel, I discuss the Spam For Love Army, YouTube Staff listening to our suggestions and my plans to build a YouTube Glossary.

Click the image above for the full screenshot.

The first video I ever uploaded to LiveVideo is the second Most Viewed video on the entire site today. I had been hearing from a few friends that LiveVideo (LV) was still a relatively small site/community and that placing on the lists was much easier there than on YouTube. So, I took an older video of mine from last month and uploaded it just to see what it’d do. I didn’t embed it anywhere, nor post a single link to it before this blog entry.

While there’s something thrilling about the easy success of moving up the charts there, the site seems to lack everything that makes YouTube what it is. My first video sits there as the second Most Viewed video of the entire day, but hasn’t received a single comment. Where as my upload of the same video on YouTube from last month has received comments from just over eighty different users.

Community counts, as cheesy as that may sound. And I’d rather hang out with lower “Honors” but engaging discussions on YouTube than be commentless and at number one on some other site.

Of course, the only video out ranking mine is from a channel featuring a girl in a bikini, so, at least YouTube can relate there. =)

The video I made two weeks ago entitled “How To Improve YouTube” is spotlighted for the next seven days in the HowTo & DIY Category on YouTube. The video, which includes suggestions compiled from over 100 different YouTubers, has received a bit of attention from both users and YouTube staff.

It’s time to make a few more video responses if you’re interested. You know now you’ll have the ear of YouTube. =) Thanks to both Sadia and Damien for making this happen.

This is my first video as the YourTubeAdvocate. The YourTubeAdvocate (YTA) is a channel on YouTube which attemps to bridge the gap between the YouTube staff and the every day users. Issues come up, suggestions are made, but many are lost in the flood of emails YouTube receives daily. This channel exists to amplify your voice.

Each month, the YTA channel changes moderators. I’ve been selected for the month of November. In my debut video I discuss mikeskehan’s surprising suspension and some site redesigns coming up on YouTube.

YouTube.com recently posted a blog entry about an upcoming redesign to their website. They believe the redesign will provide a better user experience. While I do like a lot of the changes they made to the functionality of the site, the new graphic design leaves a lot to be desired.

But that was the point, they posted a preview of the redesign to receive some feedback. So I sent an email addressing some of my biggest concerns. And because I know complaints without solutions or suggestions aren’t very helpful, I also sent along my own redesign of their redesign of the site:

Click the image above for a full resolution version.

I created this image in Macromedia’s Fireworks MX 2004. It took about three hours.

Here’s the email I sent along with the redesign:

Good to see you plan on expanding the Categories into more specific topics, a number of users have been asking for this and I’m very happy to see that addressed, thanks! However, I do have two issues with the preview of the new Videos page.

First, by combining the Videos and Categories pages, the videos Featured in specific categories are now less visible. Category Features are one of the few ways smaller, talented channels are “seen.” Please reconsider, or redesign so that the Category Featured videos are the first to display when viewing this page.

Second, it appears the new Videos page design removed the Featured Channels in each Category. This is also disappointing, as it is yet one less avenue for new or smaller, talented channels.

The drop-down menus are good and they do clean up some of the clutter on the old page. Hope this helps.

If or when YouTube gets back to me about the suggestions/redesign, I will be sure to update this blog entry.

I started this project a little over two weeks ago. I posed a simple question to over one hundred different YouTubers; “If you could change anything about YouTube.com, what would it be?”

Some answered in one sentence; others sent me multiple replies as they thought of more and more they’d like to see addressed. The plan was to compile and rank these answers, based on how often each item was mentioned, then present the most popular answers in a video to YouTube.

You can WATCH THAT REPORT VIDEO HERE.

The five most popular answers given were:

• Gmail to replace YouTube PMs
• More subscriber data
• Comment retooling
• Additional channel customization options
• Communication/Promotion issues

For expanded explanations of the above, please take a moment to watch the report video.

Of course, many had really interesting and exciting other ideas. Unfortunately, I wanted to keep the report video to a watchable length and couldn’t include all of them. So I compiled a list here of an additional fifteen suggestions that I thought were interesting:

• YouTube Instant Messenger
• Live/Streaming Video (some suggested buying Stickam.com)
• Entering the image code after exceeding the commenting limit should not restart the video that is playing
• Search functions added to the comments section
• More active participation in the YouTube Gatherings
• The ability to flag spamming or obscene channels
• Move “block user” links away from screenname links in profile comments
• The star rating system should accurately reflect the ratings, add 1/5^th to 4/5^th star icons
• Thumbnail options need to be expanded
• More specific sub categories for videos (perhaps a system similar to Digg.com)
• Bring back the “Message Sent” confirmation when PMing
• Separate email notification options for profile comments and bulletins
• Redesign the groups for better functionality
• Higher resolution video and audio (stereo, please!?)
• A section of downloadable royalty-free music and images, for use in our videos

There were more, but these were all suggestions I could get behind. Not everyone will be able to agree on all features, but by tallying which were mentioned most often from the group I polled, I think this is a good representation of what we’d all like to see.

If you have any additional suggestions, please leave them as comments or video responses on the report video. Or, as always, you can PM me via my YouTube channel: youtube.com/fallofautumndistro

So you may have noticed the recent trend of youtubers inserting title cards at the end of each video asking for ratings, favorites and comments. Everyone from WhatTheBuckShow to the vlogbrothers to that fallofautumndistro kid are doing it. But why? Why do they care so much if you think their video is worth four stars, or five?

It’s because YouTube has a few charts. One ranks the Most Discussed, while another ranks Top Favorites, another, Top Rated, and so on. The videos placed on these charts are done so by the YouTube community and their actions (rating, commenting, etc.) ((except in the unfortunate event of a cheater who creates hundreds of dummy accounts to favorite and rate his or her own videos – in which case, they should watch out for the YTwatchdog who will soon be biting them on their asses)).

Videos remain on these charts (and display their positions as “Honors” on their video page) for 48 hours after being uploaded. These first 48 hours are crucial exposure time for a new video. Unless later featured, most views and comments any given video receives happen in the first two days after being uploaded. After this time, the video falls off the charts, looses its Honors and, usually, its audience.

The only exceptions to the above are the videos which are so popular that they land on an All Time list. The All Time lists are similar to the above, only they rank Most Whatevered of, well, all time and don’t only focus on the last 48 hours.

I usually end up rating about half way through watching a video; by the center frame/thumbnail I know whether or not I’m enjoying it. I then usually wait to comment until the end, making sure I don’t miss anything. But I also only rate if I’m going to give the video five stars. A one star rating, when you don’t plan on leaving a constructive comment as to how to improve, just seems mean.

As for the recent trend of actually visually asking for ratings and comments, etc, I can only guess that we do it as a reminder.