Who's Here?

Well, hi, it's Tom. This is an unusual video in a couple of ways. First of all, I'm making this as a response video to John Ragan #1's video. And John made a terrific video directed specifically to Perry Urban, Ken Argi, Renato, and myself, asking us You know, what is this? Why leave? What's the point of leaving YouTube? Why would you guys think about leaving YouTube? Well, okay, so the first thing I want to say is that none of us are talking about leaving YouTube. YouTube is, as I've said before in other videos, YouTube is an amazing social phenomenon. And it has demonstrated to millions of people that we're living in a new world. We're living in a new world of video sharing and of video connectivity. And I'm, you know, unless they throw me out, I'm going to have a YouTube account for a long, long time. When, when John asked the questions about why leave YouTube, and his questions were, is it because of the hatred, you know, that is here? Is it because it's gotten too corporate? Is it because of copyright infringement? Is it because of YouTube customer support? Is it because you want to have friends in a more pleasant atmosphere? All of which are great questions. But when I listen to those questions, it reminded me of Horton Hears a Who. Now here's why. We who are on YouTube are like the residents of Whoville. We're living in this world and we are focused on this world and the everyday problems and, um, characteristics of this world. And because we live in this world, this YouTube video world, we don't realize that it's not the entire universe. We don't realize that it's only really a very small part of the world. Now, in particular, I think it's a very— what we, what we have here is a very small, small slice of the potential market, if you will, for video-based community connectivity. And To try to demonstrate that a little bit, this is the second reason why this is a weird video, I'm gonna switch over to a little bit of narration of a graphic to explain what I mean when I say that this is, that what we have here is a very small slice of the potential video world. If you want to hang around, I'm about to go do a little demo of, uh, I don't know what to call it, kind of a brief talk about video adoption. See you back here after I'm done over there. Okay, so this is a little weird, I know, because I'm sitting here and I'm talking and there's a picture of a curve on the screen, but I just want to explain why I believe and we believe that the opportunity for community video site goes way beyond using YouTube as our point of reference. If you think about who has come on to YouTube up to now, not to watch videos, not to watch videos that are embedded elsewhere all over the web, but to to upload and to vlog, to create unique user-generated content. My point is, my belief is, that we are very, very early in this process. If you take a look at this curve, this is called the Rogers Adoption Curve of technologies, and this guy Rogers put together this curve to describe what happens when any new technology comes on the scene. Now, what he says is that the innovators, what, what I'm calling here the explorers, those very first people who use the technology, are probably about 2.5% of, uh, the overall possible pool of users of that technology. Now, the next group, that group in purple there, the early adopters, the adventurers, are about 13.5%. Now, you know, if these numbers aren't exact They're, they're representative of this distribution curve. You go down to the next group, the early majority, the pragmatists. By now, you know, you're getting into people who don't really buy things or, or use new technologies for their own sake, but they're people who are kind of pragmatic about it. They are just looking for, you know, something that, um, that they've seen, and they're kind of the fast follower group. That next group, the late majority, the conservatives, now, you know, by now these are people who have waited and they've watched and they've seen what's gonna happen. And, you know, they're a little more than a third of the overall market. These are people, by the way, today who probably just are getting their first digital camera. And then down here, the last 16%, the black, the traditionalists, Those are folks who, you know, are maybe just getting email today, or, you know, they are very, very late to adopting any new technology. Now, if you take a look at the YouTube, the current YouTube video uploaders, my contention is that we're probably right around in here somewhere, the adventurer, early adopter group. I mean, This is what I've meant in earlier videos when I've said that you have to be crazy to be on YouTube today. And what I've meant is you have to be somebody who is adventurous, who is an explorer. Those of us who've been out here for any period of time, um, I think fall in that group. Now, if you take a look at what that means, that means that there's probably, you know, let's forget about the traditionalists. They're probably, you know, 5 or more years down the line from ever uploading a video or getting involved in a video community. By my way of looking at things, there's probably anywhere from 60 to 70% of all of the possible video bloggers, people who would enjoy being involved in a video community, who are still not uploading videos to YouTube. Now, my biggest point about that is that these people in here are never going to upload videos to YouTube because YouTube is not, by nature of its overwhelming usage, a video community site. John Reagan number one put it really well, you know, we're this little irritant to Google and to YouTube. The big money for them, the big concern for them, and therefore the place that they will spend the vast majority of their time and efforts are going to be on those, um, let's call them the entertainment, uh, media-seeking, network-alternative-seeking people. So in, in a very simple way, I just think that the numbers are so great for the people who will never ever want to upload to YouTube, that the opportunity is there for not just one site, many, many sites to create face-based video sharing communities that are in fact focused on community. Okay, so I really think that what we have here is a situation in which YouTube— and look, I've made some great friends here, and I would hope to be able to maintain these friendships. I have— I just, you know, went over 1,900 subscribers, and, and that's fantastic. I, I, I, um, uh, I've said before and I'll say now, I never expected to have so many people care about the kinds of things that I create here on YouTube. But when I look at the potential for creating an environment in which community is not over here on the side, not a peripheral aspect of the business, not an irritant as John Reagan number one said, but is really the heart of the business and that every aspect of the site is focused on community, that community involvement is number one, that engagement is number one, When do— when does YouTube make videos to the community? When do they make videos? They make announcements, they make broadcasts, but do they interact? Do we have any interactivity that lets us know that the, that the people on YouTube who are running YouTube, who are the decision makers on YouTube, are people who are deeply involved with our concerns as community members? No, no. What we see are decisions that are made in order to maximize the monetized videos. That's what they're doing now. They have to make money now. Now, I've said in the past that I didn't think YouTube really was a big revenue source for Google, that Google wasn't really all that interested in revenue from YouTube. I think market conditions and the passage of time have changed that. So that now monetization is the number one concern for YouTube. Perfectly understandable, perfectly fine, but that means that other, other concerns are front and center and not community. Now, if we have all those people, 60 to 70% of the possible, um, video community members who have not yet made videos and who in my— from my point of view, will never make YouTube videos because YouTube videos mean something else to those people. These are people that don't have accounts. They watch YouTube videos. They watch them as embeds on somebody else's site, or somebody sends them a link and they come over to YouTube and watch a video. But these are people who don't— who don't have an account. They're not registered. Heaven knows they would never upload a video. Those are people who I think represent the late majority, the early majority, the late majority, 60 to 70% of the possible users of a community video site. So to answer John's question directly, I don't think that what we're considering really has anything to do with YouTube. YouTube could fix all the kinds of problems that are there for it to fix. And I still believe that there is a much greater opportunity for community to take place in an environment that is community-focused from the ground up, in which every aspect of it is focused on community. So John, thanks a lot for your video. It really was, uh, uh, it was, it was, um, it was great for you to call attention to the kinds of issues that we normally think of when we think of why we would do something else, but that's not for me at the heart. At the heart of it is there are a lot of people who are gonna love video communities who are never gonna come here to do that. So take care, see you soon, bye-bye.