Wednesday, December 17, 2008

YouTube and Adsense

Whether you frequent YouTube or not, you may have noticed (heard) that Google now owns (actually since 2006) the popular user-upload site and has begun uploading their advertisements all over it. In addition to running a variety of Adsense advertisements, Google has offered users the ability to apply to become "partners". 


I am not terribly sure as to what becoming a YouTube "partner" entails, but I have seen that "partners" have videos ads placed on their videos as well as scattered across their channel and pages. 

Personally, I don't think that it is necessarily a bad thing. I think that it is a good opportunity for users and content producers to earn a bit of extra revenue for their hard work, but am curious as to how Google will view certain content on YouTube. I have heard that their will be a few search options for filtered and unfiltered content as well as some sort of re-rating for videos other than the 1-5 star format we are all so familiar with.

There are many popular YouTube channels that feature a variety of filterable material, but are quite popular and may suffer due to this new increase in homogeneity. Here is a quick video of a popular YouTube channel "thunderf00t". His channel deals in a variety of controversial issues and may be affected greatly by the new Google-run YouTube.



I don't know if I agree wholeheartedly with his "YouTube is dead" philosophy, but I think he makes a few good points about censorship and free speech. What are your opinions about this?

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