YouTube Community (or: Krumbine Pontificates. From His Ass)

Since my last post (which wasn't even legit since it was a repost of something I wrote last year ... and I have more to come! ;) we've posted the third episode of Talking Heads: YouTube Rejects; wrote, produced, and posted a new Narrator video ("The Hunger"); fielded handfuls of requests to get on Talking Heads; and dabbled with the notion of reviving the Beanie Boy Show.

Mostly, though, I've thought about the hot-button topic of the "YouTube Community".  I've briefly talked about it before ... but I highly doubt any of my viewers/readers today ever saw it ... much less remember it.

I find myself in an interesting position when considering the community that is YouTube.  Initially, I always though that YouTube was not (and should not be considered) a social-networking platform—the veritable foundation for any kind of "community", we can safely assume.  My argument was that we already had plenty of MySpaces and Facebooks and all of the other Friendster clones, so why do we need to manhandle YouTube into another social-networking platform?

YouTube, in my eyes, has always been a content delivery system.  Before YouTube, I had a website that I posted my videos to.  I would compress them into tiny little quicktime packages and load them directly to my servers.  It worked, but YouTube worked much better and enabled me to interact with my audience.  In short, it was a better way to deliver my videos to people who wanted to watch them.

That's why when you watch my videos (with VERY few exceptions) they don't seem like your standard fair YouTube video.  I don't produce videos to be part of a community ... I produce them because there's a story I wish to tell.  And yes, there's a difference.

More to the point, however, is the realization that YouTube is not exclusively a content delivery system OR a social-networking platform.  I believe that it STARTED as the former and eventually had the latter evolve out of it.

It is important to note, however, that the latter does NOT (nor will it) supplant the former.

There is, undoubtedly, a community on YouTube.  And this isn't a bad thing.  But we cannot forget WHY the community exists--which is to support the creative endeavors that utilize and depend on YouTube, the content delivery system.  The community cannot exist within a bubble and survive solely on itself--I repeat that we DO NOT need another Friendster clone.

Moreover, however, the community must not forsake its metaphorical birth-right: the creative content of YouTube.  It's a responsibility that everyone must shoulder ... from the people who produce the creative content, to the vloggers who make up the backbone of the YouTube community.

Is this a call to action?  Maybe.  Maybe I just want to see the discussion about community shift its focus.

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