YouTube starts paying 'select' uploaders

Google as film critic

By Chris Williams • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 4th May 2007 14:54 GMT

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Google clip dump YouTube is to trial revenue sharing with normal users by adding some of its favourite uploaders to its partnership programme.

YouTube already shares advertising dollars with big commercial content firms who threaten it with lawsuits. Users who provide the site with their own home videos and film projects, such as the popular Ask A Ninja series, have long lobbied for a slice of the action.

Among the first is daring video essayist LisaNova, the creative mastermind behind Don't Be A Douche Bag, a treatise on modern rage.

To begin with only this "select" few will enjoy Google's benevolence, as the firm is likely developing processes to handle the potential thousands of open palms set to be thrusted in its cash-swollen direction. YouTube says anyone who wants to get paid can let it know by registering an interest, but provided no timescale for when it will cough up, or what the carve-up will be.

YouTube says you have to have "built and maintained an audience" to be considered.

The site reckons its aim is to change the perception of user-generated content so it is afforded the same respect as professional work. More prescient perhaps, is the need to start paying up before the people who make the original clips that sometimes make it worth visiting for reasons other than Daily Show grabs and Norwegians skiing down stairs will go elsewhere. Rival Revver has pioneered sharing the advertising wealth, and reports that some have coined hundreds from its 50 - 50 split. ®

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