YouTube to Pay Most Popular Users

YouTube has announced a kind of revenue-sharing plan for its most popular video posters. It is elevating high-profile posters to the "partner" level, and then sharing advertising revenue with them. How do you become a YouTube partner? It's unclear, but seems to be based on traffic. Generate enough traffic to your videos (and thus to YouTube itself), and YouTube will get cozy with you.

YouTube 4 You Now Shipping!

The book YouTube 4 You is now shipping from the publisher's warehouse. Look for copies in your local bookstore or online any day now!

Put YouTube Videos on Your Blogger Blog

New feature in Blogger -- the ability to add YouTube videos as a sidebar element to your blog. Use the Blogger Dashboard to go to the Template tab, click Add a Page Element, and then select Video Bar. This lets you add a vertical bar of YouTube video clips, based on defined search elements.

Claim Your Content Coming -- and More on Viacom

YouTube is almost ready to launch a new software tool that will enable copyright holders to find and report infringing content on the YouTube site. The tool is dubbed Claim Your Content, and it will be available to any content provider -- not just official YouTube partners.

BTW, Google CEO Eric Schmidt commented at the Web 2.0 conference that he thought Viacom's lawsuit against the YouTube division was essentially a negotiating tactic in the ongoing discussions between the two firms. Of Viacom, Schmidt said "[y]ou're either doing business with them or being sued by them ... we chose the former, but ended up the latter."

Copyrighted Videos No Big Thing on YouTube

According to a study by tracking firm Vidmeter.com, less than 10% of videos on YouTube were uploaded without the permission of copyright holders. This means that the bulk of YouTube videos are homegrown. It doesn't mean, however, that those homegrown videos are the most popular videos. Nor do the numbers totally reflect reality, as that 10% number reflects only those videos that have been identified by copyright holders; there may be more infringing videos on YouTube that haven't yet been identified, or that copyright holders haven't complained about. Still, it's an interesting bit of data.

Welcome to YouTube 4U: The Blog

This blog is in support of the upcoming book, YouTube 4U, from me, Michael Miller. The book will be published by Que Publishing in April 2007 -- look for it at your local bookstore, then return here for updates and new information.