by Christopher Kendalls

Created on: July 30, 2009

There are many articles on here about how YouTube is getting worse when the truth of the matter is that YouTube is not getting worse in general it is becoming harder to deliver videos that inspire true conversation and discourse of real problems on YouTube. The video sharing site now offers high definition video, television shows in their entirety (although seasons in their entirely seems to elude both YouTube and Hulu) and movies that you may pay $2 for at your local movie trading store. Those are all great projects that YouTube is involved in and a way of delivering true value to computers users at home that are hard pressed to find this content anywhere.

High definition video in and of itself is difficult to come across. YouTube will only pull down copyrighted video when someone who owns the copyright complains about it, which is between them, the studios and the television programmers that will never change that has always been an aspect of YouTube. However the site isn't doing much to raise above the status quo; conveniently hiding important documentary and perspective in the midst of mindless jokes, racial banter, sexualized content (either implicitly or suggestive in nature) and xenophobia in general. This was not the YouTube many of us grew to love.

YouTube has also stacked the deck against smaller operators trying to compete for an audience. Unless your videos are shocking, controversial, confrontational, belligerent or entertaining in any other way you will never acquire enough followers to take part in the YouTube Partner Program which rewards content creators with thousands of subscribers the ability to make cash through their videos. Partners are rewarded through page views and often run text ads that lay over their videos on particular frames. You could have five subscribers and videos with millions of views but that would not allow you to be in the program, it would not be good enough.

There are other sites that allow anyone and everyone the opportunity to make a few bucks but let us be totally honest with ourselves about the fact that the videos on YouTube constitute the majority of those watched online. Sure there are plenty of hate videos as well as videos encouraging racism and miscegenation and interracial relationships for all of the wrong reasons, but that isn't really the reason YouTube is not the site that it used to be. YouTube is better for movie studios and television programmers these days and independent content creators that have audiences of a similar size. For those just starting out though unless you are creative in the promotion of your video it will get lost in the sheer volume of videos on YouTube, and you may as well try to place your videos on some other site

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