Susan Wojcicki, the big boss of Youtube
, reveals in a letter what will be the evolutions of the platform this year. Content creators, regulatory developments and user protection are at the heart of his speech.
YouTube is heavy, very heavy. 2.2 billion users (only Facebook does better) according to Hootsuite, around 40 million French people who browse there each month (according to Mediametrie) and more than 50 million paying subscribers for its Music and Premium services, while free is a pillar of the platform. These figures make you dizzy, so inevitably, when the CEO of YouTube speaks, we listen to what she has to say. Let’s see how YouTube version 2022 will behave.
New Features and Additional Revenue Streams for Creators
The number of content creators posting on YouTube is growing, and so are the channels generating more than $10,000 in revenue per year, as it grew by 40% in one year! And this strong growth in the number of paid creators (they are more than 2 million in total) is not due to chance. The pandemic has helped, but it is above all the multiplication of sources of income that is beneficial here for creators.
A few years ago, advertising was the only way to monetize a channel. Today, 10 other sources are offered to youtubers. Super Chats and channel subscriptions are now helping to increase his revenue on the platform. ” Last year, YouTube channel subscriptions and paid digital products were purchased or renewed more than 110 million times », teaches us Susan Wojcicki.
There are also trends that help monetize content, such as the popularity of podcasts, which are increasingly popular on YouTube. ” We expect them to become part of the creator economy “, specifies the CEO. YouTube is also thinking about the future and how to evolve the connection between content creators and their fans. Google’s service thus reflects on opportunities, such as NFTs.
Shorts, a priority for YouTube
Launched in 2021, the Shorts are starting to convince users. This part of YouTube devoted to short videos (less than 60 seconds) has already generated 5 trillion views and is a priority for the platform, which wants to democratize this feature. This already allows you to create Shorts using audio from YouTube videos.
Thus, YouTube has Shorts to compete with TikTok, but the platform does not forget the video game either and always watches Twitch with a keen eye, with its Gaming part. ” In the first six months of 2021 alone, YouTube had over 800 billion views on gaming content, over 90 million hours of live streams and over 250 million uploads “, notes Susan Wojcicki. Inevitably, this gives ambitions, and YouTube promises to work to improve live events, for creators and spectators, but also to make them more visible on the platform. In line with what we said a few moments ago, YouTube wants to make it even easier to create Shorts gaming.
Dislikes won’t come back
At the beginning of November, we informed you of a historic switch on YouTube: the end of the “Dislike” button. Finally, let’s be precise: the button, in reality, has not disappeared, and it is still possible to click on it. However, its counter is simply no longer visible under videos from the viewer’s perspective. The creator always has access to it from YouTube Studio, his dashboard, to get an overall idea of the appreciation of his videos.
Susan Wojcicki explains that the deletion of the displayed number of “dislikes” will be maintained. She indicates that she understands that some regret this change, but that it is ultimately a good thing, since the number of spectators has not decreased and the number of targeted attacks has decreased. The negative meter was indeed a tool used to harass some creators.
YouTube wants to protect its community from certain abuses
” Tackling misinformation and other harmful content is a top priority “says the boss of YouTube. The platform has relied heavily in recent years on the machine learning (machine learning) to improve the detection of content that is hateful or leans towards misinformation. YouTube released, in the third quarter of 2021, its latest VVR (Purple View Rare), which consists of giving the percentage of views on YouTube resulting from content that violates the policies of the service.
YouTube indicates that this was 0.09 to 0.11% in Q3 2021. Out of 10,000 views, therefore, 9 to 11 came from content that violated the rules of the platform. Pointed out by dozens of fact-checking organizations, who are asking for more, YouTube has still reduced its rate by more than 70% since 2017.
The platform wants at all costs to keep this rate below 0.5%, and to achieve this, it will strive to reduce, in the recommendations, the content that is on the verge of exceeding its content policy.
A regulation that will evolve
A few days ago, MEPs voted in favor of the DSA, the Digital Services Act
, this future regulation which aims to fight against illegal content by making platforms responsible for their moderation. It must come into force by the end of 2023, and YouTube is obviously one of the services and platforms concerned.
YouTube intends to work with policy makers and comply with the text, but believes that it ” could have consequences for freedom of expression online “. Susan Wojcicki adds to commit with stakeholders to support a unified digital consumer protection framework across Member States that enables YouTube to best serve its users “.
Source: YouTube press release
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