It was my first vacation in 18 years, and a trip to Los Angeles to see an old girlfriend. As nice as it was to not travel to do work for a change, I could not visit LA without a trip to the YouTube Creator Space LA. The facility is the first, well, studio designed for use by YouTubers, or so I thought. Because of that impression, I expected to be treated like YouTube royalty.
Why?
Because while I don’t have millions of subscribers (because I didn’t buy any), and I’m not in a network, I have been a YouTube Partner since 2008, and on YouTube since April of 2006. Moreover, I have contributed video content to the site an average of over a video-and-a-half a day for each day of the over eight years I have been on YouTube. I’ve uploaded over 4,400 videos, and amassed over 59 million views. And I’ve played a starring role in several key moments in YouTube’s early history, most notably, the CNN / YouTube Democratic Debates, where I was invited by Steve Grove, who was YouTube’s News and Politics Editor at the time, to submit a sample video showing others how to ask a question of the presidential candidates using YouTube. Then, CNN’s Anderson Cooper presented my “coin question” to then Senator Joe Biden, where I said “what do the words ‘In God We Trust’ (on the back of the U.S. Quarter) mean to you?”
That led to several national appearances on CNN, two times where I’ve covered the Democratic National Convention, and the development of a solid reputation as a liberal video-blogger. Then, I expanded to embrace pop-culture, and take YouTube to the NFL Draft – something I’ve done each year between 2006 and present day, making more YouTube videos at the NFL Draft than any other single media outlet.
I’ve covered The Night Of 100 Stars, Comic Con San Diego, and International CES Las Vegas for the last five years in a row and more tech conferences than one can shake a stick at. And, in 2010, I created Zennie62Media integrating my Zennie62 YouTube Channel with my 80-blog-network. I’ve interviewed everyone from YouTube Founder Chad Hurley to William Shatner (twice), and broke so many political stories in Oakland, California that I’m a recognized member of the local media there.
With all of that, and more, I expected to just be able to drop my name and the minders of the YouTube Creator Space LA would greet me with smiles and open arms. But when I got there, what I received was more along the lines of “You don’t belong here,” and were it not for the intervention of YTCSLA staffer Andrew Fillmore, I would have left the building after just four minutes. The way the man at the front desk treated me was more akin to gum he found on his shoe that like a storied YouTube Partner. In all, it was crappy.
My original reason to visit the space wasn’t just for the act of touring it, but because I received an email letter inviting me to talk about the new “fan support” button that I’d installed on my channel. You can donate to my revenue base with the click of a button. The problem was the meeting was on a day I could not make, so I figured that it would not be a problem to stop by.
First, the dude at the desk told me that I needed to have over 10,000 subscribers; I told him I have over 28,000. I also said I have 59 million views. I then showed him the email I received, but it was as if he wasn’t even reading it. Finally, I asked if he actually bothered to look at my channel; he had not. In all, it was infuriating, and what made it even harder to deal with is the man was African American, like me, yet seemed to have as his objective giving me a hard way to go. It was crazy.
As I was trying to solve the riddle of the man’s weird behavior, another person came over to the desk, but said nothing; so I turned to him and asked for help, and the person who turned out to be Andrew Fillmore said “I’ll help you,” and had me fill out the guest kiosk. Meanwhile, others on the staff at the building came up, and one of them said “I’m sorry you had to deal with that. We get some weird people coming in here.” I said “I am weird! I started on YouTube before it was popular to be on.” After that, Andrew took me on a tour of the incredible 41,000 square-foot-space, but I could not get how I was initially treated out of my head.
I said to Andrew that YouTube needed a list of what I call it’s “Legacy Partners”: YouTubers who have been on since 2006 and partners between the start of the program and 2009, or just before YouTube started it’s really crazy growth spurt, and regularly contribute video, at least once a month, over that time. The problem is that YouTube has grown so fast, and is now so large, that it’s lost sight of who helped form its foundation. People like Smosh and Renetto, who was a major YouTube celebrity in 2007, have been overtaken by the show-vloggers who don’t focus on making video-commentary but more shows and comedy takes. YouTube History is divided into the pioneers, like Renetto, Phil De Franco and iJustine, second-generation vloggers like Jenna Marbles and Pew Die Pie, who came to YouTube in 2010, and the third generation, like Bethany Mota, who, even though she joined in 2009 when she was 14, only started growing her channel to its present state in 2012, and that was due to the emergence of YouTube Networks, in this case, Maker Studios.
In all of this, we’re forgotten, those who have been the classic contributors to YouTube. And while YouTube has not done anything to show they appreciate us sticking around, platforms like Yahoo and Facebook are going after the “top-tier” talent with more subscribers than the populations of many cities. (I’ve always found it weird that some YouTubers could have millions of subscribers and yet when I walked around and asked people if someone actually had heard of, say, Pew Die Pie, they not only said no, but looked at me like I was nuts. YouTube’s recent promotional push was more than necessary to create an illusion of celebrity to match the giant subscriber numbers these YouTubers had.)
Who will be left when the Pew Die Pies of the World go test the Facebook waters? Us. The Legacy Partners. The people YouTube currently looks down on, and who’s staffers treat like gum shoe. We remain. Ignored. Shunned. Yet plugging along and uploading videos. YouTube has to work on making us feel good. Take care of the home folks. The one’s who were there from the beginning and the ones who show the most loyalty, staying home and not considering other platforms.
It’s time for YouTube to create a Legacy Partner Program: an effort to reward it’s most loyal producers, and all to make sure we don’t stray away. Promote us. Feature us. Thank us. Invest in us. Take care of us YouTube.
Please?
Zennie Abraham | Zennie Abraham or “Zennie62” is the founder of Zennie62Media which consists of zennie62blog.com and a multimedia blog news aggregator and video network, and 78-blog network, with social media and content development services and consulting. Zennie is a pioneer video blogger, YouTube Partner, social media practitioner, game developer, and pundit. Note: news aggregator content does not reflect the personal views of Mr. Abraham.