Top YouTube contributors can become partners

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The video-sharing Web site YouTube announced Thursday that the providers of some of its most popular user-generated content have been given the opportunity to become its financial partners -- and actually make money from their videos.
Between 20 and 40 users have been offered partnership agreements, the site said, similar to those YouTube has with professional content providers like CBS and NBC. The networks are paid a portion of the advertising revenue their material attracts.
The opportunities allow the site to recognize and reward the creativity of the YouTube community, Jamie Byrne, YouTube's product marketing director, told CNN.
"User-generated content has evolved from simple amateur video into high-quality work that is massing subscribers and creating user celebrities," he said.
YouTube said in a statement that because the users "have built and sustained large persistent audiences through the creation of engaging videos, their content has become attractive for advertisers, which has helped them earn the opportunity to participate on YouTube as a partner."
Partnership agreements were offered to users based on monthly viewer statistics and name recognition.
YouTube wouldn't disclose the details of the agreements, but said the content providers will be paid based on the number of times their videos are watched. The agreement doesn't prevent the filmmakers from posting videos on other Web sites.

My Comments

This article speaks about how YouTube has offerred a partnership deal to video contributors who have high viewership numbers. This is due to the fact that advertisers are showing more interest in these videos, as there is a higher possibility of them reaching out to their target audience.

YouTube has millions of videos on its site, ech of which has its own viewership. What started off as an humble idea to be able to share videos with people from all over the world has now become a money making juggernaught. With the increase in popularity, there was an increase inthe amount of investment being put into the site. Now, YouTube is actually offering the people who attract the most people to their videos to become financial partners. This shows how, with the internet, anything is posible (sorry for the cliche). People who are living in places like Estonia can now earn money using good quality videos that people watch, using a website founded by an American, funded by various international companies. This is globalisation at work right here.

With globalisatio, much of the world has become interlinked, much so the economic world. The economy of one coutry is largely reliant on another, as is that one on another. This leads to such an interlinked world that a small blip in the controls in one country, would lead to a major economic breakdown in the whole world. YouTube is an example of an organisation where there is a dependance on other organisations, probably not from America itself, to be able to survive.