YouTube Community StructuresThis is a featured page

Knock your head off.
1. Users judge others' identity based on content.
- Videos that users associate with themselves are the videos that go viral.
2. Participation is necessary for community.
- A community with no contributors is a community with nothing to contribute.
3. Community is necessary for viral videos.
- In order for community to exist, users must have a form of identity.
4. Viral videos form communities.
- Elements from content unite/connectusers with similar characteristics(identities).
- Series of videos or YouTube channels can serve as community hubs.


Mission: convey the importance of community in spread of user-generated videos, and future role of community as it converges with traditional media.
    • User communities are as necessary as they are natural
      • Friends, favorites, channels, subscribers, comments and discussion catalyze popularity
      • Sense of connection, obligations to friends, communitues
    • Changes for traditional media
      • Role of "scouts" in finding, discovering new content
      • Creation of many niche communities, demograpgics
      • Maven users (influential users naturally spread messages with greater ease)
    • Users gain sense of participation, feedback
      • advantages: greater investment into medium (YouTube, internet streaming), increased ease of video frequency, videos accessible through other online mediums/networks
      • "response content" limitless, effective
    • Transitions/exchanges between top-down & bottom-up content
      • top-down content remixed, fed bottom-up
      • bottom-up content picked up, fed top-down
    • Popular users emerge as central nodes, develop surrounding communities
      • examples for video: spricket24, nalts, etc.


Community elements - all of these are driven through actions of other users.
  • Friends
  • Subscriptions
  • Subscribers
  • Responses
  • Rating
  • Favoriting
  • Comments
  • Flagging
  • Related videos
  • Tags
  • Description

Required structures - necessities for social circles to exist, share/promote/view videos
  • Presence, interaction of other registered users
  • through subscriptions/subscribers
  • through friends
  • Without links to other users (aka, videos uploaded anonymously), community does not exist

Additional structures - these elements give further depth to community (more advanced than simple community -- users interact w/ each other, not just associated)
  • Responses
  • Rating
  • Favoriting
  • Comments
  • Flagging
  • Related videos
  • Tags
  • Description

Popularity achieved through discussion, outside links, user ratings, number of subscribers and daily/monthly honors
  • Users routinely give thanks for helping boost
  • Likelihood to help with popularity a two-way street ("scratch my back, I scratch yours")
  • Weight of comment emphasized, more powerful if user has more friends, subscribers
  • Popularity drives from external communites
    • embedded videos
    • other mediascape sites linking (MySpace, Facebook, Digg, etc.)
    • "Featured" videos chosen by YouTube elite, not users

Community formation
  • Popular videos make for popular users
    • Factors for "good" vlogs/videos:
      • editing
      • clear presentation of ideas, messages
      • personality, humor, voice
  • Circle of users
    • Friend cliques form from outside of YouTube
      • circles extend to bring in new users, previously unconnected
    • Stand-out users in overlapping circles
      • More active through comments
      • More active in video creation, uploading, favoriting responding
      • The more instances a users name appears, the more opportunities for new user exposure
  • Connected through common interests
    • Tags
      • user-defined
    • Responses
      • user-controlled
    • Related videos
      • determined by YouTube mediation

Community maintenance
  • Users more likely to friend, subscribe to other influential users
    • Will subscribe to commercial content if user has invested interest
      • Commercial channels still allow for sense of community, via:
        • comments
        • list of subscribers
        • list of favorited videos
    • Stagnant users (lacking video updates, mutual comment exchanges) likely to be "unsubscribed," "defriended"
      • Question: How often must users interact with others on daily basis? Monthly?
      • Users with popular videos need not directly interact (i.e. commenting) to others to maintain friends, subscribers

Community influence
  • Other sites, mediums employing YouTube community (among others) as model
    • Hulu.com
      • Elements YouTube does not have: Hulu users may pinpoint, highlight certain clips in videos to send to others, emphasize
    • Major networks (nbc.com, cbs.com, abc.com) allowing for community interactivity stemming from television show interest
      • User-defined wikis



nicklon
nicklon
Latest page update: made by nicklon , Apr 8 2008, 2:45 PM EDT (about this update About This Update nicklon Edited by nicklon

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Started By Thread Subject Replies Last Post
smileever How to create Youtube community? 0 Jul 22 2009, 8:34 AM EDT by smileever
Thread started: Jul 22 2009, 8:34 AM EDT  Watch
Hi Guys,

I like to create youtube community for my official work. Can anyone help me guide me on creating youtube community? Any help is been appreciated.
Thanks
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