 Yeah, I think Tech Talks. I'm Jay Fidel and this is Think Tech Hawaii. We talk about YouTube. We're going to talk to some that's been out of time, some of the many secrets of YouTube, who are exciting. And Fatih Yannick, who is a student at the Academy of Creative Media at UH Minoa, is going to tell us about some of those things on YouTube. Welcome to the show, Fatih. Hello. That's it. Hello. Give me more. Thank you for inviting me to this show. I'm excited to talk about YouTube. Yeah. Well, we want to make you a star. I'll put you on MSNBC soon. Okay, YouTube. What is YouTube and what should somebody who doesn't know anything about YouTube know about YouTube? So, YouTube's banner used to be broadcast yourself for a long time. They removed it now. But that's basically the idea with YouTube. It's a video platform where anyone can upload anything basically, almost anything. That's the beauty of YouTube. And that's also sometimes the curse of YouTube. Because when anyone has the ability to upload, sometimes the wrong things get uploaded. But in general, I like YouTube a lot and the new generation, I would say, are watching YouTube more than they watch traditional TV and traditional media. Yeah, actually, I'm writing a little piece, a little stories of Think Tech blog about YouTube in the sense that if you have, for example, a Samsung smart TV and you go on to the smart TV mode of the TV, and you will see a YouTube icon there. You can go directly to YouTube from your smart TV. I always wondered when they were going to do that. It's like a blessing, because it means that Think Tech can put, we don't have to put it there. It's already there. All its content on a smart TV. And you can have your big TV. You can watch it. Great video, great sound. It's better than a 17-inch monitor for sure. And you can sign up as you want Think Tech in your profile and your selected sources. And so you can watch it all day long and see all our stuff. And it's impressive. And I hadn't noticed that until a few months ago, and now to your point, you know, I watch a lot of Think Tech on my smart TV and I watch a lot of YouTube on my smart TV, because it has some very good stuff and here's the thing. It's got an algorithm that knows what I want. It knows my interests. And so it presents things to me. For example, I like opera. So it's presenting opera from all over the world to me. Because it knows I like opera. So what I'm saying is to your point that Think Tech is bigger, that is, Think Tech on YouTube is bigger and better, and YouTube is huge. It's global now. And it's all within the last, what, year? Maybe? Maybe two years? I would say it's been growing really fast for, since Google acquired YouTube in 2008, but especially the past 10 years, I would say it's been growing really fast. And I think it's going to grow like even more exponentially in the next 10 years. Because right now, even right now, there's people in the world, there's countries in the world, where people are still slowly getting access to internet. So when they get access to internet, where do they go? They usually go either Facebook, YouTube, like they land on one of those big websites. So their user base is constantly increasing. They're getting more and more monthly active users. And that's very interesting for the future of YouTube. And you mentioned the algorithm of YouTube, which is, I think, their main technology behind what makes everything work. So for the creator side, you can just put out something on YouTube, and then you don't have to promote it. If it's good enough, it will reach the audience that it needs to reach. If I put out a video on YouTube about American football, that video will be recommended to people who watch American football videos. So I don't have to do all the promoting the marketing myself. And the same way for the audience, let's say you like watching American history, you will get recommended those types of videos. And that'll keep you more and more on the website. And that's how YouTube makes money. That's also how the creators make money. There's a ad split on YouTube. It's 55, 45. So each creator, after getting monetized, they get 55%. I could be wrong on this, but it's like 45 or 55% goes to the creator, and then the rest goes to YouTube. So that's pretty extraordinary considering that Facebook video does not have ad revenue splits. TikTok does not have ad revenue splits. Twitter does not have ad revenue splits. So what happens is that since YouTube is so generous with their ad revenue splits, all the people that are creating the best content out there and trying to make a business out of it, or even just make money so that they could make those videos better, they're always going to YouTube. So that gives them a huge advantage in this space. So in the future, if other platforms do ad revenue split, they could be competitors. But right now, I don't see a competitor to YouTube, honestly, because all the eyeballs are there. If you want to have a long form video on the internet, that's the place to go. Yeah, movies. You can find full-length movies, either cheap or free. And yes, they have ads, but the ads are short. And after three or four seconds, you can click out, and they can skip the ad. It's a lot less filled with ads than MSNBC or CNN on cable. It is easier to watch for that reason. You don't have to sit around and wait or turn off the sound while they cover you with ads. But how does it compare with Vimeo? We have Vimeo also. We're on Vimeo. All our shows are on Vimeo. Vimeo is kind of considered more of an art form. Maybe YouTube is taking over in that. I don't know. An art form and people who make artistic product, artistic content, I think, like Vimeo. But what's one of the considerations about choosing Vimeo or YouTube or both? I would say both from the audience perspective and the creator's perspective, one of the biggest considerations is, are you going to be able to find either the audience or are you going to be able to find the content? And when it comes to that, right now, there's nothing that can beat YouTube. Because if you look at you could look at the statistics on how many hours of footage is uploaded to Vimeo every minute and compare that to YouTube. I can assure you it's going to be hundreds of thousands of times more on YouTube. So that's one thing. And before people used to say Vimeo is going to compete with YouTube. Vimeo is going to go over YouTube. But I don't see that happening. Right now, Vimeo has become kind of like artists slash filmmakers place where people put their films there. And that's sometimes they get noticed by producers, whatever. But I don't see them having the same amount of eyeballs. And that also has a lot to do with Google acquiring YouTube in 2008. Since Google acquired YouTube, when you search something up on Google, you sometimes get YouTube results, even when you search on Google. So that's a huge advantage that YouTube has in terms of how much clicks they're getting, since they're affiliated with Google. So I don't see Vimeo competing. Interesting. So what are the downsides? What are the downsides of YouTube? I mean, it's a huge organization. Google is so big and powerful. Google, whoa, they do what they want. And they have control of the marketplace more and more. Everybody says that they have all the data on all of us individually, more than Facebook or Twitter or anybody. They're really overpowering. What are the downsides of YouTube? There must be some simply because they can't really be sensitive to us individually. And maybe they're going to be once in a while, a little bit heavy. So I would say the blessing that anyone can upload to YouTube is also kind of like a curse, because since anyone can upload, that means that there are some people on YouTube that are trying to take advantage of young, impressionable kids. This is termed as the nine-year-old army sometimes. And there's a lot of YouTubers whose job is to fool people into thinking something happened in the video, but it really didn't. Or there's something called clickbaiting, for example. You could put something in the thumbnail and title of the video that doesn't actually happen in the video. And you could make money from that. So things like these make it since there's no rules. It's not like traditional media. A lot of things like scams and things like that can happen. There was CSGO players promoting illegal betting websites on YouTube. T-Martin was one of the main examples. There was ISIS videos on YouTube. Yes, it's good that anyone can upload and anyone can broadcast themselves, but at the same time, that leaves you very vulnerable. What are you going to do if an ISIS member uploads a beheading? It's really hard to monitor that. Since a lot of kids are on YouTube and kids are more impressionable than adults, I would say on average, that leaves them to being scammed and things like that. That's scary. Are they monitoring the content? That's a big issue for Facebook. It's certainly an issue for Twitter, although Twitter is failing. Is it an issue for YouTube? Is YouTube out there monitoring? I know that they have technology that will spot the audio. If you're doing a copyright violation with the audio, they'll spot you in seconds. I'm not sure that they have the same kind of technology for the video. I'm not sure that they're actually monitoring the video to avoid, for example, violence, beheadings, and the like, things that are really inappropriate for kids and adults, too. So, query, are they doing that? Because they have the power. They have the technology. They have the people. They are huge. Yeah. I think they are doing that. It could be debated. It's arguable how efficient they are at doing that, but they are doing that. Also, they have a system where there are certain keywords that, if you say those keywords, your video gets demonetized, which makes it so that a lot of YouTubers try not to curse and try not to touch on sensitive subjects in their videos, because they don't want to get monetized. So, that's how people self-censor themselves, because they don't want to get demonetized by YouTube, because that's how they make money. So, that's one of the big things. Also, they have a reporting system where you could report they have terms of service, and there's certain things that you cannot show. So, that exists as well. And also, there's something called YouTube Kids, I think, which is something that they created specifically for kids. So, on YouTube Kids, they only have kid contents, like for kids, children content, and they don't have content that has advertisements in it. They don't have content that children might be affected by, like nothing scary, nothing like that you wouldn't see on TV. So, they really care about YouTube Kids, because that's a huge revenue for them. I would say children and teens and kids watch YouTube way more than adults, because they just got more free time. Everyone's seen that one kid with the huge iPad. They're just glued to it, and half the time it's YouTube. Is that healthy? I think it's not, but sometimes I think adults are too critical of kids, but they're doing the same thing. It's not healthy, but they're taking us as examples. So, if I'm going on TikTok for two hours a day, and if I had a kid, and he was on YouTube for two hours a day, I don't think it's, I think it's kind of hypocritical that we are judging them so much, because we are also on our phones all the time. So, there should be like a balancing act in my opinion, but it definitely should be monitored for kids, because they don't know what they're clicking on. So, we talked a little about the economics of the split and all that, and everybody knows that Elon Musk is trying to get $8 a month for certified accounts. What's the future do you think for YouTube? They have such a valuable asset, such a valuable position in the marketplace. They can charge, they don't charge now, just give you these short ads, and that's not all the time. I wonder if you think in the future we're going to see a different monetary program from them. I think the main reason that YouTube makes so much ad revenue and that they have so many eyeballs is because they've made that platform really, really good for creators. So, even if a creator goes viral on Twitter or TikTok or Instagram, whatever, they always end up at YouTube. You could see that in a lot of creators' careers, they go to YouTube, because YouTube makes it so good for the creators that they just, after a certain point of time, they just end up there. I think in the future, what they're trying to do is get more and more market share, and in the past they've tried to rival and fight with companies like Netflix by putting out long term TV show series, but that didn't work out. They killed it, because there could be many reasons, but YouTube audience doesn't like it, and they came out with YouTube premium. I don't know how recent this was, but basically you could pay like $15 per month, and then you don't get ads on YouTube, and then your video can play while your screen is off. Let's say your phone screen is off, it could still play, and it also goes for YouTube music. They made a bundle. I think they're going to create more subscriptions that add maybe certain features, but I think their main goal is to make it good for the creators. So, I don't see them doing something that will affect the creators very badly, but they're always trying to do the balancing act between advertisers and creators. Like if they do everything that the advertisers want, the creators are going to have a nightmare, because there's going to be so much censorship, there's going to be so much control, they want the freedom, and if they do everything that the creators want, then the advertisers are just going to pull out of the platform. So, they're trying to always have a balancing act, and I think they are getting better at it, so I see them in the future. Right now, the comments section is a big problem. They have a lot of spamming problems, and it looks like they're tackling that right now. I just see them in the future just getting bigger and bigger because Google owns YouTube, and YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. So, a lot of people, if they want to learn something, if they want to see something, what do you do? You just go on YouTube and you search on YouTube, right? So, that's the automatic instinct for a lot of people. So, if that's the case, I don't see them ever going down. Yeah, so they might stay the same way and maybe play with the split a little bit and do that balancing act you're talking about, but hopefully they won't start charging us because we would pay. We would pay. You know, just, you know, yours would pay, wouldn't they? I think for YouTube, I don't think people would pay to watch YouTube because that's the whole point. That's why they're getting so many hits because it's free. Anyone can watch anything, and the fact that it's free makes it so that you can go viral on YouTube. That's the beauty. So, I don't see as a platform, I don't see them making it a paid platform, but as I said, YouTube premium, things like that, if they add features, extra things, they might charge for those, I think. But I don't think YouTube would survive if they made it pay to watch because there's so many other platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus. They have like professional filmmakers and directors and editors working on their stuff and making it like really good, but they're paid sites. So, all the people that don't want to pay for entertainment go to YouTube. So, then if they, that's why they have so many eyeballs. So, if they do that, I don't see them doing that because then they would lose all those eyeballs that they have that they're making money from. Right now, Netflix is doing it ad supported. Another plan that's cheaper, but it has ads. So, if anything, the companies might go the other way where they're putting more ads and then, or doing plans with ads and then charging less because in so many businesses, it's really hard to create a subscription model that can increase your, that can have, that can house like 80% of your revenue. Subscription models usually tend to 20% of revenue for a lot of businesses. So, on the internet, you get money basically, like most of the money is made from advertisement. And since Google is the best at advertising on the internet, I think they want people to go there because they want, they're going to keep it free, I think, because they want people to go there because they make money and they make the most amount of money from advertisements. You know, and you give me the impression that Google is the, and YouTube, they're the leaders on this sort of thing and they're setting the standards. And so, anybody who wants to create a subscription is really in danger of losing eyeballs, you know, when compared with Google. And for example, I think of Amazon. I'm not sure if Amazon is in the, you know, the bundle of products you're talking about. But Amazon, you know, you pay to join Amazon, you pay to become a member, a prime member, what have you in Amazon. And then on top of that, you have to pay for the bloody movies. And, you know, that's enough to irritate you, but it's the other direction completely, isn't it? Is that sustainable? Won't they have to come around and stop doing that and rely on ads or some other model instead of charging you for each movie? So Amazon has this thing where, like, they try to have all the movies on there, but only some of them are included with the Prime subscription. So they're making probably a cut of each movie that you watch or buy from Amazon. It is annoying, but sometimes it's a lot of the times it's cheaper, let's say it's on Hulu or whatever. You don't want to buy Hulu and you just want to watch that one movie and you're paying like $3. I think that's a good business plan. But Amazon, for example, recently spent like half a billion dollars on their Lord of the Rings series. And they also spent so much money on buying Thursday Night football to stream Thursday Night football exclusively. I think right now they might be at a point where they're subsidizing their Prime video from their other businesses. That's what they have done for a long time with Twitch, which is their live stream platform. And now they're trying to get Twitch to be more profitable. And I think Amazon's model could work because you know everyone has their credit cards signed in on the account. And if you want to watch a movie that's not on Netflix, just go click on Amazon. It's like $3. They get you to pay because it's just like a convenience thing. And then Amazon makes a cut off that movie and that's how they make their money. But I haven't seen any advertisements on Amazon, but they have also a free model, which doesn't have Prime Video. But you could still use Amazon and buy stuff with their free non-subscription models. Yeah, it's linked up. So going back to YouTube for a moment, it's very appealing to have all this content for free. It's very appealing for the creator to have a global market. My understanding is that YouTube is everywhere. And there are smartphones everywhere in the world and therefore there is YouTube at no charge everywhere in the world. And the reach is just enormous. And the question I put to you, and it's a complicated question. I hope we have a little time for it, is the creator, how can the creator maximize the eyeballs and views in those circumstances? Because although YouTube can give you a certain amount of reach by virtue of its algorithms and its way of extending the content globally, there are steps you can take, too, as the creator to make sure that it goes as far as it can. And part of my question is also, is this something that YouTube wants? Is this something that YouTube encourages? Is this something that YouTube is building new functionality around to enable you to get millions of views? So right now, I want to give an example from the most subscribed channel on the YouTube. I don't know if you have heard of him, but his name is MrBeast. So he created the system where he has a company and then his company dubs YouTube videos from English or like whatever language, so other languages. So for example, he made this one video in English, let's say it has 50 million views. He makes the dubbed version, his company makes the dubbed version in Russian, in Spanish, in Arabic, and then he has a Spanish MrBeast channel and then Russian MrBeast channel, and he uses professional dub recorders and sound performance, and he dubs all of them and uploads them. And now those channels, some of the videos he has more views than his original English videos. So that's really interesting that he created that company. So now I think a lot of YouTubers will either work with that company, big YouTubers, because big YouTubers have a library of viral content that they would like to make more money out of by dubbing to another language. So I think a lot of people will either use that model, make it in-house and do more work, but get it like more profitable, or they will just use his company, like partner up with his company and do it that way. And I think in the future, we're going to see more and more YouTube videos dubbed to other languages, just like we see movies, just like we see books translated. That's this, I think the same thing is going to happen with YouTube, but YouTube is so new, I think it's right now, kind of like the Wild West, but it's forming, like there are certain formulas that are happening that are taking place that I think it's going to be way more stable and it's going to catch up to traditional media in a lot of ways. Yeah, that's interesting, because if you're talking about global reach, if you have multiple languages on there, by definition, you reach globally. And of course, you have to make a deal with him, right? You have to agree that he will translate your stuff, dub your stuff, and that he will put it under what, his name or his channel. How does that work? So his company basically, you pay him to dub your videos, and then let's say you have a J Fidel channel in English, you create another channel, J Fidel Espanyol, and then you pay him to dub your videos in your main channel, and then you upload those dubbed videos to your channel in Spanish. So he makes money by dubbing your video, because he has a system where people are working on it. Would you do that if you were me? Or would you just put them all on the same channel and have a little button that changes the language? How would you change the language with the little button? I don't know. I don't know if you can. In other words, we have a show, let's say it's this show, okay? And it's up on YouTube, and we translate it into Arabic. And I have a little button somewhere, or link, maybe in the description, you know, under the YouTube description, you want to watch this in Arabic, click the button, and it calls up another link, which is the same show in Arabic. I think that would be not very efficient, because someone who doesn't know English and wants to watch the video in Arabic might have a hard time going to the English channel, and then clicking on the link that says, if you want to watch this in Arabic, click here, because they're not going to be on the main channel in the English channel in the first place if they don't know English. So I would say creating another challenge could work. But here's the thing. There are some types of content, like let's say traveling, it's like universal. Like when you travel, everyone understands what's happening, or food, for example, it's universal. But if you talk about the state of the US Treasury market or the stock market, that might not be interesting to people outside who are not going to be able to invest in it. If we talk about something that's like about Hawaiian politics, other people might not be interested in. So I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone to increase their reach. But I think a lot of channels that have a wide audience that have topics that are broad enough so that anyone can understand what's happening, and anyone can be interested, I think it's going to work for those channels the most rather than channels that have very specific topics. Okay, so you have two separate channels, or maybe a half a dozen of them, in language, as you think, will reach the greatest number of people interested in your stuff. That means you have to market all those channels to those communities. So I have to market to the Spaniards and the French and the Germans and what have you in order to get them to see what I'm doing and click on my videos. So I have to go to some effort to put it out there to various language communities. How do I do that? So I think that's one of the things with the YouTube algorithm. YouTube algorithm brings people to where they want. If your thumbnail is good enough, if the content is good, if the average view duration is high, they will just market that, the algorithm will market that itself, because it will pop up on people's home screen. If it has a certain average view duration, it has the click-through rate high enough, it'll just pop up. And when you create the new channel, let's say J. Fidel Espanyol, for example, you could make it so that that channel's country is Spain or Mexico or whatever. And then the people in that country will be recommended that video. Okay. So we're about done. We're almost out of time. I wanted to ask you one other thing. If you were talking to a group of, say, our viewers and you wanted to leave a message with them about where YouTube fits in their future, fits in their lives, how they should see YouTube as a part of their entertainment and education, you've referred to both in this conversation. What message would you leave with them now? I would say enjoy YouTube, but be very careful, because the blessing of YouTube is that anyone can upload to YouTube. And the curse of YouTube is that anyone can upload to YouTube. You started with that and you ended with that. Okay. That's a pretty strong message. Fatih Yannick, a student at the Academy of Creative Media at UH Manoa, and also associated as an advisor, a consultant with Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you so much, Fatih. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.