Guesswork

There’s been a lot of press this week about user-generated content, and how everybody is jumping on the bandwagon to get a piece of the thus far non-profitable action. Apparently the two weeks since Google acquired YouTube have been just long enough for several large companies to scare up a couple of power point presentations, a cheque, and a press release.

Carson Daly and NBC will be presenting the awkwardly titled “It’s Your Show TV”, which invites viewers to submit short videos based on specific guidelines or challenges. Each challenge winner will get $1000 and a chance at a $100,000 grand prize.

Similarly, Yahoo, embarrassed about not getting YouTube themselves, has announced a contest where budding Spielbergs can win $50, 000 and their own show produced by Yahoo Studios. Users can submit short videos between now and the end of November, and submissions will be aired online and judged by viewers and a panel of judges. A winner will be chosen in mid-December.

In a slightly different effort at cashing in on the UGC hullabaloo, the New York Times reports that talent agency United Talent is launching a division to locate and develop potential Web breakout artists. The initial investment is small – three 26 year old agents recently promoted from assistant – but it’s a first for any of the major Hollywood agents.

All three of these efforts, and the many more that will follow, will have their work cut out for them. There have been a couple of Web “talents” picked up by big media already, notably self-absorbed adolescent lip-syncher “Brookers”, and faux-adolescent hoaxtress “lonelygirl15”, but as yet it remains to be seen whether the kind of entertainment that can hold a teenage boy’s attention for 3 minutes on the internet is really worthy of significant investment. Just because a lot of people watch something, doesn’t mean that they’re willing to pay for it or even sit through an ad beforehand. The long-running family goofball show “America’s Funniest Home Videos” didn’t spawn a host of imitators, precisely because it was recognized that there is a limited audience for wedding bloopers and go-kart accidents. The same thing applies to the web – what constitutes genuine repeatable creativity, and what’s just a lucky one-off? Sorting the wheat from the chaff, even with the help of a willing jury of millions of web junkies, isn’t an easy task.

To put into perspective what’s really popular out there, consider the most watched videos on YouTube as I type this. Of the 20 clips on the first page, there are:

Of the latter, 1 is a 30 second clip of an old lady hitting a Mercedes with her purse which probably doesn’t merit a network deal. In short, most of what people are watching on YouTube is professionally created.

Revver, which actually uses an advertising model to generate a few dollars for itself and it’s contributors, has more genuine UGC but whether there’s a bigger market for what they’re doing is unclear . Of 16 clips on the “most viewed” page, I count:

OK, not exactly a scientific study. But what it looks like is that it’s the professional stuff that’s drawing the big audience (YouTube has way more viewers than Revver), not the kids in their bedrooms with a handycam. And most of the amateur content isn’t exactly advancing the art of story-telling.

So will the three minute video clip translate into something bigger than a pastime for bored web surfers? Part of the value of this kind of thing is the “long tail”; unlike television, they can keep attracting viewers, a few at a time, for months on end. The question is, how do you make money from a hundred eyeballs a day for 2 years?

Regardless, the contests should be fun to watch, and maybe they’ll find some real talent out there. For 50 grand I’ll make a tape of myself singing “Islands in the Stream” to my dog and hope for the best.

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