YouTube and Hollywood, which have been circling each other for years, are finally getting together.

But instead of moving movies and TV shows to the world’s biggest Web site, they’re trying something different: Google is handing out more than $100 million to dozens of partners to create new “channels.”

The idea is to make “professional” content that advertisers will pay a premium to be near, instead of the grab bag of videos that dominate the site and that often sell at very low prices.

This isn’t news, of course: YouTube reps have been holding meetings and auditions for most of the year, led by former Netflix executive Robert Kyncl. And we’ve known about the deal terms, and many of the partners, for some time.

But now the site is finally talking about them publicly and promising that it will start unveiling some of the new programming next month. Some of the channels — each of which will have a couple hours of original programming per week — will feature people you’ve heard of, like Madonna, Jay-Z,  Ashton Kutcher and “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara.

But the channels aren’t all premised around the idea of celebrities and Hollywood per se — just the idea that someone with some idea of how to make good stuff will start making stuff specifically for the site.

For instance, BedRocket Properties, the video start-up backed by the Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer and run by cable TV veteran Brian Bedol, will do four channels, including a soccer-themed channel in conjunction with Major League Soccer, and an action sports channel produced along with Wasserman Media Group.

Another example: IGN, the videogame Web site being spun off by News Corp., will produce a game-themed channel along with the Shine Group, the TV production house recently purchased by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

It’s worth noting that some of the channels will be run by people who are well-versed in creating Web video — and video for YouTube in particular. Machinima, for instance, which also specializes in game-themed stuff, is already one of YouTube’s most prolific partners, and essentially runs a network within YouTube’s network.

Maker Studios, which is producing three channels, is another outfit that already specializes in YouTube. And Demand Media went public this year, in part because it had figured out the art of cranking out Web videos very, very, quickly, at very, very low prices.

YouTube may not be releasing all of the channels and partners today, perhaps because it doesn’t actually have all of its deals signed yet. And at least one partner told me that some of the mechanics of the deals, like control of ad sales, had yet to be worked out.

That’s hard to imagine, given the amount of time that YouTube has been at this. But it’s also hard to imagine why you’d announce a big consumer-focused deal at the end of a Friday. So, who knows.

We do know the general outlines of the deals, though: Google will advance most of the creators up to $5 million, and in return will get commitments to produce a couple hours of programming a week for the channel. Once the programmers have earned back their advance from YouTube, they’ll split ad revenue with the site. The programming will be exclusive to YouTube for at least the first year of the three-year deals.

What we don’t know is how this stuff will actually work: $5 million won’t go very far if the partners use traditional TV and film budgets, so many of the partners are going to have to supplement that money with investments of their own — and they’re going to have to work on a tighter budget. And just because there’s a bit of Hollywood shine associated with this stuff doesn’t mean that people will actually watch — or, most crucially, that advertisers will pay up.

Google may also try other methods to get high-end video stuff. The company made a stab at Hulu when that video site was on the block. And it has indicated that it’s interested in licensing some content in international markets, where it thinks it can get more bang for its buck.

Confession time.

A few months ago I found myself on a long flight with nothing to watch. I had already seen the many Hollywood blockbusters along with the documentaries and news specials that were being shown on-board. In a moment of weakness, I decided to watch the Justin Bieber documentary, Never Say Never. I thought Never Say Never was a live "concert" film mingled with some backstage footage of the teen heartthrob blow drying his hair, playing Xbox with Usher or clips of young girls professing their love to The Bieb. I put the word "concert" in quote marks earlier, because I wondered how much of the live footage would truly be live. I know nothing about Justin Bieber other than he was discovered on YouTube by his now-manager Scooter Braun. With over a decade of music industry experience, I've had my own fair share of interviewing these types of teen sensations. Many of them don't last more than five years in the music industry (and the majority of them flame out sooner). It's not cynicism. It's a matter of fact that the music industry (and mass populous) have a short attention span for this genre. Today's Justin Bieber is yesterday's New Kids On The Block (or Backstreet Boys... or...). And, there's always something new and different right around the corner.

Crying.

The movie captivated me. Justin is not only portrayed as a very smart and focused young man, he is a musician. A true musician. He cares about playing, writing and performing. Yes, the glitz is there and there are plenty of scenes with Bieber horsing around and clips of young girls professing their love to him, but it's a touching and personal story. A key figure in Bieber's success is his manager, Scooter Braun. After seeing some videos on YouTube, Scooter moved Justin and his mom from his home in Stratford, Ontario into a townhouse in Atlanta where they struggled to get Justin a record deal. It's a very touching and real story. In a few scenes I found myself holding back tears and in other scenes, the tears were flowing. Laugh all you want, but his story is both impressive and inspiring, it almost seems like it's impossible that it's a work of non-fiction.

This is where you come in.

Scooter Braun shared the stage with pro-skateboarder and entrepreneur, Tony Hawk, at this year's Google Zeitgeist event. During their panel discussion on music, entertainment and new media, the host, Sal Masekela (ESPN X Games) asked Scooter about his use of Social Media to build Justin's audience. Scooter re-iterated a key point from my recent Blog post on direct relationships (more on that here: What The Next Five Years Will Be About): when Justin was turned down by the music industry, it only fueled them more to use Social Media to create that direct and tangible relationship with the fans. Their strategy worked so well, that Justin, Scooter and the entire Bieber Fever crew truly do control the relationship between Justin and his fans. When further pressed about using Social Media as a marketing channel, Scooter said something that fascinated me:

"It's not marketing. It's real."

It's true and it's powerful and it's the number one reason why corporations are not all that successful with these platforms. Instead of using Social Media to be real, they're using it as another engine of advertising. I often say that Social Media is the most exciting form of marketing because it allows for real interactions between real human beings. It's so basic. Justin could just communicate and connect to his fans. He could (virtually) touch them, share with them, play with them, inform them and ask them. Scooter used five words to describe the new realities of business: those who think that they can simply advertise and not balance it out with being real (creating connections and developing direct relationships) are going to struggle - deeply - with loyalty and long term success. While Justin may have a long, hard fight ahead of him to prove his mettle in the music industry as something more than a teen sensation, brands could learn a lot from him and Scooter about the power of being real by creating real relationships.

Being "real" - it seems so basic and simple. Then again, we all know what they say about common sense... it's not all that common.




Tags:

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common sense

direct relationships

documentary

espn

google zeitgeist

justin bieber

live concert

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music industry

never say never

new kids on the block

online video

record deal

sal masekela

scooter braun

social media

tony hawk

usher

x games

xbox

youtube

Less than a year ago news leaked that Yahoo was planning to “sunset” the social bookmarking service Delicious. Then the company backtracked, saying it didn’t plan to shut Delicious down; a sale was its preferred option.

After a wobbly few months, the site was bought by AVOS, a new company formed by YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, who promised “to take on the challenge of building the best information-discovery service on the web.”

Now we get to see exactly what they mean. The new-look Delicious launched overnight.

So what do you get? Let’s take a look.

First up, signing up is easy. Although I was a long-time Delicious user, first joining back in 2005, I stopped using the service last year and defected to Pinboard.in, a great clone aimed at power users. In fact, when AVOS moved to the new Delicious, they actually deleted my original account. So I was able to use the service as if for the first time.

Once inside, there are some obvious visual changes. Everything has a slightly warmer, softer tone; gone are the sharp edges and minimalist presentations that made Delicious look like the work of an engineer.

Popular links are presented in a straightforward list, while groups of links (known as “stacks”) are pushed to users in a glossy format supported by photographs. It’s nice eye candy, but takes up a lot of screen space.

In terms of functionality? Well, it’s tempting to say that the new Delicious is a bit like Pepsi of old: “new look, same great taste”. But it’s probably more accurate to simply point out that the revamp is less than radical.

Most of the obvious changes are essentially updating the slightly dated lexicon of Delicious and bringing it in line with a more modern, social web context. For example, users can now add avatars — something that seems almost idiotically simple, but had never emerged with its previous, spartan approach.

Elsewhere, users now “follow” somebody instead of adding them to their network. And collections of links — which were previously known as bundles — have become “stacks”. These are described as playlists for the web, a signpost that AVOS wants to make Delicious more appealing to mainstream audiences.

In truth, however, none of this is a major departure from what Delicious already did, and it’s certainly not much of a departure from other link collecting or list-making tools such as Bitly.

In a blog post announcing the launch, AVOS admits that most of the work was behind the scenes, rather than in adding new elements to the site.

We realized that in order to keep innovating over the long term, the eight-year-old site needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. The result is a new homepage, interface and back-end architecture designed to make Delicious easier to use.

We’re proud of what we built, but the process has also brought the site “back to beta” as a work in progress.

But in doing so, it’s also managed to break some things that old-time users were used to. A string of my Twitter followers pointed out broken features. For example, existing users complain that their old bundles seem to have disappeared completely; there are lots of reports of problems with browser plug-ins, RSS feeds appear to have stopped working and some of the old pages aren’t working.

Still, these are early days. The product is essentially starting over again, and if users are prepared to accept that this is a beta then there is time — and trust — to rebuild.

Can new users be enticed? Will old users stick around? Even though the new Delicious looks juicier, it’s not clear whether the flavor it had has disappeared or been improved upon. Either way, it looks like the hard work is only just beginning.

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"What’s the difference between the new version of YouTube’s mobile Web site and the Apple-created YouTube application that is installed on every iPhone? The Web site is a lot better." So much for that native apps are better than web apps. I assume now there is no reason to complain about the locked-down app store if you can make web apps better than device apps.

YouTube Doubler mashup

Cricket lovers can now watch the Indian Premier League (IPL) live on internet portal YouTube. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) will partner with Google India to stream live matches of its domestic IPL league in the Twenty20 format.

Insanely hilarious. So wrong yet so damn funny. Try not laughing and you'll fail miserably.

Google has pulled a brilliant swerve, requesting to depose late night comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in their court case against Viacom.

Free online video converter. Convert and download videos from YouTube, Google Video or directly from .FLV file. Play it on your PC, Mobile, iPod, PSP and enjoy!

I just noticed that you needed to have videos in your account to remix them. Can't I borrow a few?

Frankly, the joke is on YouTube.