YouTube loses its way again in Book Two

The algorithm was great. The year was 2017. YouTube got good again.

It was good at the very beginning. I was there. I remember Boh3m3 and Lonely Girl. I was there before Google bought it.

It was good during the Pandemic. And before the pandemic there was Vanlife. During the pandemic for me, was English Teachers in Taiwan becoming YouTubers.

Naturally, after the pandemic viewership was going to fall off. We got our lives back. But two other things happened that are either driving viewers away or will slowly erode YouTube viewership

The first is advertising and sponsorship. When a host breaks away in the middle of a video to plug, Emma Mattress or Nord VPN, I leave. Your transition is clumsy, not natural at all.

The second is the membership idea. It creates a two-tiered system where the paid subscribers get videos and the rest of us get the leftovers. This will erode a channel’s popularity simply because it discourages new viewers and punishes old viewers. If your plan as a YouTube creator is to make as much money as you can as the platform loses popularity, then maybe. That seems to be the strategy that investor owners of dying companies have used for years.