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YouTube to have guest editors

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YouTube has announced that they will be opening the editorial control of their homepage to one user for a few days each month. All you have to do to be considered is send them a list of 10 videos that you like and would want to be featured on the site’s homepage.

Being featured on YouTube’s homepage means 100,000s views for each video placed there, and can mean instant YouTube stardom.

It’s an exciting move by the company and an excellent way to respond to concerns that the site is being taken over by the interests of advertisers.

It is definitely an interesting first step, and one that has Marshall Kirkpatrick wondering if YouTube will ultimately go the Netscape route:

With all the Google money behind them, you have to wonder what it would look like if YouTube employed a NetScape 2.0 type strategy and paid a small crew of regular user/editors to dig up the best videos on the site and facilitate community around them.

Here’s the relevant portion of the announcement on YouTube:

We’re opening up the programming of our home page to guest editors. We’ll pick one user a month to take over for a few days. All you’ll have to do is send us 10 videos you’d like to place on home (make sure they adhere to the terms of service!) along with a short video about why you chose what you did and how you found the experience. If you’re interested in participating, please let me know.

Originally posted on January 12, 2007 @ 1:37 pm

Comments

  1. The natural extension to this will be celebrity guest editors around specific events. Bono or Kanye West edit the music community around Grammys or Bill Clinton editing politics community around an election.

  5. MagneticPortal is on the case. We are accepting postings of only the best material from all open source sites.

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    Site development is nearing launch, so I suggest that if your interested in being a human filter for the most attractive place on the net, sign up now.

    Neil

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