Tweet We’ve had a great couple of weeks over at Hacktivision! Of particular interest to our writers have been recent developments with YouTube as a cultural, legal and industrial entity. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve been talking about.
Posts Tagged ‘youtube’
Outsiders After Viral Video
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on January 27th, 2012
Tweet Originally posted at Hacktivision If YouTube’s massive overhaul – many years in the making – revealed anything, it was our deep investments in the transformative potential of web video. Many observers have criticized the company’s move as selling out, a way to streamline the site’s chaos for the benefit of advertisers. (What else is [...]
Posted in uncategorized 
Tags: gender, race, Video (Web/Mobile/Transmedia), web series, youtube 
No Comments »Can — And Should — YouTube Recreate TV?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on December 20th, 2011
Tweet Thanks to Chuck Tryon for linking! A redesign can make or break a website — remember Facebook before the News Feed? — or it can mean nothing at all. The consequences of YouTube’s latest redesign are unknown, but I view it with some ambivalence. I’m excited, but I have my reservations. Clearly I’m in the minority. [...]
Networks Killed Viral Video: Machinima and the Maturation of Web Video
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on August 9th, 2011
Tweet As if we needed any more proof the term “viral” was a relic of 2008, the team behind Machinima.com’s Bite Me gave us one more yesterday at their International Television Festival panel. The panel was called “Bite Me: How to Go Viral,” but in the first few minutes, Andy Shapiro, Machinima’s vice president of [...]
The Problem of YouTube: YouTubers vs. Web Series?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on February 11th, 2011
Tweet Full article at Flow TV PRELUDE: So I have an article out on Flow TV on the economic and ideological debate between web series producers and YouTubers. I wrote the piece in September after this debate, which sometimes comes back: YouTubers get views, but web series get quality, so which is better? In some [...]
YouTube and Next New Networks: A Real Web Video Market?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on December 20th, 2010
Tweet UPDATE: YouTube has bought Next New Networks for an estimated $50 million. ORIGINAL: As recapped in my weekly news roundup of the web video market, the New York Times shocked the web series world with a report that Google-owned YouTube was in talks to buy Next New Networks, an independent web video studio and [...]
How Did Xtranormal Become the Newest Viral Video Factory and Social Game?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on October 24th, 2010
Tweet UPDATE: For more information, check out my story on Tubefilter, which includes an interview with Xtranormal’s CTO. How do you make a viral video? Asking that question is kind of like asking how you make a half-court shot: unless you’re a pro, you can’t plan for it (and there are viral video pros). Still [...]
Camp 2.0, or YouTube’s Queer Identity
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on September 7th, 2010
Tweet So I have an article out this month in Communication, Culture and Critique! As is typical of academic publishing, I wrote the bulk of the article years ago, so if it reads very YouTube-circa-2007, that’s why. (I should also say I’ve more or less moved on from the theoretical concerns with identity and performance [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: academy, gay, research, Video (Web/Mobile/Transmedia), youtube 3 Comments »Is Hulu Winning the Web Video Wars?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on July 29th, 2010
Tweet Originally published at SpliceToday. Comment there! Let’s flashback — something I love to do — to 2007. Hulu was about to launch in private beta. The media world was talking about Viacom’s YouTube lawsuit and NBC’s decision to pull the rug out from under the video site. Media analysts satirized online video as a [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: advertising, distribution, mobile, TV, Video (Web/Mobile/Transmedia), youtube 4 Comments »The Past and Future Market for Web Comedy
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on July 20th, 2010
Tweet Comedy tops virtually every “best of the web” list. From the top web series, top viral hits and YouTube’s most subscribed. Internet video, in many ways, is comedy. While major television networks search for new comedy formulas — though we might be seeing more classical sitcoms a la Hot in Cleveland and Big Bang [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: comedy, Video (Web/Mobile/Transmedia), web series, youtube 7 Comments »
