Entries Tagged 'youtube' ↓

YouTube - Sarah Palin BOOED at hockey game.

I hate even linking back to youtube, but I’ll make an exception.

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When it comes to online communities, divide and conquer isn’t going to work. I find it surprising that people are just now finding out that YouTube doesn’t give a shit about content creators. They are handsomely profiting from mostly copyrighted clips that populate the site. Do you really think they give a shit about boring vlogs and people who are too sensitive to be on the internet?

Anyone who believes in Paul Robinette’s vision of a “troll free” vlogging site is an absolute idiot.

This is the same person:

• Who appeared in Blackface ripping off a poem from NPR in a video
• Orchestrated a fake harassment scandal with his wife
• Attempted a similar “exodus” with Livevideo only to call people who joined “traitors” a few weeks later.
• Who has stepped on many toes, big and small for the sake of worthless views.
• Who is egotistical and possibly unstable like most youtubers.

I have a two theories. Either this is a stunt to upset vloggers or he is trying to set up a half assed business.

After reading the mostly bad reviews on the site and knowing about the proposed “identity verification*”. I have no interest at all in joining such a site. If a website requires a “third party” for my private information to confirm my identity by a person like Renetto who can might use it for abusive reasons, I don’t want any part in it.

Vloggers who believed Paul Robinette’s bullshit failed to realize this fact: no matter how many safeguards provided, people will find a new way to talk shit about you online. If you can’t deal with that, you don’t belong on the internet. On other websites I had racial slurs & other types of harassment directed toward me. Did I raise a fit and alert the NAACP? Absolutely not? I simply never let it reach to a point where I am at “war” with someone.

Like a school yard bully, the more you agitate him or her, the more he or she will try to push your buttons. Vloggers need to either ignore trolls or use this thing called the “block” button. It is pretty effective on this blog and other places.

As for finding a new place to vlog, there are literally 100s of video hosting sites to go on. Tired of youtube? Why not try veoh, or metacafe, dailymotion or viddler (where I went)? While those sites may not get the audience of youtube, a respectable amount of people are watching videos. Someone will try find a way to harrass you (if you let them), but you won’t get a wave of stupid comments that popular youtube videos often get.

*Oh right before I put this up I learned that the provider that would have taken care of the verification process was given the banhammer by ning.com, the provider behind vloggerheads. Paul if you really wanted to make a site independent of youtube, YOU SHOULD HAVE USED YOUR OWN SERVER AND NOT SOMEONE ELSES!

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I happen to have an iphone and I’m starting to take a LOT of pictures lately.

So whatever I find I will share them with you.

For example here are some pictures taken over the past few months:

Graffiti at Mohawk Place, my favourite music venue in Buffalo.

Continue reading →

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Last month I did a comparison of two video streaming sites, BlogTV & Stickam. I noted that both sites had irritating characteristics. In particular BlogTV featured the ilk of youtube that I can not tolerate.

After I wrote the entry I got a message from BlogTV’s community manager, Kara. It was sent in early July, but I’ve been sitting on it for a while because I have been busy with school, banging women, drinking Blue Moons in Philadelphia and twitter. (all in that order)

Hello Leon,

I was reading the article you wrote about stickam vs blogTV and I wanted to speak to you about it.

I am the community manager here and while I know we are still in beta phase and have our problems, we really care about our broadcasters and about the future of this site.

Our dream is for this platform to inspire people to create ‘better than TV’ quality, live shows where people can come to be interactively entertained. I feel that stickam is, as you said, ‘a watering hole.’ It seems to be more designed for a person who wants to hang out with online buddies.

BlogTV on the other hand allows you to hang out while still providing more of a creative environment. We constantly create events and contest, games and performances for people to take part in. We have a music venue called BTVM (blogTV mainstange) where live music performances take place every week or so. We truly want blogTV to feel like a place where you can get lost for a few hours and be entertained on every page that you turn.

As for you thinking we don’t pay attention to the ‘little’ guy…this is not true. You have really caught our interest with the way you think and we would like to promote your show if you want. All you need to do is send me some high quality pics of yourself or something that represents you, plus a show name and times to community@blogtv.com and we will get a home page banner up for you. Then we can also mention you for new comer of the week on our weekly news show (Fri. 9pm EST username: weekly) and even in our monthly newsletter.

So, keep being honest and speaking your mind…you have something special.

Contact me any time,
Kara-Hannah
Community Manager
email: community@blogtv.com

I responded to blogtv with this:

While it would be very neat to be promoted, i’ll be honest and say this. (You want honesty :) ) I am a boring person when it comes to online streaming. I have absolutely nothing to offer to anyone in the arena of video entertainment. If YouTube, the MTV of online video sites, rejected me for partnership 4 times in a 3 month span, its probably for a damn good reason.

I do really appreciate that you took the time to hear me out in a message that isn’t a form letter. You don’t see that with YouTube or even other sites. Sorry it took me a very long time to respond. I’ll consider the featuring spot when I have the time to do so.

Still Stickam is my online streaming home (though UStream is starting to steal the spotlight and that’s another blog entry!)

Kara responded:

Hey Justin,

I definitely appreciate the honesty. I only want to you to do a show with us if you are interested in it yourself. This is not about partnership or stats necessarily, but just that we felt you had an intelligent and forthright point of view.

Keep enjoying yourself at stickam or ustream, but know that you are always welcome to come do a show with us whenever you want.

You can always reach me via message or at my email address community@blogtv.com

Keep it real,
Kara ;)

So there you have it. We should all give BlogTV a round of applause for hearing me out. You don’t get that with youtube (the only time they would have heard me out when I told them something was broken and not for my content). Look out for LeonWestbrook’s hour of unwarranted self importance coming to blogtv.com soon! (I remember, PrincessDiana161 thinking that was a awesome room name at PhillyTube. :) )

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