I first wrote about this back when the Lovelygirl13 event unfolded on YouTube. If you didn’t follow the story, and hopefully most of you didn’t, it was a marketing ploy put on by a couple guys who probably have dollar signs in their contact lenses. The cast was a girl who always looked… well… lonely. She led her fan base through a journey of her life via YouTube only to watch them fall flat on their faces when it was discovered that it was all a fake.
It was at this point that I became confident YouTube was beginning its downward spiral. It’s a shame too because YouTube has been an excellent resource for a lot of research that I’ve done on various issues. I’ve found myself sifting through countless user submitted videos and vlogs thanks to community known as YouTube and at the time it was getting better and better by the day. Unfortunately, money is involved and where there is money there is also evil.
Yes, Lonelygirl13 was the beginning of the end of YouTube I’m afraid. Now that Google owns YouTube it’s a guarantee that the community will be squeezed for every penny possible, and then some. Not only that, but corporate America is trying to sneak in with little or no care for the community they are damaging.
Take for example the latest attempt at tapping into the high profile community for profit. It turns out Wendy’s wants a piece of the pie. That’s right folks, an ad agency acting on behalf of Wendy’s has launched a couple of vlog posts on YouTube that is a user video look-a-like and does nothing short of advertise Wendy’s products.
You can see the ad spots, along with a good post on the Wendy’s scheme here.
If any of you cherish the community that was built with the launch of YouTube, you might want to start writing Google and YouTube demanding a cut back on YouTube spam. Otherwise we may just see YouTube slowly go the way of the buffalo.
And who wants to see that?
