YouTube Stars!

Recently, K80blog made a video discussing the state of the vlogging community on YouTube. She said that YouTube has become a bit boring and has lost it's edge. People seem to be playing it safe and not taking risks. Katie said that she came here to express her opinions, stay honest and to make the most of her channel. She challenged the community to keep YouTube interesting. So far, there have been 75 Response Videos to her vid. Here is her video. After that, there are two response videos and then a video from a new and interesting vlogger!




Paperlilies remembers the earlier days of YouTube when it was interesting to watch people talk honestly about their real lives. She agrees that YouTube has become dull and that people are less honest. In her case, Bryony has to limit what she can say due to deals she is considering as a result of her previously honest and popular videos.




Tlg847 is always good at providing perspective on YouTube issues and larger cultural trends as well. Here, Tom talks about horse racing and how the sport has become "big event" motivated. People are drawn to spectacle. But the mundane was once interesting on YouTube as people were newly able to peek into lives of ordinary people. He finishes by observing that poets have always been able to make something special of the mundane - and reads a poem to illustrate his point.




YouTube has only been around for a couple of years. Some people have already made interesting and entertaining videos that have created a following. They have many subscribers, and may have also used their YouTube success in other mediums such as TV and Music and the Arts. Stevie Ryan (LittleLoca) hosted a TV show, HotForWords has been on Bill O'Reilly's show (and will be on it again soon!), Esmee Denters was signed by Justin Timberlake's company, Paperlilies has sold paintings on eBay.

But for every person who has already "been there, done that" on YouTube, there is someone new, just starting out, just becoming popular. One such person is JustStirCrazy. Audra is 24 and lives on the West Coast. She has had some real life drama; she was in the military and survived a bomb blast in Iraq. She also has an equally attractive twin sister named Dael Anne who has been in a few of her vids. Audra has fiery red hair and a personality to match. She says what is on her mind, and people love to listen because her rants are often poetic! Check out this rant/poem and also, don't miss this other rant and this honest expression of 5 things Audra hates.

Labels: audra, dael, juststircrazy, k80blog, Paperlilies, tlg847

posted by KennyCrane at 5/18/2008 10:45:00 PM 0 Comments

Here's four interesting videos from four YouTube guys. We'll see two music videos - one is a cover of a classic Sinatra song and the other is an original song about YouTube Stars! Then we'll hear from two of the "wise men" of YouTube as they talk about violence and morality in the online age.

First, some news! Our new widgets site, www.MyYTStats.com, is doing very well! The beautiful and talented juggler/comedian of YouTube, OlgaKay, just added our widget to her Homepage and her Blog. Go see! And get the Total Video Views widget for YOUR website too!

Marina - HotForWords (my new friend, see this post) - was on The O'Reilly Factor with Bill O'Reilly last Monday night! They talked about the origin of five words that Bill likes to use on his show. I was very happy to hear him mention how many Total Video Views Marina has received on YouTube! He got that data from our Total Video Views widget, which appears front and center on the www.HotForWords.com website. Excellent appearance, Marina! And thanks, Bill O'Reilly for indirectly promoting our Total Video Views widget!

Did you notice that last week, our friend VenetianPrincess debuted at number 56 on the Top 100 Weekly Chart? WOW, that's amazing! Jodie went from just over 27 thousand subscribers on 4/6 to over 43 thousand on 4/13! (See her chart, here) She has been getting good press coverage in newspapers and on TV, and her latest parody vid about Hillary Clinton - Hillary, Be My Best Friend - has over 800 thousand views in its first 10 days. Congrats on your success, Jodie!

Here are two contests you should check out. The first is the Colgate Max Fresh Contest on MySpaceTV that Jennifer Newberry is in. Click here and vote for Jennifer! The second is the TotalPopStar contest with YouTube ladies Krista Nicole (KristaHeartzuz), Jessica Sanchez (JSanchezFan) and Rebecca Shearing (bexboop878) all in the Finals. Click here for more info!

Now, on with the show!


Smooth crooner Daniel Bonaire performs a great cover of a song originally done by Frank Sinatra. Daniel sings the song to his favorite female YouTubeStars. He includes pics of the ladies in his video. I'll be sure to mention some of them and their videos in future posts here on YouTubeStars! If you enjoy this song by Daniel, go watch his other music videos. He has 11 so far and they're all very good!




YouTube comedian nerimon has made a parody music video with his own lyrics sung to the "Rock Star" melody from Nickleback. He sings, I'll be a YouTubeStar!" Well, now he is an official YouTubeStar, he's in our blog. :) Check out this popular video with almost 40 thousand views in its first week and a half.




PeriUrban has replied to another video that was about the Florida teens who jumped one of their teen girl friends, on his urbanblog channel. His point is that every generation thinks the younger generation is behaving badly compared to how their own generation used to be. But that's not true, and we shouldn't look back - Peri believes we should act charitably while working to create a better future. Peri and friends are working on a new site where people can express themselves in a responsible way. Let's see what they come up with!




Tom, tlg847, responded to the same video that Peri responded to. His thought is that our perspective is limited, we only see certain things at certain times. We don't realize that the world is actually getting more civilized over time. Despite the shocking headlines we see everyday, we are actually living in the safest most civilized moment in history. He references a talk by the brilliant Harvard Evolutionary Psycologist Steven Pinker, watch that video too!

Labels: danielbonairemusic, hotforwords, nerimon, olgakay, PeriUrban, tlg847, urbanblog, VenetianPrincess, widget

posted by KennyCrane at 4/18/2008 02:05:00 PM 1 Comments

One of the best things about YouTube is that people who watch a video can respond to it in the comments and by a video response. This creates a conversation about the subject matter of the video. Often, the comment section adds so much to the understanding of an issue because a YouTuber can see different sides of the issue - different points of view. As long as people express their thoughts in a respectful way, this is a good thing! When commenters just spew hate in order to get a rise out of the video poster and the comment readers, it is best to ignore the commenter since they often leave these kinds of comments just to get attention - be it positive or negative. The human drive for social interaction is very strong, and YouTube can fulfill that need to some degree. Let's continue to do what we can to make YouTube a constructive community where it is possible to have an overall positive experience.

Here are four videos about interaction on YouTube. The first is a short bio from one of our favorite singers, in which she also discusses commenters. Next, we'll hear from one of the "wise men" of YouTube on the topic of what to do when certain people threaten others online. Then, we'll see a response video on the same topic, from a member of the former eNation. Finally, we'll have a look at a controversial video and the lively and heartfelt discussion that ensued in it's comments.

First, some news! I recently heard from Marina of the HotForWords channel about the importance of the "Total Video Views" stat. Apparently, people who want to get an idea of how well you're doing on YouTube are interested in knowing how many views all of your videos together have received. It seems that YouTube does not publish this piece of information anywhere. Marina asked if I could find that number for her. I created a widget that anyone can put on any of their websites (MySpace, Facebook, their own personal sites) which simply provides a YouTuber's Total Video Views number in text form. HotForWords is already using the widget on her website. The widget can be styled just like any other text - change the font, font size, colors - to whatever suits you. We created a website to support this new widget enterprise: www.MyYTStats.com. Please go there and see what we have so far. We have several versions of this Total Video Views text widget - one scrolls and one fades in and out. They are all available for YOUR use on YOUR websites, for FREE!



Our good friend Jennifer Newberry just launched a new channel dedicated to vlogs only. Jennifer is a 26 year old blond Swedish-American singer who we have posted about in the past. We even interviewed Jennifer back in December! This is the first video on Jennifer's new channel. Listen to her thoughts on "mean comments" and learn a little about who Jennifer really is. Then read the interview!



Tom, tlg847, pulls no punches as he discusses how threats to people and their families are handled in "life" and on YouTube and the Internet. He uses "bad language" to make his point. Is "it's only the Internet" a valid excuse for threatening and/or nasty behavior? Join in on the discussion by commenting or making a video response! Several interesting websites were mentioned in the comments. One is an ACLU page that talks about Civil Liberties in the "Summary of Argument" section. Another briefly describes the Avogato Trust Metric. Tom has been working with Renetto, PeriUrban and KenRG on a new website which Tom mentioned in this video and in the last video here. The final frames in that video tell us what the new website's name might be. This picture is from that video.



VitalFinds, an intelligent and prolific videoblogger who contributed to the eNation discussions and helped test the 2BuxMall, made a video response to Tom's video. She adds her ideas about what should and should not be acceptable in a well run video community website.



Last week, popular vlogger and artist Paperlilies made this video to announce her latest art competition. Bryony has done quite a lot to foster the art community on YouTube. She has painted several pictures on camera and auctioned them off on eBay. Tom, tlg847, bought one of the first ones. Bryony has sponsored other art competitions which gathered a good amount of participation and interest from the YouTube community. This time, her well known wit, sometimes veering into snarky territory, was deemed to be offensive to several members of the YouTube community. There have been almost 800 comments on the video so far, many on the topic of religion. Have a look and if you have an opinion, leave your comment!

Labels: Jennifer, JenniferNew21, kenrg, MyYTStats, Newberry, Paperlilies, PeriUrban, religion, renetto, statistics, tlg847, vitalfinds

posted by KennyCrane at 3/23/2008 10:46:00 PM 2 Comments

As mentioned in our last post, the second San Franciso YouTube Gathering took place last weekend. There have been many videos uploaded that show what happened at the event. Here is a collection of some of the best videos of this YouTube Gathering.

First, an interesting new item. It has just been reported that Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, recently stated that live streaming video would be added to the list of featured offer by YouTube by the end of this year. Of course, these capability is already available to users of StickAm and LiveVideo. In fact, I watched parts of the live feed of the event on LiveVideo last weekend! I put up the link to this live feed in our last post; I hope you got a chance to check in and see what was happening! Live streaming video is just another reason to sign up with LiveVideo, even if you already have a YouTube account. Please click on the blue "Less Tube. More You!" ad in the upper left corner of this page to go to LiveVideo.

In one of the videos below, a new website is mentioned - TubeCloud. Go there and enter a YouTube channel name and it goes in the cloud. The more people that enter that channel, the bigger the tag in the cloud. Its basically a tag cloud of YouTubers. Click here to nominate my YouTube channel on TubeCloud. Here's another person to nominate on TubeCloud, TiffanyJoAllen. She's a rising YouTubStar singer that we've mentioned here before.

Now, on to the San Francisco YouTube Gathering Video! (Beware of language in some of these videos!)

Labels: Castaa, community, eNation, gathering, kenrg, olgakay, PeriUrban, renetto, smpfilms, tlg847, YouTube Gathering

posted by KennyCrane at 2/29/2008 04:57:00 PM 1 Comments

First, the good news. YouTube has expanded their Partner Program. This means that more people will be able to make money from ads that will run in and next to their videos. YouTube ran a pilot Partner Program earlier this year and asked about 100 people if they wanted to be in it. Now, they are ready to admit many more. The rules state that you may be made a partner if you have lots of subscribers and video views and you adhere to YouTube's Terms of Use. How much money can you make? No one is talking because Partners have to sign a non-disclosure document. It has been rumored that partners are paid around 10 cents per thousand views - that's $100 for a million views. If you want to find out for sure what the pay rate is, apply for the Partner Program. If you're chosen to join, you'll find out about the earning potential. Good Luck!

To learn more about the partners program, watch the following video from YouTube's own channel. Also, read this article and have a look at YouTube's blog entry on the partner expansion.




The bad news is that there are signs that YouTube is still unable to administer its system fairly. There are continued reports of people having their accounts suspended for little to no reason, while others who are banned multiple times for good cause are still able to keep coming back. People are still able to artificially inflate their video views, and the thumbs up/down system has been abused. Mikma, a YouTuber whose trademark catchphrase comment is "Mikma was here" has recently had all of his comments deleted by YouTube. All this has many people wondering if YouTube can fairly administer their Partner Program. Time will tell, we'll have to wait and see how it goes. Here are two videos, from Tom (tlg847) - a member of the new YouTube Council, and long time YouTubeStar Paperlilies, about the Mikma mess.







More bad news, from the American heartland. There was a mall shooting recently in Omaha Nebraska. YouTuber FairyPixie lives there. She made a heartfelt video about the tragedy. She made the point that kindness is contagious and we should be nice to each other. Maybe a kind act could be just the thing to keep someone on the edge from doing something terrible. Watch the video, FairyPixie expresses this thought much better than I can!

Labels: fairypixie, mall, News, omaha, Paperlilies, partner, program, tlg847

posted by KennyCrane at 12/12/2007 02:31:00 AM 1 Comments

This post will feature a few videos for some YouTube users that I typically don't write about - young children. Children do visit YouTube and parents should be aware of the fact that some perfectly innocent video pages are disgracefully defaced by rude and offensive comments. I'll present two videos here that children might be interested in viewing. Children can watch those videos here without being exposed to the possibility of inappropriate and disturbing comments.

We'll also see the video of a talented female singer and view a discussion on why people make videos and what can come of it, made by two intelligent and entertaining men of YouTube.

First, the news! Have a look at 3 interesting movements on the YouTube Top 100 Weekly Chart. Geriatric1927, who was number ONE right before Lonelygirl15 locked up that spot for months, just dropped out of the Top 10 - into spot 11. Boh3m3 was knocked out of the Top 20, by Linkin Park. Ysabellabrave, despite gaining 324 new subscribers this week, dropped one place - surpassed by My Chemical Romance.

This Week's Featured Video is an orignal song by Jeff Williams (capo420420) with an introduction by the attractive singer, Jennifer Newberry. Check it out!


I Want You Back (Jackson 5)... Sung By Me...

We'll start off with a really nice cover of this Jackson 5 oldie. It is sung by KazMills, a young lady who lives in London and is a Pop Singer. She has 23 videos which cover pop artists like JoJo, Mariah Carey, Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood. Check her out; she's quite a good singer!


If you can't see the video above, watch it on YouTube.


Geriatric1927 and Tom: A Couple of Amateurs

Tom (tlg847) has a video meeting with Peter (Geriatric1927) and records the split-screen result for us to see. They discuss the effect of videomaking on the pop culture and decide that there is great value in the new connections and friendships that have come about. This video is a great example of such a connection; Tom and Peter would not have met and had this conversation were it not for YouTube. Watch this important movie!


If you can't see the video above, watch it on YouTube.


Naked Brothers Band-Crazy car

This band of pre-teens is a favorite of my 6-year-old nephew! The Naked Brothers Band are "a tweener movie and TV series for Nickleodeon created, written and directed by actress Polly Draper ("thirtysomething") around her sons Nat and Alex Wolff. It's a mockumentary based around the fictional rock stardom of the (actually very musical) brothers. Dad - musician and former "Arsenio" bandleader Michael Wolff - also gets in on the fun as music supervisor and an actor in the show." according to toptensources.com. This song is actually quite catchy. It's been described as bubblegum music for the 21st century. My nephew and I like it! Watch it with your young ones right here rather than on YouTube where they might be exposed to rude comments.


If you can't see the video above, watch it on YouTube. (But beware of nasty comments!)


LazyTown Bing Bang - The Single Version!

Here's another catchy tune that's popular with the little ones. It's Bing Bang from the Lazy Town TV show. Parents might like this one too; it's similar to 80s dance songs. Get up and dance, people! Watch it here, no nasty comments to deal with.


If you can't see the video above, watch it on YouTube. (But beware of nasty comments!)

Labels: capo420420, Geriatric1927, JenniferNew21, KazMills, Lazy Town, Naked Brothers Band, tlg847

posted by KennyCrane at 6/25/2007 03:46:00 AM 0 Comments