Cute kittens and toddlers may be YouTube’s bread and butter, but Google’s video portal needs more than that to encroach on the goliath that is cable TV. But instead of shelling out for the rights to premium content from cable networks, YouTube is hoping it can nudge its existing community toward making high quality videos.
Today the company has confirmed that it has acquired Next New Networks, a firm founded in 2007 that focuses on producing high quality original video content for the web. Alongside the news, YouTube is announcing ‘YouTube Next’, a team of experts (made up by many of the NNN team, no doubt) who are setting out to “supercharge creator development and accelerate partner growth and success”. In other words, YouTube is going to give certain partners access to a team of experts that can hopefully help them produce better content. YouTube’s pending acquisition of Next New Networks was first reported by the New York Times in December.
From the YouTube blog:
In fact, the number of partners making over $1,000 a month is up 300% since the beginning of 2010 and we now have hundreds of partners making six figures a year. But frankly, “hundreds” making a living on YouTube isn’t enough and in 2011 we know we can and should do more to help our partners grow.
The YouTube Next initiative sounds good on paper, but it’s not really clear how YouTube is going to be able to scale the program to make it useful to more than “hundreds” of partners.
Last year YouTube launched a Partner Grants Program that allows promising content creators to receive an advance on their future ad revenue so that they can invest in making videos with higher production values. And it gave a $1,000 credit to 500 partners late last year to buy new video equipment.
But both of those programs revolved around money, which scales. This YouTube Next team is about expertise — YouTube will be contacting partners that it believes could use some help, and will send in its team of experts who can offer tips on YouTube’s platform and the kind of content that tends to do well online. This training will be free, but, again, only select content partners will get access to it.
YouTube says that Next team will be global, but it isn’t saying how many people will be involved. Beyond this partner training, it sounds like YouTube will be launching further grant programs under its Next brand.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
It's been more than three years since we received any confessions from an employee at Staples. Thankfully, Staples vet Dave decided to write us with the insights he gleaned from his time at the office supply superstore.
1) The managers have a ton of power, the front line employees have very little. If you want to negotiate, get an exception, have a question, or were told one thing and are now being told something else, just ask for a manager. Managers can make pretty much anything happen and are extremely sensitive to customer complaints.
2) Tech work is the lowest priority. Everything else comes first even if it's something as time insensitive as putting out stock. The reason is that everything else is evaluated in some kind of metric, tech work being finished in a timely manner is not (or at least it's never enough of a priority to let front line employees know). This may not seem like a big deal, you wait a few extra hours maybe a day or two, but it exponentially increases the likelihood of error because the tech doing the work is constantly being pulled away from the task at hand, making it far easier to forget what needs to be done, what had been done, and other details of the work at hand.
3) Price matching is pretty much an absolute sure thing so long as it's from a bricks and mortar store. Just bring in some evidence in the form of a flyer, photo, or even have them call to confirm. This is especially useful when combined with...
4) Online coupons are all over the place. Google around on a weekly basis and many times you'll be able to find coupons for 15% off an entire order, sometimes they'll go as high as 25% off. They're not tied to a specific person, or account, and they'll be good over and over again until they expire. If you're shopping for a specific item wait till a brick and mortar competitor puts it on sale, price match it and use the coupon.
5) Staples makes almost nothing, and sometimes loses money, on PCs, especially laptops. As a result, Staples focuses very strongly on selling you a bunch of crap with the PCs. Crap they make a lot more money on. This is why if you try to dash in, buy a laptop and dash out you won't be dashing anywhere. Staples has set up a system to eat up at least 20 minutes of your time, in an attempt to sell you extended service plans, tech services, accessories, and anything else. Most of the metrics Staples uses and pays attention to are focused in this area (the biggest of these is called Market Basket and is essentially the cost of everything bought except the PC that is sold in each transaction with a PC). If a sales associate is letting laptops fly out the door without attaching any other sales to it he won't be there long. As a result it can be difficult to buy just a PC. You'll be hammered with how you need to buy extended warranties for a good bit of it, you'll be asked for lots of information so they can record it for their records (this is mostly an attempt to slow you down so you can't make a quick purchase), you'll be told any number of things to drive up the market basket number. A sales associate would far rather you not buy at all than buy just a laptop, so expect roadblocks to be thrown up if you make your intentions obvious. One associate in a nearby store was notorious for telling customers they were out of stock and would send them to another store to avoid an accessory-free sale.
6) The Up Front Agreement is Staples' attempt to get low-paid, high turnover employees to sell more. There's nothing really to know here except that Staples explicitly touts this as a way to make the customer feel as if they are in charge when really the sales associate is in charge. Not a shock that's what they intend, but a bit more honest than I expected.
7) You get to be an Expert or manager by selling, not by being competent. So if you're dealing with an EasyTech Expert they may know what they're talking about when it comes to fixing your PC, but they definitely know how to sell.
8) Sales end on Saturday night and new ones begin on Sunday. If you find an old tag that's expired they will still honor it so long as you point it out. I once saw an expired tag honored that was out of date by over a year.
9) The Copy and Print Center is by far their most profitable area. As a result they will make it right if you complain, they will re-do the order to correct issues even to the point of if they screw it up enough times giving you your corrected order and your money back. About the only thing they won't do is actual design work, so you'll need to bring in your order already ready to go. If you do need design work done they can send it out to be done, it's a little expensive but I never saw a complaint. Also, you will be upsold here to nicer paper, its not much more and does make a big difference if it's a project you want to impress with. I wouldn't have believed that before I worked in the CPC, but it does.
Thanks to Dave for sending this in. If you have some insider info about the store you work at (or used to work at), send us your confessions at tips@consumerist.com with "confessions" in the subject.
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