Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A Confession

I spend a lot of my time on YouTube really reveling in the community, reading comments, leaving comments (so many that even though almost all of them are relevant, they generally get marked as spam), and getting on Skype with friends. I care a lot about friendships that I've made on YouTube and generally the community aspect. I really love that whole experience, and emphasize it for any friends who may be getting down about not getting recognized for what they do.

However, there is still a little part of me that notices and keeps track of the insignificant things like views, subscribers, and ratings. It has happened recently that regardless of the effort I put into my videos, they are only being watched by about 1/4 of my audience. I know it's frustrating and that everybody does it, but something about it is really starting to get me down. I think the difference is that I've been doing more music videos, which are really labor-intensive, but get less interactive comments--people say things like "this was really cute!" but nothing else, whereas when I vlog, I get a lot of constructive comments and perspectives. So even though my views haven't changed too much, although they are down a bit, I notice it even more because I don't get really valuable comments.

I suppose this means that, for my own sake and experience, I should probably alternate between vlogs and other types of videos, because I really like to interact with people. I also want to really foster a sense of community on my channel to increase the likelihood of this interaction.

You know, I was really feeling a little down at the beginning of this blog, but I'm already feeling better now that I've recognized what's really bothering me. I think this means I should keep this blogging thing up. Next 30 days? I guess I can do that :)

Sleep: X
German: X
Clarinet: X
Exercise: ABLF (I ran TWICE as far as I have been! I love victories.)
Reading: 30 min., next 30 min to be completed after this blog
Blogging: X

5 comments:

  1. Don't worry Steve, I'm sure it will pick up, I enjoy the music you write. (Wow, that sounds like the kind of comments you were talking about) :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. This relates a bit to an upcoming #justtubed video. It seems that you prefer discussion to entertainment for the quality of interaction. I'm this way too. I'd prefer the interaction to be quality rather than a large amount of comments that don't really say anything. This is why you probably won't see me ever asking comment questions on my channel. I feel like when you give people a specific thing to say in the comments, you end up learning less from them. I like hearing what people were provoked to say organically, and perhaps this makes it harder for some to participate, it is more satisfying to me to have those interactions. I'm beginning to talk in circles here. I guess it's that I know that comment questions boost yr numbers and all, but I'd much rather stay this well known and continue having fruitful discussions.

    There. Did I say the same thing three different times? Probably.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You still get more views than me, yet I have more subscribers than you, so yeah. Consider that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the mixture of the vlogs and the videos.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know exactly how you feel man, and I know this is something we talk about quite a lot on Skype. Having moved away from vlogging, I've pretty much ended up at the opposite end of the spectrum, in that I'm primarily just trying to entertain as many people as possible. Since I don't really cover the same sorts of topics you do (actually, I don't cover any topics at all!) I don't expect any comments of a higher level than 'cool vid XD!'

    Basically, this does indeed affect everyone, and the only real consolation you can take from it is that you've sifted out the ruffians, so the people who are watching you are the ones who really give a damn. Other than that, it's just something which needs pulling through :)

    ReplyDelete