Youtube Direct: Get Other People To Do Your Video Work

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Youtube Direct

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uploaded by Truemorist

Youtube is launching Youtube Direct, which is a contribution and curation tool for news organizations seeking public contributions for video footage. The upside is that you can shamelessly solicit the public for free material- yay! The downside is that you'll get tons of spam and low-quality crap- boo! You can moderate the deluge of footage, though, using... wait for it... Google App Engine. As with most Google offerings, it's pretty and simple, but one more inroad into your or your business' workflow. 

The instructional/pitch video refers to your users as "citizen stringers" a moniker which they'll likely not embrace, but hey- I've been called worse.

I wonder if ad agencies are freaking out about this- the best ones probably won't care, but there will possibly be a bunch of companies who think they can turn to the public for better advertising that that which they currently pay for. I wonder if that'll turn out to be true.

It would also be really cool for a personal site: for example, putting together a collection of videos from a concert or zombie walk or riot. Like Flickr sets, only for video.