Brief note...ThemTube refers to any commercial media, the stuff you see in movie theaters and on TV. I didn't come up with the term but read it in the YouTube guide by Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean.
If you've visited YouTube in the last two days, you may have noticed the Show tab at the top of the page nestled between Videos and Channels.YouTube added commercial content this week in an attempt to attract advertisers and actually make money of the site.
YouTube hosts a lot of videos and Google needs to be able to pay the bills for it, so it only makes sense that YouTube makes changes to make money. I checked out the shows and movies YouTube has added so far, and there are some things I'm interested in watching. (I'm watching the pilot episode of Astro Boy right now, just out of curiosity.) I'm happy that YouTube will host copyrighted content legally now, but I feel a little weird about watching TV shows and movies on the site (in their entirety and legally there, that is). I don't go to YouTube to watch commercial stuff. The majority of the videos I watch are user-generated vlogs and sketches. That's the purpose of YouTube, to watch what regular people are making, what you are making.
The coolest thing about YouTube is that everyone has an equal chance at exposure. Anyone's video can be featured, anyone's video can show up as a related video alongside other videos. There are users who are more popular, who have more subscribers, yeah, but their content is just like anyone else's on YouTube. There were no separations. Reports have been floating around, though, that YouTube's redesign will separate commercial content and user-generated content in search results (and maybe in related videos too? I'm not sure).
I'll continue to watch the people I'm subscribed to because I love their videos, but it'll be harder for them to reach new viewers if the redesign will create those separations. It's pretty sad considering this is all happening because of advertisers' interests.
(And is the added commercial content available outside the U.S.?)
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