Through a letter, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has revealed that YouTube has paid a total of $30 billion to different creators and media agencies. YouTube has financed this amount in the last 3 years.
CEO Wojcicki Talks About Transparency, Growth, and Channel Strikes
Wojcicki in her first letter of 2021 to creators has discussed different issues including growth, finances, and different policies of YouTube. She informed that the number of YouTube channels are more than doubled in 2020.
Through these YouTube channels, creators join the Youtube partner program to get advertisement revenue. YouTube also plays a key role in USA GDP. According to Oxford Economic Report highlighted by Youtube CEO, the company contributed $16 billion in 2019 to US GDP. This contribution is equal to 345000 full-time jobs.
CEO letter also focuses on the hard work done by the YouTube team for transparency. Channel Strikes is one of the major concerns of creators. Wojcicki also addressed this issue in the letter. She said that at the “scale we operate, it’s hard for creators to keep up with changing Community Guidelines.”
She also said that in the future YouTube wants to do better communication with creators to avoid channel strikes.
As per the current YouTube guidelines, if a channel gets 3 strikes within 90 days, then it will be terminated. One of the major frustrating situations is when an old video gets a strike because of the new policy.
Wojcicki on Misinformation, Section 230, Youtube Shorts
YouTube is also has a lot of pressure to control the misinformation spreading over the platform. Recently, Youtube created new policies and guidelines to avoid misinformation related to the presidential elections in the USA. So many channels and videos were removed for spreading misinformation about voter fraud in the USA.
Currently, there is a lot of misinformation related to Covid Vaccine over different platforms. YouTube is focusing on this issue to disallow any misinformation concerned with vaccines. YouTube CEO further said that the company follows the guidelines created by countries worldwide.
She said that One other interesting part of Wojcicki’s letter was a focus on regulation. A recent hot topic in tech policy circles is the reform of Section 230, which effectively allows social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to operate without being liable for content people post. Wojcicki referred to Section 230 as an act that “enables us to both keep YouTube open and allow a large amount of content on the internet as well as take the actions necessary to protect our platform.
Wojcicki also discussed how the Youtube Shorts platform is competing with TikTok in the short video segment. YouTube Shorts is under beta testing in Indian Market. This new platform is receiving 3.5 billion daily views. The company has a plan to extend it to other geographical areas as well.
2020 has been a great year for Youtube growth. People around the globe used YouTube to learn different skills, building communities, and Covid19 related information.
In the first quarter of 2020, there was a 25% increment in the watch time globally. Youtube gaming saw immense growth in the pandemic year. 100 billion hours of gaming content were consumed by the users in the first 3 months of 2020. Live streaming increased by 45% in the first half of the year 2020.
Conclusion
As per the Ipsos survey conducted on youtube users having ages between 18-44, 77% of respondents revealed that they joined the platform to learn new skills.
YouTube is also providing a big boost to commerce. As per research, 70% of respondents bought a product after doing research over YouTube. YouTube platform had a total of 400 billion impressions over the videos related to covid-19 information.
