The YouTube Awards (sometimes called the YouTube Video Awards) was an annual promotion run by the website YouTube to recognize the best user-generated videos of the year. The awards were presented twice, in 2007 and 2008, with winners being voted for by the site's users from shortlists compiled by YouTube staff. YouTube was launched on February 14, 2005, and quickly began to grow - by July 2006, traffic to the site had increased by 297%, making it the fastest-growing website in the world. As a result of this success, in March 2007 YouTube launched their own awards promotion to honor some of the site's best videos. Seven shortlists were compiled, with ten videos per shortlist. Users were invited to vote for the winners over a five-day period at a dedicated webpage. Singer Damian Kulash, whose band OK Go won in the Most Creative category for their music video "Here It Goes Again", said that receiving a YouTube Award was a "surreal honor" and that the site was changing culture "quickly and completely".
The YouTube Awards returned the following year, to commemorate the best videos of 2007. This year, the number of categories was expanded from seven to twelve, while the number of videos per shortlist was reduced from ten each to just six. Critics noted that "unlikely newcomers", such as "Battle at Kruger" and "Stop the Clash of Civilizations" by Avaaz, had triumphed over more established videos, such as "I Got a Crush...On Obama" and "Leave Britney Alone!". Reaction to the YouTube Awards was generally negative. In 2007, commentators questioned why a promotion to recognize the best videos of 2006 was occurring so late into the year, and contrasted the awards with the similar Vloggies. Attention was also drawn to the timing of the 2007 awards: five days after media conglomerate Viacom had filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. Technology evangelist Don Dodge suggested that the awards were an attempt by YouTube to highlight content on their website that did not violate copyrights before the case went to trial.
Video YouTube Awards
Background
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. The website was activated on February 14, 2005, and quickly began to grow - in the six months to July 2006, traffic to the site grew by 297%, almost threefold, making it the fastest-growing website in the world. In October that year, Google bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion; two months later, Time selected "You" as their 2006 Person of the Year, to recognize the growth of user-generated content on sites such as YouTube. Reflecting on the year, Jamie Byrne, YouTube's head of product marketing, remarked: "[2006] was really a pioneering year for online video and for user-generated content." According to comScore Media Metrix, the website attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide during January 2007.
Maps YouTube Awards
2007 Awards
As a result, in part, of its growth and success, in March 2007 YouTube launched its own awards promotion to recognize the best user-generated videos of the previous year. The launch of the YouTube Awards was formally announced via a press release on March 18. Awards were to be presented in seven categories: Most Creative, Most Inspirational, Best Series, Best Comedy Video, Best Music Video, Best Commentary and Most Adorable. Ten videos were shortlisted in each category, with the shortlists having been compiled by the site's staff. Byrne explained: "We wanted to call out some of the most popular videos and let the users choose which ones deserve some additional recognition." YouTube users were invited to vote by visiting a dedicated webpage, www.youtube.com/ytawards, which went live at 2 p.m. PST the following day, March 19. Users voted by ranking the ten videos in each category in order of preference, and could see what the up-to-date rankings were in real-time - Ben Fritz of Variety felt that this made the process "transparent".
Voting lasted for five days, closing on March 23; winners were announced two days later. Their prize was a trophy (a large, glass Play Button on a heavy, metal base) and prominence for their winning video on YouTube. American rock band OK Go won the Most Creative award for the music video for their single "Here It Goes Again". Accepting the award, lead singer Damian Kulash said that it was a "surreal honor" and that YouTube was changing culture "quickly and completely". Singer-songwriter Terra Naomi, whose song "Say It's Possible" won in the Best Music category, thanked the voters, saying: "The YouTube community has really embraced me; it means a lot to me." Naomi--who had signed a record deal with Island Records two months earlier--was 2007's only female winner. The remaining five winners were the Free Hugs Campaign (Most Inspirational), Ask a Ninja (Best Series), Smosh (Best Comedy), TheWineKone (Best Commentary) and Kiwi! (Most Adorable).
Winners
2008 Awards
The YouTube Awards returned the following year to recognize the best videos of 2007, and were announced via a post on YouTube's official blog on March 13, 2008. As with the previous year, shortlists were compiled by YouTube's staff, based on the number of views and "general buzz" - in total, the nominated videos had a combined view count of nearly a quarter of a billion. For the 2008 Awards, five new categories were added (Best Sports, Best Political, Best Eyewitness, Best Short Film and Best Instructional), and the shortlists were reduced from ten videos each to just six. The voting process through which users selected the winners was also changed: to remove potential bias, the featured thumbnail and order of the categories changed randomly each time the voting page, www.youtube.com/ytawards07, was refreshed. Users could vote once per day until 23:59 PT on March 19; the winners were announced on March 21. At this time, hundreds of thousands of users had cast votes.
In some categories, the winning videos had not been the favorites. In the Best Eyewitness category, "Battle at Kruger", described by The Guardian as an "unlikely newcomer", beat out the "famous" footage of the University of Florida Taser incident. Similarly, a video by YouTube channel Barely Political, "I Got a Crush...On Obama", had been viewed more than seven million times and had spawned worldwide media attention by the time it was nominated in the Best Political category. Despite this, the award went to "Stop the Clash of Civilizations", a more "serious-minded" video by global organization Avaaz. Aaron Ferstman, a spokesman for YouTube, praised Avaaz's video for dealing with "serious issues like discrimination ... in kind of a neat way that speaks to young people". He also noted that "Stop the Clash of Civilizations" was the only Best Political nominee not related to the 2008 United States presidential election. In the Best Commentary category, Michael Buckley's video "LonelyGirl15 is Dead!" beat "Leave Britney Alone!" by Internet star Chris Crocker. In an interview with MSNBC, Crocker applauded Buckley's success, saying: "Congratulations to him!". Ferst remarked that the races for both the Best Political and Best Commentary awards had been close.
Winners
Reception
Reaction to the 2007 YouTube Awards was generally negative, with some commentators confused as to why the promotion was occurring so late. Following the announcement of the awards, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore questioned why a ceremony to honor 2006 was being held in March 2007, and called it a "late attempt" to recognize the best videos of the year. Likewise, Steve O'Hear of ZDNet proposed that the awards should have taken place earlier, closer to Time's announcing of their 2006 Person of the Year. Journalist Virginia Heffernan argued that it was a "real insult to the speedy Web world" that a 2006 event was taking place in the spring of 2007. She also criticized the five-day voting period, describing it as "rushed and almost certainly screwy". Eric Auchard of Reuters similarly bemoaned the voting system, remarking that asking users to vote for their favorite videos was "anachronistic", since the site's five-star ratings system already tracked which videos were the most popular; Liz Gannes of Gigaom agreed with his view, calling it a "good point". Blogger Robert Scoble compared the YouTube Awards to his own video awards show, the Vloggies, which had occurred six months earlier, and suggested that YouTube had copied his idea. Josh Lowensohn of CNET also compared the YouTube Awards to the Vloggies, arguing that the former was not "a new idea". Lowensohn additionally criticized the prizes that the winners received, remarking: "I'd like to see YouTube offer some sort of cash or video camera prize."
Commentators also noted the timing of the announcement of the 2007 awards: five days after media conglomerate Viacom had filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement. Technology evangelist Don Dodge suggested that the awards were an attempt by YouTube to highlight content on their website that did not violate copyrights before the case went to trial. Dodge explained that he had been part of a similar program whilst at Napster, and that the awards might demonstrate to the courts that there was "substantial non-infringing use" of the website. Cashmore agreed with Dodge's assessment, pointing out that the awards were months too late, had no sponsor, and were concluded within a week. Writing for The Washington Post, Jake Coyle similarly described the awards as "a quick, hasty process". The YouTube Awards also received criticism the following year: summarizing the 2008 promotion, Caroline McCarthy of CNET described the website as "a cultural hub rather than strictly a creative outpost", and that it therefore "doesn't really lend itself that well to awards".
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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