I'd like to thank, uh, my mom, my mom's basement, my allowance...
YouTube just announced a new awards show for its top videos. The seven categories include Most Inspirational, Most Creative, Best Series, Best Comedy, Musician of the Year, Best Commentary and "Most Adorable Video Ever." Obtuse and snore-ful categoies, but at least YouTube is stepping up as an editorial voice, a role I've long suggested they adopt.
Several vloggers are nominated, including Paul Robinett ("Renetto") and Peter Oakley ("Geriatric1927"). Comedians Barats and Bereta, Smosh and Ask a Ninja are nominees, as are lonelygirl15 and OK Go.
Robert Scoble is complaining that YouTube copied the idea from the Vloggies (OMG like I totally saw that idea on Twitter! Web two dot copycat! Twittertastic! What's l33t sp34k for STFU?).
Personally, I think there's room for both. I also think that an independent council -- sorta like the Academy, but more accessible -- should be set up to dole out awards to all types of Web video.
p.s. Marshall Kirkpatrick has a nice video player showing all the nominees here.
The problem with YouTube Awards is that vloggers don't all use their site. Vloggies is tool agnostic.
Funny title, that's pretty good :)
Jeremiah from PodTech (and vloggies)
Posted by: Jeremiah Owyang | March 19, 2007 at 09:52 AM
Ha - good title!
An independent group to nominate vids is a neat idea and might bring some high quality clips to the surface that would otherwise get buried in popularity via simple crowd voting.
YouTube is almost like an antimatter Oscars. Academy Awards are high budget incestuous insidership where YouTube awards may be ruled by the mob of people who need to get a life.
Posted by: Joe Duck | March 19, 2007 at 11:59 AM
Vloggies may by tool agnostic, but there are plenty of videobloggers (as in "proper" videobloggers)(ahem) who are as ignorant of life inside YouTube as many YouTubers are oblivious to the delicate matter of RSS feeds. I can hardly see the Vloggies even *considering* YouTube content at this point - or am I wrong about that?
That being said, I'm up for a "best commentary" so vote for me and I'll kiss your baby.
Posted by: mark day | March 19, 2007 at 04:50 PM