_ Source: The Game Theorists; Youtube
Pewdiepie, the most successful youtber ever, threatened to delete his Youtube channel on 50 million subscriptions in a recently released video. As a reason for this, he announced that he wanted to protest against the changes in Youtube, which are causing a lot of damages to content creators on Youtube. This is the reason for the fact that many Youtube channels are suddenly struggling with a big loss of viewers and subscriptions. The viewer numbers of newly released videos on his channel through recommendations from other videos have decreased by 40 percent.
Some content creators complain that they would lose more subscriber with each uploaded video. Also users complain in recent months that subscriptions of channels, which you follow, are suddenly shut down. Youtube argues to have made changes recently, which could be the cause.
However, is no secret that Youtube regularly makes unannounced changes to their search algorithms. It is assumed that changes have been made to those videos, in which a greater interactivity of the users get them a better rating. Likening and commenting on videos is given a higher priority.
A study by Matt Gielen and Jeremy Rosen, published on TubeFilter, suggests that the success of a new video depends on how successful were the previous two videos of the channel.
The Game Theorists analyzed data from his own and Youtuber friend’s channels and concluded that Youtube might strive to take the role of traditional television in the digital world. Regular and long-term consumption of content should be encouraged. Thus, channels, who publish new videos every day, would benefit from the changes. According to his data, such channels have received a huge increase in popularity over the same period as many channels began to decline. This also applies to content, which is rather niche subjects and therefore does not necessarily appeal to the masses.
No matter if Youtube has changed its algorithms or not, more and more traditional companies like Disney and Warner Bros are also expanding on Youtube and bring more competition to the platform with high-quality productions and regular new content.
The interest of the audience has also changed, as a study by the marketing consulting company Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve shows. 800 international representatives of Generation Z, including those born between 1995 and 2010, were asked about their interest in online content. The result shows that this new target group is less interested in content for leaning back and shutting down, but rather for content that stimulates creativity. For example, many of the interviewees were interested in content such as videos about cooking, dealing with stress and everyday life, and learning about content such as marijuana.
For PewDiePie, however, his apparent marketing stunt was a complete success. He reached the 50 million subscriptions in a few days. However, he did not delete his actual channel, but only an insignificant second channel. By this action, however, he won over 600,000 new subscribers on his main channel. More than 6 times as many as in the previous week.
