SocialNext

Can a YouTube Competitor Land Perez Hilton?

Last December YouTube suspended popular gossip blogger Perez Hilton’s account. Perez had one of the most popular YouTube channels and participated in their “Partner Program”.

YouTube was slow to get a straight answer to Perez as to why his account was suspended and, justifiably, he was pretty darn mad. The result was Perez ditching YouTube for his own streaming video setup, PerezTV.

YouTube's lack of customer service (even for Partner participants!) is their Achilles Heel and resulted in a big fish getting away. The bottom line is this is a huge missed opportunity for a second-tier video site like Veoh, LiveVideo or Metacafe. They could have gained massive publicity from a pop culture trend setter and seen a huge jump in usage and accounts.

The opportunity is still there. Perez doesn’t seem to be monetizing PerezTV yet and if offered a sweetheart revenue sharing deal could still change over to a hosted platform.

7 Ways to Challenge YouTube

Google-owned YouTube dominates the online video market. With YouTube now promising to pay content creators how can smaller video sites like Revver, Veoh, Metacafe and LiveVideo compete? Here are 7 ways smaller video sites can make inroads on YouTube.

1. Reach out to popular unsigned content creators and invite them to upload. Nothing new here. It's about acquiring great content. An unsigned group would be flattered to be noticed.

2. Now here's the key: Pay these creators to make their content exclusive to your site. The result here is two fold: you have has unique content users can't find anywhere else and the groups become evangelists for your service. Even if you couldn’t pay with video ads, you could create a payment structure based on views.

3. Offer a bulk upload tool: If the talent has a back catalog of videos uploading one by one takes forever.

4. Simplify the process for users to sign up and join the service so they can subscribe and leave comments.

5. Offer unique features YouTube lacks such as better tracking, allowing creators to pick the screen capture of their video and daily emails of views and comments on videos.

6. Feature the content creators: I’m not just talking about their videos but also customized homepages on the service, interviews and photos too.

7. Sign content deals with popular video and pop culture blogs such as VideoSift or Fark to feature your content. These sites drive a lot of traffic and can help boost adoption of your service.