The episode’s two primary guests were Jenna Mourey (aka Jenna Marbles) and Tyler Oakley, who chatted with Corden about their respective journeys to online fame and their personal favorite videos. They also battled each other in a YouTube quiz that required them to rank videos based on view counts, fill in missing words in comments, and recreate a dance video.
Interspersed between these segments were several others led by YouTube stars. Boyce Avenue and Epic Rap Battles of History delivered live performances, The Slow Mo Guys exploded a watermelon, and Kandee Johnson gave Corden a Barbie-style makeover. Johnson also joined Corden, Mourey, and Oakley to play a game in which they had to identify YouTube-themed objects by nuzzling up to them.
All in all, the episode was a clear success. Corden was respectful of the YouTube’s big stars, but he was not afraid to poke fun at the odd cultural phenomena the video site has created in its first decade of existence. The episode served as a strong advertisement for the YouTube community, and based on the traffic it generated on social media, it was a hit with viewers, too.
SourceFed has released a new web series, full of uncertainty and satire. On August 22, 2015, the digital news and nerd-based network founded by Philip DeFranco premiered The Study, starring host and ex-SourceFed member extraordinaire, Elliott Morgan.
The Study will be a weekly, satirical news show which Morgan wrote in an email will have “tight writing, irreverent humor, and a lot of dumb vape pen smoke.” In all twelve episodes, Morgan will play a wealthy, neurotic character who acts like he knows everything, but then ends up making a good point about the topic at hand. Essentially, The Study will be 90% satire and 10% truth without clarifying to the audience which is which.
“The goal is to kind of challenge the viewers to deduce where the line between satire and reality is drawn,” Morgan said. The long-time digital host, who’s also worked on Buzzr’s Beat the Clock and several Mashable series, noted that SourceFed approached him earlier in 2015 about making The Study. Since then, the host and SF team have been working on the series off and on.
New episodes of The Study will be released every Saturday for the next twelve weeks on SourceFed’s YouTube channel, which is currently more than 1.5 million subscribers strong.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given timeframe. We’re starting things off simply with a Tubefilter Top 50 of the Most Viewed YouTube Chaniframenels This Week, but look for a lot more fun charts to come in the near future. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts – with new installments every Friday – here.]
Scroll down to see the Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channels and an entertainment sporting events channel still has the top spot.
Chart Toppers
WWEFanNation is still at the top of the US chart this week. The YouTube home of World Wrestling Entertainment witnessed a 5% uptick in views to end the seven-day stretch just shy of the 100-million mark with 99.8 million views. BuzzFeedVideo is next up in second place. The flagship channel of the popular website known for its listicles and animated GIFs brought home nearly 85.3 million views on the week.
Next up in third place is, yet again, DisneyCollectorBR. The internet’s prime destination for videos of adults unboxing and playing with children’s toys was up 4% on the week to top out at almost 78.4 million views. Up next is Taylor Swift. The international country-turned-pop star’s channel’s view count climbed 5% to reach over 71.2 million views during the week.
And rounding out the Top 5 is DisneyCarToys. The other channel towards the top of the chart with a penchant for playing with toys for kids scored nearly 55.4 million views in the week.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers in the U.S. this week goes to Vat19.
The YouTube home to more than 700 videos promoting and showcasing a wide range of “curiously awesome” gifts that run the gamut from practical to awesome to decorative to active didn’t have a massive increase in its week-over-week view count, but this week is the first time the channel broke into the Top 50.
That may have something to do with the fact the channels Dude Perfect spoof – dubbed Dude Decent – made it on Sports Center‘s Top 10. Or it may just be the fact the channel is consistently putting out videos racking up hundreds of thousands of views featuring grown men playing with very creative toys. Regardless of the reason, the channel saw a 5% week-over-week increase in views, almost 22.1 million views on the week, and the #48 spot on the US chart.
Channel Distribution
The top 50 most viewed U.S. YouTube channels this week amassed a total of 1,820,077,350 views. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
VEVO: 12 channels in the U.S. Top 50, with Taylor Swift the highest-ranked channel of the network at at #3.
Maker Studios: 5 channels in the Top 50, with DisneyCarToys at #5.
Fullscreen: 3 channels in the Top 50, with FamilyFunPack at #7.
BuzzFeed, Collective Digital Studio: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFee’ds BuzzFeed Video at #2 and CDS’ Good Mythical Morning at #34.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 250,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide and children’s nursery rhymes are still getting a lot of plays.
Chart Toppers
Littlebabybum is at the top of the charts again this week. The YouTube channel that’s home to videos of your pre-K child’s most favorite nursery rhymes cracked the 100 Million Weekly Views Club this week, topping out just shy of 109.7 million views. Up next in second place for its second week is WWEFanNation. The YouTube repository for clips of World Wrestling Entertainment amassed more than 99.8 million views during the seven-day timeframe.
TheDiamondMinecart is still next up in third place. The top-ranked gamer on the chart scored more than 94.1 million views on the week. ItsBabyBigMouth is in fourth place. The Canadian YouTube channel dedicated what’s inside Kinder Surprise Eggs cracked 85.4 million views in the week
And rounding out the Top 5 is BuzzFeedVideo. The flagship YouTube channel from the site known for listicles, animated GIFs, and hard news stayed relatively constant in its weekly view count with almost 85.3 million views.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers this week goes to Coby Persin aka Model Pranksters aka zipkid99.
The YouTube home of a risque, controversial, and morally questionable mix of prank videos and “social experiments” had a particularly good week on the internet. Persin uploaded his modern interpretation of To Catch A Predator,showing just how easy it is to lure unsuspecting pre-and-early-teens to meet up in strange locales with strange men. And it lured a lot of eyeballs to his online videos, too. The channel witnessed a week-over-week increase in views of 787% and racked up more than 42.9 million views to top out at #27 on the worldwide chart.
Distribution
All in all, the top 50 most viewed YouTube channels accounted for 2,541,455,004 views last week. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
Maker Studios: 7 channels in the Top 50, with TheDiamondMinecart at #3.
VEVO: 6 channels each in the Top 50, with Taylor Swift at #7.
BroadbandTV, BuzzFeed, Fullscreen, XMediaDigital, ZoominTV: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BroadbandTV’s Major Lazer at #32, BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #5, Fullscreen’s FamilyFunPack at #18, XMediaDigital’s mashamedvedtv at #9, and ZoominTV’s JackSepticEye at # 13.
And here’s the distribution of the this week’s Top 50 YouTube channels by country of origin:
United States: 24 channels in the Top 50.
Canada, Great Britain, India: 4 channels each in the Top 50.
Spain, Russia: 2 channels each in the Top 50.
El Salvador, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Netherlands, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand: 1 channel each in the Top 50.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 225,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.
Sometimes, a web series is so different that it leaves an indelible mental mark. Two Robots Talking is one of those series. It’s far from the most polished web series out there. Its episode titles are clearly created in iMovie. But man, is it something else.
The two robots referenced in the title are a pair of 3D-animated characters named Steve and Dale, and they love to talk about philosophy. Sometimes, they’re taking the Turing test. Other times, they’re responding to Stephen Hawking’s recent letter about AI. No matter the topic, Steve and Dale dish out their opinions with constant honesty and dark humor. Here they are discussing the merits of fine art:
Creator Andrew Genaille of Sir Perphoulous Films uses a text-to-speech format to give life to his two robots, and that’s key; it allows Two Robots Talking to have a deadpan, almost tongue-in-cheek sensibility to it. Not all the episodes hit, but on the whole, the series is so unique in its presentations and themes that it is worth checking out for that reason alone.
OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT
No Rights Reserved. Viral sensations like “the knockout game” form the center of this web series.
Variety Pack. A filmmaker with an unusual state of mind unloads a “psychedelic stream of consciousness.”
Dropped Pie. In this web series, a culinary accident becomes a taste sensation.
Blondie. A young woman navigates her way through life in the big city.
Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.
Brands on Facebook should start planning their future content strategies with animated GIFs in mind. The massive social network and online video contender has introduced the ability for some brands to start including the looping image format in posts on their company’s official Pages.
According to The Next Web, Facebook is beta testing animated GIFs on Pages run by select content partners. So far, Facebook has given Wendy’s, BuzzFeed, and Coca-Cola-owned Brazilian brand Kuat the ability to post GIFs to their Pages. The social network is also allowing some brands to use animated GIFs as boosted posts within a Page, and Adweek reports some brands can also use GIFs as promoted posts which will show up in users’ News Feeds.
“GIFs can be a fun and compelling way to communicate, so we’ve started testing GIF support in posts and boosted posts for a small percentage of Facebook Pages,” Facebook said in a statement reported by Adweek.
Facebook previously introduced support for animated GIFs to its entire user base back in May 2015. Users couldn’t upload a GIF file directly to the social network’s servers. However, a link to a GIF generated as an image after the user posted the link.
Facebook noted it would roll out GIF support in the future to more Pages if the feature “drives a great experience for people.”
Playlist Live D.C. is approaching fast! If you’re attending this year, we’ve got you covered. This nifty guide will outline the schedule and events you won’t want to miss at the the three-day, in-person celebration of the YouTube world and its digital stars.
Taking place from September 4-6, 2015 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in our Nation’s capital, Playlist Live D.C. will begin with a business day on Friday for applicable pass holders only. On Saturday, general programming starts for all attendees, with the main event starting at 10 AM EST; the day ends with what looks to be an entertaining dance party at 8 PM. Sunday’s panels and sessions begin at 10 AM again, and the entire Playlist Live D.C. event wraps up at 5 PM. A completed, detailed schedule will be released the week of August 24, which you will be able to view on the Playlist Live D.C. website.
Playlist Live D.C. will also boast an impressive roster of special guests throughout the weekend. Guests include such well-known digital names as Alexis G. Zall, Alphacat, Bart Baker, Eleventhgorgeous, FouseyTUBE, Jacksfilms, LaurDIY, Matthew Santoro, Meghan Rienks, Olga Kay, Ricky Dillon, Shay Carl, Teala Dunn, and Trevor Moran. You can see a complete list of Playlist Live D.C.’s guests here.
And of course, don’t pass up your chance to meet some of these digital stars at one of Playlist Live D.C.’s many scheduled meetups. The event will group several random creators together and then schedule a time for that group’s meetup with fans. Standard and business pass holders can login to Playlist’s online system to reserve one meetup for Saturday and one for Sunday using their order numbers and billing addresses. You can read more about Playlist Live D.C.’s meetup process and information right here.
There have been a number of recent legal disputes between music labels and YouTube content creators. For that reason, it is extremely important for videomakers to know about the YouTube Audio Library, which offers its users access to a plethora of royalty-free tracks on demand. The Audio Library has grown in size since its launch in 2013, and its most recent expansion is its biggest one yet: YouTube has added 1,000 tracks to the Audio Library across a variety of genres.
The names of the composers who have contributed to the Audio Library’s new influx of tracks won’t be familiar to most people, but their work is instantly recognizable among YouTube viewers. Kevin MacLeod, for example, has composed a prolific number of musical hooks that have been used by YouTubers around the world. Personally, I find “Scheming Weasel” to be particularly inescapable.
The new tracks join the Audio Library’s other offerings in a huge database. If you’re looking for the right background music for your video, you can search by genre, mood, instrument, and duration. Go ahead, give it a whirl.
PBS Digital Studios has added a new web series and creator to its roster of science and education-based content. The network now boasts the YouTube channel and show Physics Girl, created and hosted by MIT physics graduate Dianna Cowern.
Cowern grew up in Hawaii and is currently the Science Outreach Coordinator for UC San Diego’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. On her YouTube channel about page, Cowern says she tries to make “physics videos for every atom and eve.” The scientist’s most recent episode of Physics Girl shows viewers how to make swirling vortices on the surfaces of bubbles.
“PBS Digital Studios is thrilled to welcome Dianna and the Physics Girl channel to the network,” said Lauren Saks, Programming Director at PBS Digital Studios, in a release. “Dianna takes complex physics concepts and make them accessible through thoughtful explanation, household items and humor. PBS Digital Studios aims to foster curiosity throughout all of its channels; Dianna brings a superb mix of enthusiasm and creativity to subjects that could otherwise be overwhelming.”
Blip is dead. Long live Blip. The online video platform, which for more than a decade was a hub for high-quality original content, has been shut down by its owner, Maker Studios.
Blip launched in 2005, just three months after YouTube opened its own doors. From the start, it feature a creator-focused approach, and it managed to attract thousands of video producers and hundreds of millions of views. Its best-known users included The Nostalgia Critic, who used it to host videos from his Channel Awesome network, and Michael Moore, who partnered with the platform to distribute his film Slacker Uprising. Blip pushed its creator-friendly model even further with the launch of Blip Studios in 2012.
At the same time, Blip struggled to turn a profit in a competitive industry, and it was ultimately acquired by Maker Studios in 2013. While Maker has made use of Blip’s technology and partnerships, it eventually marked the actual Blip platform as a vestigial video site and announced the decision to close it a month ago. In its place, Maker has directed Blip users to the content within its own network. “If you are a creator and you have a YouTube channel, we encourage you to apply to the Maker Gen network to take advantage of Maker’s tools and services,” reads a message that now appears on Blip’s homepage. “If you are a viewer, we encourage you to check out the great content from Maker talent at our new flagship site.”
In the end, I propose a toast to Blip’s decade of online video entertainment. And if the site’s demise is making you reminisce about its glory days, well, we know a guy who can help stir up those (and other) nostalgic feelings.
Out of all the podcasts led by YouTube stars, we’re particularly partial to Ear Biscuits, hosted by the inseparable duo of Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. Each week, we will bring you a recap of the latest Ear Biscuits episode, as well as an invitation to listen in and join the conversation.
Laci Green has found her niche. Thanks to videos she describes as “really frank” and “very friendly,” she has emerged as YouTube’s foremost “sexpert.” Her dedication to online sex ed makes for an interesting discussion, and she got deep into their details of her career when she sat down with Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal for an episode of their Ear Biscuits podcast.
Green’s channel is founded on the principle that, when talking about sex, “there’s a lot of weird stuff, and it doesn’t make sense.” From a young age, Green “felt at odds with a lot of the ideas I was being fed” by the Mormon community she grew up in, and as a result, she devoted herself to sex ed–not just to clear things up for her young viewers, but also for herself. When she talks about her target viewer, she references “younger me,” referring to a greener (no pun intended), more naive Laci. “Sex is a big part of your life as a teenager,” she said, “and I felt very ill-equipped to handle it all, so it became an interest of mine.”
The fascinating part of Green’s work on YouTube is the manner in which she has taken a subject that is often uncomfortable for tweens and teens and conveyed it with the same sort of charm and relatability other YouTubers use in their own advice vlogs. Her candor is a big part of her appeal; it’s what allows her to connect to her young audience. “My philosophy has become one that sexuality is a part of life, it’s natural, and it’s healthy. We need to be safe about it, we need to be real about it, and we need to arm people with information. Knowledge is power.”
And where better to arm viewers with knowledge than on YouTube? By buying into the hipness and slang of young Internet users, Green can effectively reach them. “You have to meet people where they are at with these topics,” she explains. “I want to speak the language.”
While Green’s videos have attracted a sizable audience, her career on YouTube has come with its share of hurdles. Most significant was her open crusade against prankster Sam Pepper and his sexually invasive YouTube videos. In confronting Pepper, Green was impeccably confident, but handling the situation was a struggle. “It was really awful,” she admits, “it was a really bad experience for me.” “I don’t like conflict,” she later added, “and I struggle with how to approach calling someone out.”
In the end, she did succeed at calling Pepper out, and she believes “the community learned the lesson,” but at the same time, she still believes there is room for the YouTube community to improve its relationship with sex and gender. “We need to have higher standards for ourselves,” she said, “and have more awareness about what kind of content we’re posting online…this is a new media platform that’s amazing and exciting. We have to be careful, or the patterns and the trends and the problems that are in traditional media will come in and affect this platform. We have this great opportunity. We have to be aware.”
Green will continue to help the community raise awareness, but she can’t do it alone. During the podcast, she reminds us of an important fact: “I’m just one human being.”
The full Ear Biscuit with Green is available on iTunes and Soundcloud.
The move to film a Late Late Show episode at YouTube Space LA is, to say the least, unusual for a major television network. But Corden told Variety the temporary move simply made sense, as it was a grateful nod to the more than 196 million collective video views and over 890,000 subscribers the show has garnered on its YouTube channel to date.
“We were so overwhelmed by the manner in which people were consuming the show on YouTube,” says Corden. “We thought, ‘Has anyone ever done a show from YouTube, celebrating all the stars they’ve created?’ When we realized no one had, we thought, ‘Right. Let’s do it!’”
But planning such a large production outside of CBS’s regular studio for the Corden-hosted late night talk show didn’t come without some of its own challenges. Variety notes it took CBS executives and the Late Late Show crew at six weeks to organize the shooting, book YouTube talent as guests, and plan the layout for the set and the schedule for the show so the entire production still resembled a Late Late Show episode, just with a bit of YouTube flair.
The Late Late Show team also wanted to make sure the content of the episode highlighted the importance of YouTube and the digital stars it helped foster. As such, the opening sequence of the show features an original song by David Javerbaum featuring Rebecca Black, who became (in)famous on YouTube from her pop hit music video “Friday.” Corden’s monologue covers the history of YouTube, and during the show’s bumper sequences (played before and after commercial breaks), Corden eats with animals, which are of course abundant in YouTube videos.
Late Late Show executive producer Ben Winston told Variety his team was also worried about how YouTube fans and viewers would receive the episode. “There’s a worry when you do these things that the YouTube community would think it’s disingenuous, that we’re trying to placate them,” says Winston. “To see all these YouTube characters in the same room — for them even to meet each other — that was quite exciting to be a part of.”
Corden noted how TV has generally been “a little bit naive” and “dismissive” of YouTube stars. “Jenna Marbles and Tyler Oakley have amassed this huge following,” said Corden. “These people would have found a way to break through as avenues have been closed to them on television.” The TV host also explained how proud he was of the ambition of the Late Late Show team in pursuing the YouTube-themed and Space-filmed episode.
