If there is one proud place Google can mark on its virtual jungle of products and services, that’s nothing other than YouTube. Having stood the test of time, here’s where Google lays thrust on building a community up now. In mid-September, the first announcement of YouTube Community beta arrived with a promise to “give a new, simple way to engage with your viewers and express yourself beyond video.” It enabled creators to engage their fans with text, live videos, images, animated GIFs and so on.
Close on the heels of this move, the video-sharing site has invited YouTube Heroes — voluntary contributors — whose primary role is to monitor the spread of ‘inappropriate’ content, intervene and flag such videos. In its nascent stage, the programme also demands from this crowdsourcing initiative to add captions and subtitles to videos and share their knowledge with other users on the YouTube Help Forum. Right now in the enrollment phase, individuals with a “valid YouTube channel and are of legal age” can apply to be the ‘Heroes’, according to Techcrunch.
Going by the video post of YouTube, the Heroes have many benefits to enjoy like the access to the heroes dashboard (the tool to moderate content), a chance to join the community, attend training and exclusive workshops, mass flag videos, access top hero perks being a few of them. The perks are reward points to mark the ‘Hero Level’.
So far, the Heroes initiative has received more disgruntled users than those in favour of it. As the ‘YouTube Heroes’ video crossed a million views since it was posted on September 20, this was evident with over 300K people preferring the dislike button and mere 5K something viewers hitting the thumbs up. The reason is clear right under the video. YouTube has disabled the comment section to the disappointment of viewers to express their views! The operating style of the moderators is another area of concern as to who will oversee their actions finally.
Anyways, opening space for community participation is not a new deal from Google. In the recently launched personalised travel planner app Google Trips, there was this slot for contributors termed ‘Local Guides’, who were to “correct business listing information and write reviews.”
