I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to phone someone at Google? The chances are you will not get much further than trying. The other day I wanted to have a chat to someone in the UK’s Google office about a project. It was a multi-million pound project too. It wasn’t that I’d just forgotten how to log-in to Gmail. After hours of searching on their own search engine as well as several others, the best I could find was a number for Google’s office in Ireland. When I called that all I got was a recorded message. In other words it seems that for all their touchy-feely branding Google are about as transparent as the Maoist government holding a meeting in a lead-lined politburo chamber. Indeed the secrets behind their money-spinning algorithm is (like the ingredients for Coke or the colonel’s secret recipe) only known to a select few.
When Google took over YouTube it was rather the same story there with little direct engagement between the video sharing site and their users. But gradually signs emerged that Google staff were beginning to communicate with the most successful of YouTubers and encouraging them to boost their hit-rates even higher. Recently something of a gear change has occurred with the release of the YouTube ‘Playbook’. Those familiar with American sports will know that a playbook is a Coach’s personal strategy guide from which he directs the team’s tactics for the next phase of the game (known as a ‘play’). So as one can imagine from the title the Playbook is YouTube’s attempt to offer the advice it so far has only shared with a handful of YouTubers, for anyone who can be bothered to download and read the 70 page document. Like me.
So is it any good? Well, certainly for a novice it’s handy stuff. It offers advice like making the first ten seconds of your video exciting and to make sure that you upload regular content to keep an audience interested. But to be honest for any experienced web video types there’s very little in the Playbook that we didn’t know already. What might be a bit more interesting is revelations on the more refined mysteries of YouTube, such as what makes a video with 200 views rank above one with 20,000? But there’s no reference to that sort of thing.
So ultimately YouTube (and by extension Google) aren’t giving too much away with their Playbook. But hopefully this will just be the start of a greater era of engagement and dialogue between You Tube/Google and its users, which will only be good thing for both parties.
