It’s no doubt that Google is an amazing company that has transformed both media and technology and the overall world in which we live. I’m a huge, unabashed fan of Google – and BIM has been a beta test partner for many recent Google product launches.

But the recent announcement from Google that YouTube is launching YouTube Direct leaves me puzzled and with the general feeling that this is a dud. Here’s why:

• A site/publisher interested in the functionality of YouTube Direct could have done virtually everything described in the press release before this – take user-uploaded videos from YouTube and embed them on the publisher’s site for free. There’s nothing new here but an API (application programming interface) that most sites will have trouble using.

• Google provides no content moderation or screening – so any local site publisher with a strong brand risks having pornography or obscenity show up on the site at worst, or the cost of having an in-house staff member screen the content at best.

• YouTube Direct comes with no promotional support or contesting engine (something that our YouNews™ team here at BIM has found is critical to driving submissions, which is why we do national contests such as Halloween Hijinks and Holiday Lights at least 4 times per year).

• Google provides no sales training to local stations and site publishers on how they should actually be selling and positioning user-generated content and video in their local sales efforts. Selling user-generated content is not an intuitive exercise for local sales staff that have been selling the benefits of professionally produced content for years.

• YouTube Direct is not integrated into an existing content management system, meaning that local staff will need to work within multiple interfaces rather than having all content (station content, third party professional content such as AP, and user-generated content) show up in the same interface.

The one thing I *do* appreciate about YouTube Direct is that it does continue to validate the space and the premise on which YouNews was launched – that there is a need and a market for well-managed user-generated content -- and the fact that Google is paying attention to it (albeit with a flawed strategy) is exciting.

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About Timur Yarnall, CEO Broadcast Interactive Media