How to Make YouTube Rewind Great Again
What YouTube Rewind 2018 Got Wrong
It’s undeniable that YouTube has had a huge impact on internet culture over the past decade and a bit since arriving on the web in 2005. Since then it’s growth has been immeasurable with the trends and individuals that have come out of the platform.
Since 2012, YouTube began to document these moments that helped define the platform that year and highlight the greatness that the community and external celebrities had done for the website. This was when the first YouTube Rewind was uploaded and became an instant hit, the same year that The Avengers, premiered in cinemas worldwide and blew us away with seeing different worlds collide in one cinematic masterpiece.
Seeing this done on the web was still a relatively new thing, with collabs rarely happening due to the distance between creators. And with low numbers of users uploading, it didn’t mean that there were dozens of other large YouTubers within your city.
FreddieW and Ray William Johnson appearing in one video absolutely blew my mind in 2011, as it felt like a crossover episode. So when YouTube Rewind started with Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ which crossed the 1,000,000,000 view mark in 2012, it was shocking to see Rhett & Link, Smosh, Annoying Orange, Nigahiga, iJustine and more dancing altogether.
As the years went on by Rewind grew bigger and better involving creators such as Kid President, PewDiePie, EpicMealTime, VSauce and The Slow Mo Guys. You could see the production levels step up but also where the issues that plague it today started to seep in.
The golden years of YouTube Rewind are arguably between 2012–2014 before there is a significant dip in quality and an increase in the dislike button being used.
So, what went wrong?
YouTube had several changes to the platform that resulted in advertisement and investors coming first over creators. As a creator myself from 2006, it was frustrating to see how they began to treat users that helped make the platform what it was. However, this move by YouTube was understandable and in the long run would be better for us all, as the more successful YouTube became as a platform, the more successful its top creators could become.
The first issue that Rewind faced was that as the platform grew larger and larger, year-on-year, there were more popular creators and YouTube had to find a way to cover them all in their recap of the year. In 2010 there were only five channels with at least one million subscribers, compared to 2018 which had over 12,000 channels with other a million.
Much harder to condense into eight minutes right?
It became harder to please everyone and so everything got diluted as YouTube tried to include as many as they could, sometimes reaching 75+ YouTubers.
The second issue was the increase of shoehorned media and corporate entities amongst the ‘real’, authentic creators that were amongst the biggest on the platform. We saw the rise of Late Night Show hosts such as Conan, Fallon and Kimmel force themselves into Rewind where they didn’t really fit and stuck out like a sore thumb. YouTube obviously wanted them in because this would help investors and advertisers invest into the website if they saw recognisable faces instead of just Jenna Marbles or Lily Singh.
Each YouTube Rewind seems to drift further and further away from what made those early Rewinds so special, and that’s the simplicity of creator crossovers. Seeing them have fun and not being forced into ridiculous concepts where they are on screen for 2–3 seconds.
Many thought that 2017 happened to be quite poor, however, after this week’s release of YouTube Rewind 2018 that perception has changed. If you look online you will see a great amount of disappointment and hate for this years Rewind due to the problems I highlighted becoming more intense. With the exclusion of some of the most relevant users and moments of the year being avoided to please advertisers.
YouTube is currently in a position where they need to start getting the community back onside and looking forward to Rewinds at the end of the year. I think for future YouTube Rewinds it would be useful to take a step back and analyse what worked in the past and really strip down back to the basics. Create the enjoyment and special year-end review that makes viewers and creators alike nostalgic of the past year and all of the great moments we had together as a community.
YouTube is an incredible platform that I have spent the majority of my life creating for or watching. The success I had on the site impacted my life’s trajectory in ways that I can not explain to you and has taught me so much, making me a better, talented and knowledgeable person.
Hopefully, as the site continues to grow and develop it can find a place where it manages to please both the community and business side of running YouTube — and I think that starts with something small, like fixing Rewinds and making them fun again.
