How do you become a star on YouTube? With more than 65,000 videos uploaded to the site each day, breaking out is nowhere near as easy as uploading the video you made in your living room. Two kinds of video have success on YouTube, says Michael Powers, senior project manager for YouTube: Those so unusual they grab viewers' attention, and those done by people who develop into YouTube personalities (real or imaginary, as in the case of lonelygirl15) by making multiple videos and building a loyal audience.
More of these personalities are getting 100,000 to 600,000 clicks per video as they learn what the YouTube community responds to best. "The community of YouTube is starting to figure out how to entertain each other consistently," Powers said. YouTube says it plans to keep its attention on DIY-ers even after its recent purchase by Internet Goliath Google, a partnership that has some fearing YouTube will become too commercial.
Michael "Mikey" Inouye, 21, and Abbe Groh, 20, Oregon Inouye, an English major at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., already was making videos to moderate success when Groh visited him this summer. They filmed themselves hanging out, and the suggestively titled "Abbe does Dallas" got 200,000 views its first day.
Since then, they've made other videos of themselves goofing off. They've both started to build a fan base Inouye's "Minouye" channel and Groh's "abbegirl" channel are among the most subscribed to on YouTube. Inouye pins 70 percent of his current YouTube success on Groh's sex appeal.
Videos with his pretty, blond friend get many more views than his solo ones. Inouye knows how to play the system. He makes sure an inviting shot of "I've discovered YouTube is a giant trash bin, and in order to get out of it, you have to make a little trash," Inouye said.
Groh, who dropped out of Willamette, is making her own videos too. She says she gets hundreds of messages a day from fans, mostly guys, and she tries to answer them all. People have accused her of having a production company behind her, like lonelygirl15, but she says she's a solo shop: "I would love to be another lonelygirl15, because then I would be getting paid.
I am not a professional actor." she said. Joe Bereta, 23, and Luke Barats, 22, Spokane, Wash.
The two friends, who met doing improv theater at Gonzaga University and now perform in the same improv comedy troupe in Spokane, Wash., just got a one-year deal with NBC to develop a TV pilot, thanks to the attention their short comedy videos received on YouTube. They got their start making videos in college to amuse friends and for class assignments, said Bereta, who was a broadcast major.
They put them on a Web site and started posting them to YouTube earlier this year. They broke out this spring with a video called "Mother's Day," Bereta said. It's about two brothers who fight as one tries to get the other to pose for a photo to give their mother.
The video got the YouTube kiss-of-luck: a placement on the "Featured Videos" page and 1 million hits. "From there, it kind of blew up," Bereta told RedEye Since then, Bereta says they've put up one or two new videos a month. They've done a catchy theme song and a video called "Completely Uncalled For" that features Barats slapping Bereta.
The slap-fest has been watched more than 1.8 million times. The NBC deal came as a surprise.
"I'd like to say we did something special, but all I can say is we got lucky," Bereta said. "It was 50 percent luck, 50 percent hard work." And hard work makes a difference, he said.
Technology allows almost anyone to post a video on YouTube, Bereta says, but he and Barats, who work for the same film and video production house, put more time and effort into the writing, shooting and editing of their videos than many of the others posting on YouTube do. 'I was instantly addicted. I still can't stop' Paul "Renetto" Robinett, 39, Canal Winchester, Ohio Four months after starting to post videos on YouTube, Paul Robinett known on Web as Renetto, a Moby-looking bald guy with thick black glasses was recognized in the real world.
Several people browsing Robinett's Ohio candle store last week asked the 39 year old if he was Renetto from YouTube. He said yes then promptly made a video about it. Robinett is a frequent contributor to YouTube, posting daily.
The father of four gets anywhere from 10,000 to 300,000 views per video, though a clip of him eating Mentos, drinking Diet Coke and spitting it all up got more than 2 million. "It's crazy it's totally insane," said Robinett, who calls himself "self-unemployed," meaning he's got fingers in various business ventures but has plenty of time to build his YouTube world. The path to becoming an Internet celebrity was accidental, Robinett says.
He was surfing on YouTube with a new MacBook Pro and decided to try it himself. Using the camera in the laptop, he made a video in the character of Renetto, who speaks in a nasally voice. Soon, Robinett was posting more.
He's put his family online (including his kids and his dad when he forgot to pick up Robinett from the airport) and stood on his roof to protest world poverty. That was requested by an ad agency, Robinett said. "It's like reality TV on steroids," Robinett said.
"I was instantly addicted. I still can't stop." The YouTube community has let him know they love him or hate his guts.
But the haters can't stop him. He's made a couple videos to let them know. Steve Gadlin, 30, Evanston Gadlin, a Web programmer by day and half of the comedy team Sasha and The Noob by night, posted his first videos to YouTube several weeks ago as a way to put what he calls his "silly stuff" in front of more viewers.
Under the name of his production company, Blewt! Gadlin posted episodes of "Talkin' Funny," Sasha and The Noob's Tuesday night cable-access show, and clips called "Silly Sessions" that feature Gadlin and other local performers doing crazy dances and making funny faces. So far, response has been small.
The most popular videos have been viewed 100 to 200 times, others a few dozen. Gadlin thinks most of those were their friends. "I don't think our things translate as well" to YouTube, Gadlin says.
One possible reason: "Talkin' Funny" episodes are 30 minutes long, while many popular YouTube clips are much shorter. And maybe the kind of live comedy Gadlin and his friends do at The Playground Theater in Lakeview every Saturday night (a game show called "Don't Spit the Water") is funnier on stage than on screen. On Saturday, Gadlin and friends made their first video exclusively for YouTube, a musical parody of The Monkees called The Clapkees.
They went to Foster Beach, put on Beatles wigs and filmed themselves dancing and being chased around by a gorilla. "That, for me, was a really cool moment," Gadlin said. "We had this idea a long time ago, and now we're actually doing it.
" The one-minute video got 330 views in six days. Gadlin's OK with that. "It's for our own entertainment," he said.
"The real stuff is happening on stage Saturdays or live talking to viewers on Tuesdays.
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