YouTube doesn't want to 'kingmake'

SAN FRANCISCO -- YouTube doesn't want to stand in the way of its content partners making more money. That was among the messages delivered by Dror Shimshowitz, head of product for YouTube creators and curators, at the TV of Tomorrow show here Wednesday.

"You have to create a lot of value before you can start extracting it," Shimshowitz said during a panel discussion about YouTube's content partners. "It's important to make creators as successful and profitable as possible. We want to grow this ecosystem to be 100 times what it is today. And trying to monetize every little way of making money directly for YouTube is not our strategy."

Other platforms have stepped in to help YouTube content creators--some of whom have complained about the drawbacks of YouTube's platform recently--make more money. Subblime CEO Adam Winnick said his company is helping them connect more directly with advertisers by creating lists of certain products they use which their fans can then buy.

"We're borrowing YouTube's content creators' playbook in a lot of ways, but instead of videos we're talking about lists of things," Winnick said. He added that when a YouTube channel announces it is starting a Subblime page, about 30 percent of its viewers click through the link on its YouTube video description to the Subblime profile.

YouTube changes its policies about how content creators interact with such third parties on a broad basis, Shimshowitz said. "It's not something we want to do on a company by company basis," he said. "We're just a platform and we don't want to kingmake. We want to provide capabilities everyone can take advantage of."

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