YouTube Is Looking For The Next Vlogging Star

Anthony Ha

Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and random startups. Previously, he worked as a staff tech writer at Adweek, a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing.... → Learn More

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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YouTube is announcing a new program to nurture the next generation of video bloggers.

The Next Vlogger initiative is part of YouTube Next Creator — where, as the name implies, the site tries to find and mentor future YouTube stars. It already held similar programs for cooking and fitness, as well as nonprofits.

Creative program manager Austin Lau says he’s looking for vloggers who have already “put in some time trying to make YouTube work” and built a following, but who aren’t quite top-tier stars. The winners will receive $5,000 worth of video equipment and $10,000 worth of promotion on YouTube and elsewhere. They’ll participate in educational workshops with Google+, and they’ll receive mentorship from “top vloggers” like Justine Ezarik, a.k.a. iJustine.

Ezarik tells me that she sees this as an extension of the mentorship that she’s already doing through her show Vlog University. She’s hoping to offer a range of advice, technical and non-, she’s even open to working on collaborative videos.

Ezarik has parlayed her YouTube stardom into assorted TV appearances, so she says she’s often asked whether YouTube leads to bigger things. Clearly it can, but she adds, “I think YouTube itself is actually a pretty big thing.”

Once the Next Vlogger program is complete, Lau says he’s hoping the participants, in addition to becoming super-famous, will serve as “ambassadors to the greater YouTube community,” who share what they’ve learned. Lau also says the vloggers could be well-placed to participate in “opportunities not necessarily available to greater public,” like YouTube’s Partner program.

You can apply for the Next Vlogger program here.


Company: YouTube
Website: youtube.com
Launch Date: February 2005
Funding: $11.5M

YouTube provides a platform for you to create, connect and discover the world’s videos. The company recently redesigned the site around its hundreds of millions of channels. Partners from major movie studios, record labels, web original creators, viral stars, and millions more all have channels on YouTube. YouTube is predominantly an ad-supported platform, but also offers rental options for a growing number of movie titles. YouTube was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who...

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Company: Google
Website: google.com
Launch Date: September 7, 1998
IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

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