Connections between all bloggers. Constant contact between bloggers and viewers. Lifehacks, experiments and new skills
YouTube stars are often accused of living luxurious lives and making money from advertising. On Wednesday, May 10, this was compounded by accusations that Russian authorities control popular YouTube channels through media holdings. The author of the investigation drew a detailed diagram and showed who receives money from pro-Kremlin structures and for what. I figured out why this is not so and why bloggers actually contact TV producers.
Attention! All arguments are charged for persuasiveness with quotes.
Probably, it was this legendary phrase that inspired the creator of the Vastrik.ru blog, Vasily Zubarev, when he compiled a diagram of connections in Russian YouTube and tried to find out “who is launching new hype shows and why.” Zubarev, who moved from Moscow to Lithuania more than two years ago, decided to prove to subscribers that the most popular platform for video bloggers “is beginning to be actively flooded with propaganda,” and connected arrows between Moscow and St. Petersburg YouTube stars in an attempt to find their connections with the Kremlin.
The author of the diagram warned that he does not pretend to break the covers and make loud conclusions, but many perceived the infographics in exactly this way. Some publications submitted material in the style of “The scheme has been revealed...”, others tried to discuss it with the bloggers mentioned by Zubarev.
In fact, the diagram can be viewed more as a rough sketch of the blogger clans that have developed in Russian YouTube. Most video hosting stars do not work with the affiliate program directly, but use the services of agencies. Their representatives provide technical support and content promotion, and bloggers from the same “partnership” often attend the same events and shoot joint videos.
Zubarev decided to build on the “Druzhko Show” - a new channel on YouTube, where three episodes of the program with the meme host Sergei Druzhko have already been released. He is loved for his unique set of phrases for all occasions from the program “Inexplicable, but true.” It seems that almost every blogger who inserts various fragments into their videos has at least once used the charismatic Druzhko.
According to the author of the schemes, “Druzhko Show” is filmed in the studio of the Internet publication Life. He also mentions that the show’s columns feature two so-called special correspondents - Kirill Lavrukhin and Lev Shaginyan. The latter, judging by his Instagram, previously worked as a correspondent for Life, and the first is involved in the creation rollers for the project "Raisin".
According to the head of the News Media holding (which owns Life) Aram Gabrelyanov, the native advertising agency Izyum is a project of the former deputy editor-in-chief of Life Darina Yevtushenko. He called himself only an investor, ready to invest up to three million dollars in the project.
Nevertheless, the connections between Druzhko and Life seemed sufficient to the blogger to draw an arrow from the project straight to the Kremlin. He argued this by saying that Life is a “pro-Kremlin publication.”
Another fictitious “proof” of the Kremlin’s hand was the unreliable fact that the production of “Druzhko Show” is allegedly connected with the TNT television channel. From 2005 to 2008, the channel aired the program “Inexplicable, but Fact,” dedicated to investigations of various mystical phenomena. In 2016, VKontakte users suddenly remembered her: the public page “Sergei Druzhko for all occasions” gained thousands of subscribers in a few days, and then it was suddenly blocked.
It turned out that the TNT4 channel, which was just re-broadcasting Druzhko’s program, did not like the use of excerpts of the show several seconds long. Representatives of the TV channel tried to “make friends” with the public, but nothing came of it, and the community is still blocked “at the request of TNT-Teleset JSC.” Perhaps this is why the Friendly Show does not use excerpts from old episodes with the host.
From TNT the arrow points to another popular show - Big Russian Boss Show, hosted by rappers Big Russian Boss and Young Pimp. Despite the fact that the young people are hiding behind bushy beards and masks with the logo, their true identities have long been revealed on the Internet, and their popularity came long before their high-profile appearance on YouTube.
Zubarev painstakingly compares the studios in which the Big Russian Boss Show and the morning program on TNT called “This is Morning” are filmed and comes to the conclusion that they are identical. The blogger tried to explain the “Kremlin trace” by saying that the TV channel belongs to.
The Big Russian Boss Show team does not hide the fact that the project is being made by Comedy Club Production employees (in 2015, Gazprom Media acquired a stake in the company through the TNT channel - 75 percent minus one share). For example, in one of the videos, the author of the channel “Slumdog Millionaire” Timur Dzhankezov, when visiting the office of the Comedy Club, twice shows the audience a door with a Big Russian Boss Show sign.
The former screenwriter of Comedy Club Production also says that members of the TNT team are working on the show. According to him, television people are also involved in Druzhko’s show. It’s easy to find Boss screenwriters online: for example, in your resume published in open access, openly writes about his involvement in both the BRB show and the Comedy Club projects.
Zubarev, in turn, refers to the following “fact”: The Boss came to one of the Comedy Club television episodes as a guest, which means he has a connection with the TNT team. The blogger also claims that the Yoola network is behind the creation of the Big Russian Boss Show, but there is no information about this on the affiliate program’s website.
The scheme also mentions another partner of the Yoola network - the editor-in-chief of the publication and the host of the author’s YouTube show “vDud”. Zubarev also considers him pro-Kremlin - they say that Dud previously hosted programs on the federal channels Match TV and “Russia 2”, and already in “vDud” he invited the rapper L’One and the author of the blog “Khach’s Diary” Amiran Sardarov. Such guests, according to the creator of the “propagandist scheme,” can also be considered “pro-Kremlin,” since they are associated with the BlackStar production center and the rapper, who performed the track “My best friend is President Putin.”
The author of the investigation also recalled the past merits of the “Thank You, Eva” studio, which once, in addition to supporting the best Runet bloggers in the person of Ilya Maddison, and the creative association “I Like” (now the “BREAD” group), became famous for appearing in correspondence of the former press secretary of Nashi posted online. After this, bloggers began to be considered “pro-Kremlin,” especially since the creator of the studio did not deny the presence of certain powerful customers.
Degtyarev also created the My Duck’s Vision studio, which quickly gained popularity thanks to numerous absurd parodies of propaganda videos. The video creators have developed their own style with a lot of effects and complex graphics.
With Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that Degtyarev published information on his VKontakte page about the removal of the video, citing a fragment about the studio’s non-involvement in its creation. For some reason, no one remembered the imitators of My Duck’s Vision or the same Zhurov that flooded YouTube.
screenshot from YouTube
YouTube is no longer just entertainment for schoolchildren, but a real political tool: in recent months, even oppositionist Alexei Navalny and oligarch Alisher Usmanov have become video bloggers. At the same time, it is not they who are gaining millions of views, but young people playing video games, performing stand up and making videos on how to apply cosmetics correctly. First place in the top 100 Russian YouTube occupies “EeOneGuy” (Ivangai) - the channel of 21-year-old video blogger Ivan Rudsky, who has already collected more than 11.6 million subscribers with videos about his life and earned money to move to Los Angeles! For those who don’t scour YouTube, we have prepared a selection of 11 video bloggers whose names it’s shameful not to know today.
If you don't understand any words, there is a dictionary at the end.
Ivangai
Who it: Ivan Rudskoy is a Ukrainian and Russian let's player and video blogger. Now lives in Los Angeles.
Films lifestyle blogs: he sings in videos, plays computer games, does something on a dare, answers questions from subscribers, records parodies. According to media reports, the main audience of the channel is teenage girls.
Ivan Rudsky's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: 11.6 million people.
What he became famous for: played Minecraft, reviewed games, recorded the track “The Nerd’s Song.”
Most popular video: #Do it your way— 30.5 million views.
Political position: in April 2017, Life.ru accused Ivangay of actively posting “anti-Russian pictures” on social networks three years ago, and subsequently erased the entries.
In August 2016, he surpassed Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in the number of subscribers on VKontakte, commenting on this event with the post: “There is no second place, but you are hanging in there. All the best, Have a good mood and health."
Quote:“Hayu-hai, Ivangai is with you!”
Max +100500
Who it: Maxim Golopolosov is a 27-year-old video blogger, author and host of the show “+100500”, which airs on the AdamThomasMoran channel.
Max Golopolosov's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers:"AdamThomasMoran" - 8.2 million people, fifth place in top YouTube among Russian-language channels. Max also has a personal channel "MoranDays"(1.1 million subscribers), where he mainly talks about travel.
What he became famous for: Max is a real “dinosaur” of YouTube. He was one of the first in Russia to start making video reviews. For many years now (since 2010), once a week Max has been making selections of the funniest, most ridiculous and interesting videos. His show is the Russian version of Ray William Johnson's show “Equals Three” (“=3”). Just a few months after the first release, Max gained popularity.
Main features: The show is filmed against a leopard print backdrop. This, the only thing that Max and his friends came across when creating the first videos, eventually became the signature feature of the program.
Max shows different videos and then peppers them with his ironic comments. There is a lot of swearing in the releases.
Most popular video: Episodes of the show consistently receive millions of views. The most popular of them called “Loch!..! (person of non-traditional sexual orientation)" released 6 years ago, to date it has been watched by more than 12 million people. The issue included, in particular, a funny interview that gave rise to several memes, including: “Bom-bom, got it, no?”, “No, well, you’re an Indian.”
Political position: Max noted that he tries to stay away from politics. At the same time, the show contains videos on political topics. For example, in one of them, Max ridiculed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who found it difficult to give an interview and answer a simple question.
Kate Clapp
Who is she: Katya Klap (in the world Ekaterina Trofimova, 24 years old) is the “grandmother” of Russian YouTube. Your first channel "FoggyDisaster" started it back in 2008. On it, Katya posts comedy sketches, musical parodies of show business stars, reviews of films and books.
She launched her second YouTube channel, TheKateClapp, in 2010. Here Klap shares videos with his subscribers about travel, everyday life, cosmetics, food, cats and “girl problems” (how to deal with acne and build love with a guy), and also answers questions.
Katya Klap's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: the FoggyDisaster channel has 1.6 million subscribers, and the TheKateClapp channel has more than 5.5 million.
What she became famous for: Um, it's hard to say. She says that Jesus himself motivates her to make videos.
Most of all, Katya’s subscribers love her sketch show “Challenge Accepted.” The essence of the show is that Clap fulfills the requests of his subscribers (sometimes very strange). For example, Katya Klap can eat a few hot peppers or a couple of lemons in front of the camera, apply makeup without a mirror, or wrap herself in a carpet.
Main features: Clap's videos always have a lot of pink, glitter, toys, cute girly trinkets and just tons of cosmetics (pink eye shadow, pink blush, pink lipstick).
Most popular video: Katya Klap's most popular video is about how she gets ready in the morning: waking up, eating breakfast, putting on makeup. That's all. The video “My Morning” has already been watched by 8.1 million people.
Quote:“Stay positive and creative, all the best to you!”
Sasha Spielberg
Who is she: Sasha Spielberg (Alexandra Balkovskaya, 20 years old) - video blogger, singer, gamer. Spielberg started her YouTube channel in May 2010, when she was only 13 years old. She shot her first videos in English - these were video greetings for her friends from Cyprus.
According to unconfirmed information, Sasha Spielberg’s father is Alexander Balkovsky, co-owner of the Z-Agency studio (a division of Timur Bekmambetov’s film company Bazelevs, which deals with advertising and promotion on social networks and YouTube). On Russian YouTube, there is an opinion that Sasha Spielberg is not a “blogger of the people,” but simply a successfully completed social project of her father, whose business is affiliated with the authorities. Hardcore YouTubers are sure that Spielberg’s subscribers are screwed, because many of her videos receive more dislikes than likes.
Now Sasha Spielberg films and uploads videos on her channel about how she spends hours playing The Sims, discusses where she gets so many strange cosmetics from, shares her dreams, and also publishes her videos.
Speaking of dreams: two months ago Sasha posted one of the most talked about videos - bathing in a bathtub with chips. In the video, Spielberg admits that it was her dream to bathe in her favorite chips.
Sasha Spielberg's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: 4.9 million people.
What she became famous for: Sasha Spielberg began to be recognized not only by teenage girls after the video blogger began dating politicians and spoke in the State Duma.
Political position: In March, Sasha Spielberg took part in a meeting of YouTubers dedicated to the issues of popularizing education and culture among young people. The meeting was organized by Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky. With him in April, Sasha Spielberg recorded a mi-mi-mi-blog, where she asked the minister about her first kiss and, at the same time, actively supported the projects of the Ministry of Culture.
On May 22, Sasha Spielberg made a triumphant speech from the State Duma rostrum. Many bloggers on YouTube, journalists and ordinary viewers criticized the girl and even accused her of hypocrisy. Thus, Sasha Spielberg stated that she has been “transparent since she was 13 years old” and actively communicates with her subscribers, which is what she recommended to the people’s representatives. It’s just that on Sasha Spielberg’s YouTube channel all comments are closed, as well as on her other social networks.
Most popular video: video in a duet with the famous DJ Leonid Rudenko “Melt the Ice”. The clip was watched by 11.9 million people.
Quote:“I’m not a supporter of extremes... rallies over the fact that someone is wearing yellow sneakers” (about Alexei Navalny’s FBK investigative film “He’s Not Dimon to You”).
Nikolay Sobolev
Who it: 23-year-old Nikolai Sobolev is one of the authors and founders of the prank project “Rakamakafo Pranks”, as well as the host of the channel “SOBOLEV” (“Life YouTube”).
Ivangay (in one of the last videos Nikolai Sobolev stated that Ivangay is a drug addict. However, in the next video Sobolev said that he was wrong and apologized to the gamer).
Most popular video: on the channel “Rakamakafo” - video "Fight with a girl"(11 million views). In the author’s blog “SOBOLEV” there is a video about “Blue Whales” (9 million).
Main features: Nikolai Sobolev is an intelligent, handsome YouTube guy who records all his videos against a brick wall in fashionable jackets and with perfect hair.
Quote:“My secret is that I simply have an unbreakable belief in myself, and no one has ever been able to prove to me that I can’t do something. I am Nikolai Sobolev. And I can do anything!”
Yury Khovansky
Who it: 27-year-old video blogger, the first stand-up comedian on the RuNet, one of the judges of Versus Battle, an aspiring rapper.
Yuri Khovansky's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: 2.8 million people.
What he became famous for: Initially, his stand-up show “Russian Stand-up” was not very popular, but with the support of video blogger Ilya Maddison and thanks to a huge number of conflicts, Khovansky gradually acquired an audience of millions.
Khovansky is one of the most scandalous bloggers on the Runet. He publicly insulted Viktor Tsoi and Pot. In 2014, after a spat on Twitter, he called out Black Star Inc label member Christina Si on Versus. Instead of a battle, the girl recorded a video “Yurik”, which received almost 5.8 million views, with the message “You went against the Armenians in vain.” Later, Khovansky said that Christina “set” the “Armenian mafia” on him - two guys beat him in the front door.
In addition to the scandal with Christina Si, Khovansky has a protracted conflict with Noize MC. The performer did not react to this for a long time, but during Versus Main Event 2, which took place on the roof of a high-rise building in St. Petersburg, Noize approached and hit the comedian in the face. Khovansky tried to answer, but they were quickly separated. This did not stop Yura; he continues to dedicate video clips to Noize MC.
Khovansky has a serious conflict with video blogger Dmitry Larin. After a series of mutual insults, the climax of their showdown was battle lisping Khovansky with burry Larin at the Versus site. The video unexpectedly became the second most popular during the entire existence of the project (on this moment number of video views - 31.3 million). Khovansky emerged victorious from the fight: all three judges gave him the championship.
Main features: Khovansky is a well-known lover of beer and alcohol in general (he drinks in almost all videos, he even hosts a show about cocktails, Russian Drink Time).
Most popular video: the release of Versus appeared on the Internet in March 2016, and already in October Khovansky imagined himself to be a real rapper and, in the wake of the hype, recorded a video "Dad is in the building" with 27.8 million views. This is currently the most popular video on his channel.
In November, Yura made a diss track against Noize MC "Noise"(almost 14.2 million more views). This caused a negative reaction from the popular rapper Oxxxymiron: who had previously been on friendly terms with Khovansky, Miron wrote on Twitter that Yura “played too much” and “a blogger, in principle, cannot present anything to a creator (even a weak one) on his own field.” Yura also benefited from this situation - he shot an ironic video "Forgive me, Oksimiron"- almost 25.9 million views.
Two more of Khovansky’s videos have about 14 million views. This is a parody of the song “The Ice Is Melting” - “And Khovansky drinks beer” and a joint video with Dmitry Malikov “Ask Your Mom”.
Political position: Khovansky noted that one cannot be apolitical to everything that happens, while creative person It is very difficult, when speaking out, not to be accused of “excessive opposition or, on the contrary, Putinism.” “I don’t understand how people have so much time to search for political subtext in any nonsense,” said the video blogger.
At the same time, he has a comic song about Putin with the words “Putin is the start of censorship on the Internet, Putin is the best thing on the planet.”
In June 2014, Khovansky was the author of a petition to the Ministry of Health demanding that State Duma deputy Elena Mizulina be checked for mental health because of her “absurd bills,” including statements from the cycle “to ban absolutely everything on the Internet.” In a short time, the petition received more than 116 thousand signatures.
Quote:"I'll be a gangster!"
Eldar Dzharakhov
Who it: 22-year-old video blogger, musician.
Dzharakhov publishes lifestyle blogs, records sketches, shoots video clips as part of the “Successful Group” and the “Click-Clack” team with Ilyich (Little big). A month ago I participated in Versus BPM with another video blogger - Dmitry Larin (the third most popular battle in the history of Versus - 19.3 million views). The victory was not awarded to anyone (but, in our humble opinion, Dzharakhov won - Larin constantly forgot the words, missed the beats and eventually gave birth to a new meme about 2015).
Eldar Dzharakhov's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: about 1.8 million people (another 2.2 million people are channel subscribers "Successful group", which included Dzharakhov and his friend Alexander Smirnov - Sasha Tilex).
What he became famous for: The first success came to Dzharakhov and Tileks in 2012, when they recorded the anthem of the popular public “MDK” (more than 6 million views on YouTube) and the community began to support young performers.
Political position: on Twitter in March, Dzharakhov advised subscribers to show their parents “a film about Dimon” if they had not already seen it. He called Navalny’s election campaign... (awesome), noting that it was “interesting to watch.” He expressed surprise that the media were silent about the rallies that took place in the country on March 26.
Eldar Dzharakhov was associated with the reason for the removal of the video “Hitler 1945/Navalny 2018 - We can repeat it!” from YouTube. His representative denied Eldar’s connection with the creation and deletion of the video.
Druzhko Show
Who it: 48-year-old Sergei Druzhko made a bomb comeback. Do you remember his imperishable program on TNT “Inexplicable, but true”, where Druzhko with a poker face talked about UFOs and the humanoid Alyoshenka? In April 2017, Sergey Druzhko became the host on the YouTube channel Druzhko Show (the production of which is indirectly supported by Life). In the show, Druzhko actually parodies himself. He speaks deliberately seriously about frivolous and sometimes stupid trends on the Internet. Sergei Druzhko is looking for mysticism and universal conspiracy everywhere and closely monitors fluctuations on the memes exchange.
Sergei Druzhko's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: In just one month of existence, more than 2.5 million people have subscribed to this channel! Bloggers from Russian YouTube have been gathering such an audience for years.
Main features: charisma! And some mystical music in the background.
Most popular video: the first episode of the Druzhko Show - 13.4 million people.
Quotes (turned memes):“Easy”, “Sergey Druzhko is with you. Let's hype a little?", "Strong statement. Of course, I won’t check it.”
Larin
Who it: Dmitry Larin (according to some sources, Utkin) is a video blogger, author of the show “Larin Against”, the video chat “Night on Earth”, “What to Read”, “Larin Walks” and others.
screenshot from YouTube
Number of subscribers: just over 2 million people.
What he became famous for: criticism of other video bloggers. His first surge in popularity came from a video about Andrei Nefedov.
Larin gained real fame after a conflict with video blogger Yuri Khovansky. Larin also competed against Eldar Dzharakhov (with Khovansky and Dzharakhov there were Versus battles with millions of views) and Nikolai Sobolev (the latter even recorded a video challenging Larin to a battle, but Dmitry refused).
Main features: burr, the image of an intellectual, bile and cynicism, classic suits.
Most popular video:#LARINPOTIV - Yuri Khovansky's video challenge on Versus, received more than 19 million views.
Political position: called the cult of Victory in the Great Patriotic War “terrible.” He stated that he supported the accusations in the situation with the case of blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky. “The law is the law, whatever it may be,” noted Larin.
At the end of May 2017, in one of his streams he refused to talk about the authorities and Alexei Navalny. “I don’t care about politics,” Larin said. He does not consider it right to “instill a subjective opinion regarding such large-scale processes,” since many people listen to him.
Quote:“I despise you, scum.”
Khach's Diary
Who it: 31-year-old Amiran Sardarov is, according to some sources, a Yazidi Kurd by nationality. He is very proud of his origins. Sardarov does not have a school certificate - he completed only three grades of primary school.
In June 2015, he created a channel where he began to tell subscribers in a diary format about his life together with his best friends T-Killah (singer Alexander Tarasov) and Oleg Miami.
Sardarov, Tarasov and Miami film their dialogues, reviews of new sports cars, interviews with successful businessmen and media managers. In the “Diary of a Vacationer” section, Tarasov and Miami talk about their travels. At the same time, Sardarov has not been able to obtain Russian citizenship for several years and has never been abroad.
Amiran Sardarov often holds charity events, helps children with incurable diseases, gives them gifts, organizes holidays, concerts or races for them in evening Moscow.
Amiran Sardarov's VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: 2 million people.
Main features: Amiran Sardarov wears exclusively black and white T-shirts of the same model, drives a blue BMW i8, dates only girls of model appearance, and denies love.
Amiran Sardarov's laughter is like the cry of a wounded seagull. It's so funny that the blogger created another channel in 2015 "Chaika Warehouse", where he uploads backstage from video filming for the main channel.
Amiran Sardarov launched a #daikhachu flash mob some time ago, attracting famous people for an interview. The founder of the media holding NewsMedia (Life) Aram Gabrelyanov and the head of Tinkoff Bank Oleg Tinkov have already given the idea.
Most popular video: Amiran and T-Killah’s video “It’s normal” - 17.5 million views.
BadComedian
Who it: Evgeny Bazhenov is a 26-year-old video blogger, film critic, and stand-up comedian. He created the YouTube channel in 2011. Bazhenov shows reviews of domestic and (much less often) foreign films. The tone of all BadComedian reviews is critical. Most often, the blogger unleashes a barrage of criticism on comedies directed by Zhora Kryzhovnikov and films starring actor and bodybuilder Alexander Nevsky.
It’s safe to say that BadComedian is now the main film critic of Russian YouTube.
Evgeniy Bazhenov’s VKontakte page
Number of subscribers: 1.9 million people.
What he became famous for: openly speaks his opinion about Russian films. Not everyone liked such frankness. Thus, actor-bodybuilder Alexander Nevsky called BadComedian a hater, and Mikhail Galustyan said that Bazhenov’s criticism is “unconstructive.” True, there are those who liked BadComedian’s criticism - rapper Basta and singer Alexei Vorobyov.
Main features: BadComedian takes a very detailed approach to the study of all films. In his own words, he watches each film at least three times to notice all the details.
Most popular video: BadComedian's review of the film "Hack the Bloggers" - more than 5.7 million views.
Ruslan Sokolovsky
Another popular blogger of recent times has become Ruslan Sokolovsky. He was not among the top ten popular bloggers (he currently has 384 thousand subscribers on his personal channel), but after his arrest and criminal prosecution he became one of the most famous video bloggers in the country.
Now Ruslan Sokolovsky publishes videos on the channel. The first episode of the new blog was viewed by 1.3 million people.
Don’t forget to watch the next episode of “Sokolovsky on the site” today at 19.00 Moscow time.
Dictionary:
Video blogger- a person who shoots a video and posts it on the Internet.
Let's Play is a trend in the world of video games where players post and comment on their gameplay.
Minecraft- computer game.
Stand up is a genre of comedy in which one comedian performs in front of an audience, usually speaking directly to the audience.
Versus Battle- Russian Internet show in the genre of rap battles.
Versus BPM— format of fights on musical beats and without judges.
Runet- some Internet sites with main content in Russian.
Battle- competition in any creative direction.
Hate, hate, hater- hatred, hate, hater.
Diss is a track whose purpose is to show disrespect to someone.
Public- an abbreviated name for the term “public page”.
MDK- one of the popular humorous communities on the VKontakte social network, with more than 8 million subscribers.
Stream— live broadcast on YouTube and other video hosting sites.
Hype, hype- hype; one who strives in every way to create a stir around himself.
Backstage- what is left behind the scenes.
Comeback- return.
Pokerface- a stone face that does not express emotions.
Memes, memes- pictures or phrases that ironically or sarcasticly describe a situation.
How true is the infographic about Russian YouTube, according to which the Druzhko Show is a Kremlin project, Dud is a colleague of Black Star, and the Big Russian Boss show is the brainchild of the TNT channel.
Still from Druzhko Show
The creator of the Vastrik.ru blog, Vasily Zubarev, published an infographic dedicated to the Russian segment of YouTube. According to the author, video hosting began to be “actively flooded with propaganda,” so he decided to tell readers about which bloggers are associated with well-known media resources and companies.
In his blog, Zubarev already talked about how to properly search for information about people on the Internet and use open sources. He organized several interactive contests for readers, challenging them to find hard-to-find information using search engines.
The author stated that he used information from open sources, including a paid registry, to prepare the scheme legal entities"Circuit". Zubarev marked unverified information on the infographic with dotted arrows and asked readers to help verify the insights.
The infographic covered more than 20 famous Russian bloggers from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The authors themselves called the scheme “far-fetched” and “lazy,” but partly true.
Moscow
The blogger started with Sergei Druzhko's show, which launched at the end of April. Zubarev used already known information that the creators of the program were allegedly the native agency Izyum. In March 2017, Life owner Aram Gabrelyanov promised to invest in it.
The author calls Life “the main pro-Kremlin publication” and notes that Druzhko’s show is filmed in the channel’s studio, and Izyum employees act as presenters. He stated that the show is allegedly being produced by the TNT channel, which in the past aired Druzhko’s program “Inexplicable, but true.”
Zubarev recalled the bloggers’ project “Thank You, Eva” that existed in 2010-2012, which was accused of PR for Vladimir Putin before the presidential elections. The author named the former press secretary of the Nashi movement, and now an SMM specialist, Kristina Potupchik, and the founder of the My Duck's Vision studio, Yuri Degtyarev (he never hid this), who were convicted of financing from the Kremlin, as the creators of the association.
Video bloggers Ruslan Usachev, Sam Nickel, members of the group “Khleb” and Ilya Maddison collaborated with “Thank you, Eva” at different periods. Zubarev connected with them Yuri Dud, Amiran Sardarov from “The Diary of a Khach,” Danila Poperechny and Yuri Frost.
According to the author, these bloggers cooperate with the promotion agency Yoola (former name - VSP Group) and are associated with the Black Star music label. Zubarev cited as evidence only the fact that Dud in the first issues interviewed the creator of “The Diary of a Khach” and the rapper L’One.
Judging by Instagram Yoola, Dud joined the agency in early May. The account also mentions other bloggers like Maryana Rozhkova or Yan Lapotkova.
However, there is no official list of partners on the agency’s website. Blogger Danila Poperechny on his Twitter criticized the author of the infographic for false information. In the conversation, he clarified that he was never involved with Yoola.
I actually did videos on Thank You Eve. But then suddenly an arrow goes from me to Yoola, with the meaningful inscription “consists of”. Where the author got this data from is unclear.
Danila Poperechny, blogger
Zubarev also stated that Yoola is promoting the Big Russian Boss show. The rapper's agency's Facebook page mentioned once - as one of the nominees for the VKLYBE.TV AWARDS.
It is known that the filming of the Big Russian Boss show is carried out by the Medium Quality association, which also films Stand Up and Comedy Club on TNT. On the association's YouTube channel published fragments from the programs. The rapper came to one of latest issues"Comedy".
According to the author of the scheme, the program “This is Such a Morning” for TNT is filmed in the same studio as the show “Bossa”, on which the creative producer of Comedy Club Production Anton Kurilchik is working. At the Neforum Awards he received an award for best show Russian YouTube instead of the hosts of the Big Russian Boss Show.
Petersburg
In an infographic on bloggers from St. Petersburg, Zubarev noted that he could not find connections with “state holdings.” In the Moscow scheme, he called the Life media holding and the TNT channel “state-owned”. The first is owned by Aram Gabrelyanov’s company “Media Content”, and the second belongs to Gazprom-Media. The state controls 50.2% of Gazprom shares.
Zubarev started the St. Petersburg scheme with the local advertising agency WildJam, created by former VKontakte marketing director Yaroslav “Elf-Merchant” Andreev. According to the author, blogger Nikolai Sobolev and the Versus Battle project collaborate with him.
Representatives of the battle platform did not announce cooperation with WildJam, and videos with Sobolev’s participation published in the agency’s official community on VKontakte.
April 28 agency united with the production center Abrikos Media, created by bloggers from the LizzzTV channel Max Brandt and Konstantin Pavlov. The diagram indicates that the "Merchant Elf" also created the rave group Little Big, but he clarified that this is not the case.
I'm not the creator of Little Big. I was one of those who stood at the origins, financed, and participated. And the clown in the first clips is me. But I am one of them, and not the main one. The creator and ideological inspirer is Ilya “Ilyich” Prusikin.
Yaroslav “Elf-Trader” Andreev, director of WildJam
The WildJam press kit (available) states that about 50 bloggers cooperate with the agency. Among them are Katya Klap, Ruslan Usachev, Wylsacom, the KlikKlak association created by Ilya Prusikin, Diary of a Khach, Eldar Broadway and others.
In his diagram, Zubarev linked WildJam with Versus Battle, to which rapper Miron Fedorov, better known as Oxxxymiron, is in turn related.
The author indicated that the musician helped develop the battle site and worked with former GQ editor-in-chief and screenwriter Mikhail Idov to create the series “Londongrad” for the STS television channel. The fact that Fedorov participated in the creation of Versus Battle, told one of the creators of the project is Alexander Timartsev, known as the Restaurateur. And Idov and the rapper talked about their acquaintance in a joint interview.
The author of the infographic recalled that the channel bought the project of bloggers “Karamba TV” in 2015. However, in 2017, the founders of the project Mikhail Orlov, blogger Maxim Golopolosov and director Petr Sivak sold their shares due to disagreements with STS Media.
Mikhail Orlov said that the channel constantly put pressure on him and the other founders, and also tried to “squeeze out the company.”
At one of the meetings, the general director directly began to accuse us that we had sold a bad asset, and said that it would be nice to recapitalize the company as shareholders.
Mikhail Orlov, co-founder and former director of Karamba TV
Further on the diagram, Zubarev explained that Maxim Golopolosov is one of the founders of the Bloggers United company, which, according to the author, includes blogger Alexandra Balkovskaya, known as “Sasha Spielberg”. Her father, Alexander Balkovsky, is an advertiser and venture investor who, together with Timur Bekmambetov
We have already told advertisers about what parameters to look for when choosing a webmaster and in the process of working with them in the article “”. Now it's time to look at the different types of traffic and understand how an advertiser can work with each of them in the affiliate network. Admitad Academy presents a series of publications “Traffic for Advertisers”, and we will start with YouTube bloggers - perhaps one of the most trendy, creative and fast-growing areas of traffic generation.
Today we will try to understand what kind of businesses a YouTube channel is suitable for, what bloggers you should pay attention to, and how to determine whether a channel or influencer is good enough to achieve your goals.
Why do you need YouTube?
YouTube is exclusively video content, which means that webmasters have the opportunity to show a product or service from all sides. This is especially true for online stores: often people do not have the opportunity to find out the necessary details about the product until it is delivered and the potential buyer has the opportunity to touch, try on or try it. Probably the only and main limitation is the audience of the world's main video hosting and its socio-demographic characteristics, for example, age: the purchasing power of viewers under 18 years of age is extremely low, and the share of users over 50 years of age is small. Therefore, if your target audience is older than this age, most likely this channel will not suit you.
Clothing, shoes, accessories, cosmetics. The target audience here will be women who follow fashion and shop online. They want to see what a new shade of lipstick will look like in real life (and not in a photo from the store’s website), what size M dresses from a certain brand are made for, and whether the item ordered in the store meets their expectations. Moreover, on all these issues they need to find out the opinion of a person they can trust - an influencer, an opinion leader. Accordingly, we need 1) beauty bloggers and makeup artists (makeup artists and cosmetics lovers who regularly review new products in the makeup and skincare market), 2) fashion bloggers, stylists, lifestyle bloggers “for girls” (they talk about fashion trends, help you choose a wardrobe and unpack packages from online stores).
Sporting goods. In the category "Sports and healthy image Life" has long been home to all sorts of fitness trainers, nutritionists, yoga teachers and other disciplines. Accordingly, they sell well here sportswear and shoes, accessories, specialized gadgets (trackers and headsets), accessories, equipment, as well as dietary food.
Childen's goods. In this category, the vast majority of viewers are mothers, often with small children. Bloggers are also “experienced” mothers and share their experience in shopping, telling which toys will appeal and suit children of a certain age, what will be useful or, on the contrary, dangerous for them, and where it will be more profitable to order this or that product.
Gadgets and smart devices. Here the audience is predominantly male. Basically, bloggers who talk about gadgets do it thoroughly and in detail - the audience purposefully goes for such content, because often consumer equipment is quite expensive, and you want to find out about all the pros and cons of the purchase “on the shore”. The vast majority of videos are dedicated to smartphones, followed by PCs and netbooks, drones, audio systems, trackers, smart watch. However, you can find a review of almost any technique on YouTube.
Trips. Usually people plan their trip in advance: choose a flight, hotel, tourist routes, excursions and entertainment during the trip. Therefore, travel blogs are popular - bloggers often review hotels and talk about the main attractions of cities and countries that are definitely worth visiting.
DIY. These are all kinds of products for construction, crafts, repairs and gardening. There are many videos on YouTube with step-by-step instructions “How to build a gazebo with your own hands / assemble a robot / make repairs on the balcony.” Since the viewer sees the situation before, the process of work and the result after, such master bloggers are extremely convincing.
We deliberately did not highlight the “Goods from China” category, since it is too broad and includes almost all of the verticals listed above. This list includes product categories that bloggers have been working with successfully for a long time. But this does not mean that access to other areas of e-commerce on YouTube is closed: with interesting creativity, a suitable audience and an unusual connection, even the most complex product can be sold quite well through YouTube - you just need to choose the right blogger.
We evaluate the blogger
So, we came to the conclusion: the YouTube format suits our product, our target audience is present here. Wonderful! What's next? Perhaps you have already received an application from a blogger to connect to your offer. Now we need to evaluate it according to a number of parameters and decide whether it is suitable for us or not.
Subscriber audience
From the very beginning we need to describe in as much detail as possible target audience our product, because it should match as much as possible with the audience of the blogger with whom we plan to work in the future. What is your customer thinking about, what challenges does he face every day, what problems might he have? What is her lifestyle? social status, where do these people live, work, and relax? When you are considering a blogger to collaborate with, look at the comments that subscribers leave. If their thoughts and questions fit the target audience you initially chose, congratulations - this channel may well be suitable for you.
Go through their profiles, look at what channels they subscribe to - all this will give you an idea of the nature of the audience and its interests and will help make the portrait more detailed. Studying a blogger’s audience through comments can be an excellent source of insights for you, which you can later use in your own promotion channels.
When looking through the comments, choose the most meaningful and informative ones and go to the viewers’ profile...
This is how, by going to the commentator’s channel, you can see what interests the person and what type of content he likes most
Audience growth
There are services that allow you to evaluate the growth dynamics of a blogger’s audience. On YouTube it's Socialblade.
Let's look at the interface of the Socialblade service. Just enter the link to the search into desired channel, and we will receive basic information about it
In addition, we will be able to evaluate the dynamics of audience growth by day over the past month
If we see that the number of subscribers looks like a “ladder” with sharp jumps up, and then a long lull, then with a high degree of probability we can assume that there was an increase in the audience in this channel and, most likely, these are mostly “dead souls” , which will not bring you income.
In a normal situation, growth spurts are not excluded, but they are caused by the blogger’s participation in some kind of hype project. Then the traffic is “topped up” and continues to gradually go up - in the case of cheating, this does not happen, and the level of subscriptions remains equal, the same as immediately after the jump.
This is what natural organic growth in channel subscribers looks like
And this is how traffic boosting will look like: with sharp “ladder” jumps
Another useful service is the vidIQ browser extension. With it, you can see video statistics, as well as an assessment of video optimization, SEO, video and channel tags, and much more. A big plus is that all this is visible right next to the video, and there is no need to copy-paste the link to the video to a third-party site.
After installing the browser extension to the right of the video, you can see information about any video on YouTube
You will also have access to lists of channel and video tags
Audience size
The idea that the number of subscribers an effective blogger must certainly exceed hundreds of thousands (or better yet, a million) is greatly exaggerated. When working with YouTube on CPA, we should be primarily interested in conversion to sales. Often, “getting” into a narrow but well-targeted audience is much easier and more profitable than trying to hit the million-strong army of untargeted subscribers to a channel “about everything in the world.” Yes, the coverage will be significant, your brand will be seen by a wide audience, but now we are talking about sales, not awareness - it has been noticed that after reaching a certain coverage, user involvement and activity stops growing. In addition, really large YouTubers in affiliate networks are like rare Pokemon: when they reach millions of subscribers, they become brand ambassadors, sign contracts with agencies and no longer work for CPA, but for fixed amounts (with five or six zeros).
We advise you not to chase YouTube stars, but to dig deep into the microblogger segment. A dozen microbloggers will give you the same reach as large influencers, but will create the impression that your brand has flooded the Internet, and it’s simply impossible not to try it. Look among local opinion leaders with up to 30,000 subscribers: such bloggers are usually closer to the people, they communicate with the audience on equal terms, look for common ground with the audience - considering them “their own”, users have more trust in them.
And one more thing: evaluate a blogger primarily by the number of views of his videos, and not by the number of subscribers - because this is exactly what you ultimately need.
Subscriber activity
By activity we include likes, dislikes, comments, subscriptions, unsubscribes and reposts - in general, any interaction with video content. Everything is simple here: the higher the ratio of likes to dislikes, the more loyal the audience and better content, the more subscriptions and reposts, the better the coverage and more often the contact with the advertiser’s brand. If the number of dislikes is more than 10-15% of the total number of reactions, it is better not to post on such a channel.
Pay attention to jumps in the number of subscribers (we remind you that you need to look at these indicators in Socialblade): if at one moment there were a lot of subscriptions and views at once, and after some time there is a sharp drop in these indicators, then you need to be wary. IN best case scenario the blogger held a competition that attracted fans of freebies (ala Giveaway, when bloggers give out prizes for subscriptions and comments); at worst, he tried to “hype” the current news, but his provocation was negatively received by the audience.
Comments under a post can tell you a lot about the blogger and his audience. What do subscribers ask? What emotions do they get from watching it? How do they communicate with each other? What is expected from a blogger in the next videos? If the content of comments is limited to offering mutual subscriptions, mutual insults and quarrels out of nowhere, this audience is unlikely to become your customers. The more conscious the comments, the more likely it is that views will be converted into purchases. It’s very good when a blogger knows how to get subscribers to discuss a topic: he’s interested in their opinion, he unsubscribes in the comments, and keeps the conversation going.
Pay special attention to user reaction to advertising. Plus, if they themselves ask: “Where can I buy this?” Minus, if among the comments there are the phrases “Ugh, the blogger has sold out, I’m unsubscribing” - it means that he does not know how to organically integrate advertising into his content.
An example of positive feedback from real users who ask questions and suggest topics for future videos
Another example of a positive reaction: users enter into dialogue with each other, share life hacks and give tips on the topic
Geography of subscribers
If being tied to a specific city or country is critical for selling goods and providing services, then look for local bloggers. After all, it is much more logical that a taxi service in Ufa will be offered by a Ufa resident, and not a Muscovite or St. Petersburg resident. In addition, this will significantly reduce the number of controversial orders (and to ensure that controversial issues do not arise, separately indicate in the offer description which geolocation you are willing to pay for orders from).
Brand character vs blogger image
Any brand has a positioning, which is made up of many factors: its mood, mission, goals, values, ideas. All this gives rise to an associative series in the user’s head and evokes corresponding emotions, and each new contact with the brand should reinforce these emotions.
When choosing a blogger, not only watch his videos, but also try to find out more about him. Its image should not contradict the character of your brand. What should he look like, how should he speak, what views should he adhere to? What is his lifestyle and is it similar to the one you promote? Has he participated in scandals, does he use provocation in his videos, has he ever tried to “hype” dramatic news or events? The same things can bring him thousands of views, and give you bad associations with the brand. Remember that for a while he will become a kind of face of your brand, which means he must correspond to it.
One careless comment on the topic of nationality in a video about cosmetics - and the blogger receives a wave of negativity from subscribers. No advertiser would want to be associated with such a blogger.
Number of advertisements
Look at how often the blogger places advertisements for other brands on his channel and in what format he does it. There are sad examples of bloggers who have just discovered the possibilities of monetizing their content and decided to use them to the maximum: these are contextual promotional videos inserts in the video itself every five minutes, and a review of a dozen competing brands at once, and a mention of “and the sponsor of my video...”, and a cloud of links that are in no way related to the content of the video in the caption. Naturally, no one wants to insert themselves into such a company and add advertising noise to their product.
Pay attention to the frequency of advertising videos - how often does a blogger “bomb” the audience with them? Try to imagine his channel without a single mention of advertising and brands, mentally cut out all overt advertising inserts from his content. If after this the content still has substance and value, you can work with it. By the way, the same scheme works with Instagram bloggers: if there are more advertisements for nail salons/beauty studios/clothing showrooms/hookah bars than meaningful content, run away from such cooperation.
Submitting advertisements
Try to look at the videos from the point of view of a subscriber, and not a potential advertiser: how naturally does the advertising content fit into the overall content of the videos? In some cases, advertising does not have to be native: sometimes it’s much better to say “head-on” about sponsorship than to try to pull in a brand that doesn’t fit in at all. general concept material. Users are far from stupid and can feel pseudo-native, so it is better to choose those bloggers who try to be as honest as possible with their subscribers.
See how much the person understands what he is promoting. A beauty blogger who doesn’t know how to put on makeup is nonsense, just like a talented beauty blogger who for some reason talks about gadgets. Of course, there are exceptions in the form of interesting connections: if the makeup artist conducts a test front cameras smartphones in order to find out which one takes the best selfies, and at the same time casually talk about other useful characteristics, such a video can work - provided that viewers are not loaded with information about the number of processor cores of the gadget.
Channel design
Proper design is the key to good search results. This is especially true for reviews: usually, to find information about a product, people copy the full name of the product in an online store and paste it into the search. Accordingly, if a person is looking for information about a model Samsung smartphone Galaxy S7 edge 32GB, then this request will most likely produce a video called “ Detailed review Samsung Galaxy S7 edge 32GB" and not "New from Samsung".
The same goes for video captions. They should be concise, but meaningful; if desired, the user should immediately see a link to the product, and not look for it among everything that the blogger wants to promote.
In the top search results are videos with the exact name of the product you are looking for and an addition (review/unpacking/usage experience)
A good example of a description: in the very first line, the reviewer puts a link where you can buy a smartphone and get cashback (while mentioning the full name of the smartphone for better search engine optimization)
Topics
It is natural for a blogger to grow with his audience, develop his channel, expand the topics he talks about - there is nothing reprehensible about this. But there are situations when an influencer is trying to quickly gain an audience and suddenly switches to discussing some current issues, which in no way correlate with the main theme of the channel. Topics such as politics, religion, and international relations, to which users may have ambiguous attitudes, are especially dangerous. Imagine: a blogger runs a humorous channel about online games, and people of completely different views and interests come to him, united by their love for gaming. And then, in the wake of the elections, he begins to actively support a certain party or speak sharply negatively about its opponent. Users immediately have a question: who paid him for this? Who does he really support? Even if this was his personal point of view, there is a high chance of receiving a wave of negativity and unsubscribes, so choose those bloggers who share channels: one for useful content(his business), the second - for his personal life. Otherwise, at some point, his business channel will begin to be associated with his opinion, and his opinion with your brand.
YouTube has only existed for 11 years, but it’s already difficult to imagine the Internet without it - billions of views daily, presence in more than 88 countries, rapid growth in the number of users and adherence to the main principle of “Broadcast yourself”: if you want to show yourself to the world, make a video and upload it to the network . Despite the phenomenal popularity of YouTube, a significant part Russian Internet prefers to ignore this universe and does not suspect that subscribers famous bloggers many times more than the most readable media. For example, he has more than 9 million subscribers, almost 5 million, and the gamer’s videos have been viewed more than 2 billion times in total.
A platform for the generation born with tablets
A resource with an audience of a billion unique users can safely say that the future of media is connected with its development. Today, anyone who wants to tell a story can do so - and it doesn’t matter whether it’s the story of an American schoolboy making apple pie, or the song of a famous astronaut in space, there is an audience for both.
The Internet has revolutionized the media industry and brought in a new generation of content creators. It’s hard to imagine that any TV channel could launch a show about the photosynthesis process, recreating ancient hairstyles, grinding gadgets in a blender, solving algebraic problems - and on YouTube such videos are in demand. Moreover, more than half of the views are provided by mobile phones - in Russia this figure increased by 140% over the year - which suggests the formation of a new habit of information consumption.
Eyal Baumel
CEO Yoola
“Before our eyes, a generation born with tablets has grown up. For them, a TV is just a box, much less functional than a computer. On YouTube and any other digital platform, the whole world is open to you. This attracts not only teenagers aged 12–17, but also an adult audience, for whom YouTube streams sports events and supports serious channels.”
A real abyss of content diversity
There are three types of content in the video blog network, which differ in the degree of impact on the audience: hub, help and hero. Hub content is the main content of the channel, what makes people subscribe and view it regularly. Help content is more situational and more often arises from the information agenda - for example, a gadget reviewer tells subscribers about the shortcomings of the iPhone 7. Hero content is the most complex and expensive to produce. It’s impossible to shoot such videos every day, but they are the ones that go viral and attract new audiences. The correct proportions of different content make the channel popular, forcing users to subscribe and follow the progress of video bloggers.
“YouTube is a real abyss. There are a million reasons to watch it, it’s like trying to find a reason to read media. It's just another format with its own advantages. Audiovisual information is, in principle, easier to perceive, although this does not mean that you should stop reading texts. YouTube has everything: brilliant comedy channels, beautiful essays about cinema, educational channels, blogs about life, conversations about pop culture and just very strange things.
Western YouTube has many advantages simply because it has been around longer. It has its own environment and its own formats, but at the same time there remains a lot of freedom - people allow themselves to experiment, do what they want. Russian-language YouTube is still a closed ghetto, where everyone copies each other (and there are boundaries like how to look and speak, how to address viewers, and so on) and where everyone copies television. The second is especially depressing: the most beautiful thing on YouTube and on the Internet in general is that there is no uncle hanging over you and you can do whatever you want. And with us, everyone automatically starts talking like announcers on Muz-TV, reading Wikipedia out loud, and so on.”
Customization for users
Video bloggers take into account psychological characteristics generation Y: no long phrases, clip editing, bright colors, cheerful pop music and a quick change of pictures. Channels that offer content that is impossible to imagine on television are gaining popularity: hard humor, obscene language, pranks, interactive communication. On the one hand, the service’s audience is teenagers, but on the other, those who were schoolchildren in 2005 have now graduated from universities and need information of a different quality.
Kate Clapp
Channel TheKateClapp
“A person is always interested in knowing what’s going on with their neighbors behind the wall, and video blogs allow you to delve into someone else’s underwear, find out how others live, what and why they do. To some extent, a video blogger is a fast food person whom you can turn on and listen to at any time, and he can quickly become your friend, even if you have never seen him in person. In my blog, I always try to talk about things that inspire me: my viewer grows with me - and the content also changes, now, for example, there are more topics about sexual relationships, which is typical of my age, and the viewer is also interested in this. He looks at my life and thinks about his own - if I talk about traveling, then he wants to leave the house more, if I talk about books, then he wants to read more.”
Illusory friendship with the person on the other side of the screen
Video blogs are becoming a new outlet in an era of shortage of simple human communication. Looking at how one charismatic girl shows the contents of her cosmetic bag, and another witty, funny guy comments on the game “Tanks”, the user seems to feel that he is sitting with them on the couch and having a great time.
Constant contact between bloggers and viewers
A video blog is content that is easy to interact with: share it on social networks, like it, comment on it right there. Sometimes reading user analysis and criticism of a video is more interesting than watching the video itself.
Stephen Nuttall
Head of YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA):
"Blogs are simple form talk about what is interesting to you and the audience. Moreover, this can be either a broad topic - sports, fashion, beauty - or a very specialized one. It is very important that video blogs allow you to give feedback- bloggers and viewers are in constant contact, a kind of chemistry arises between them. This way of communication is not like traditional media. Blogs are always a dialogue, this is not cinema or television. According to our research, YouTube stars influence people more than traditional movie stars, they are more accessible, and people feel a close connection with them. Viewers can influence the development of the project, participation is incredibly addictive. It’s like your favorite show or TV series, only cooler because you can influence the plot."
A communal apartment with bright personalities and showdowns
Some YouTube characters are striking in their texture: in the neighboring links you may come across a homeless person, a makeup artist, a human rights activist, a Minecraft schoolboy - and they all have one thing in common.
Sergey Streltsov
Director of Multichannel Network Development at Yoola
“You watch YouTube for personalities - the charm of the people who make the videos is very important. If you like them, then you will want to watch the video. Previously, to become a media character, you had to be an actor or musician, graduate from a certain university and get into a creative environment. Now it is video bloggers who embody the creative ideal - they prove that you can achieve popularity simply by picking up a camera. These are ordinary guys and girls from our backyard, there are no media corporations behind them. Videos where one bright personality opposes another - “Afonya against everyone, everyone against Afonya” are gaining enormous popularity - people are interested in following the development of the conflict, taking one side or the other. The community of authors and viewers on Russian YouTube is now more like a communal apartment, where everyone wants to shit on the other’s door. It’s hype to give a shit and then say that the other one started it first.”
Lifehacks, experiments and new skills
One of the reasons why YouTube has taken off is the abundance of channels with life hacks and lessons: on YouTube you can learn to do literally everything - paint eyelashes, fold origami cranes, twerk and cook vegan burgers.
Nastya Rubik
Channel "KitchenShow"
“The KitchenShow channel inspired many to start cooking. Oddly enough, our main viewers now are quite young guys. It's an amazing feeling to know that you're influencing the younger generation, inspiring them to do something more than just surf the Internet.
I think everything is heading towards YouTube replacing television. There are many interesting narrowly focused shows, a lot of high-quality entertainment and educational content. And in the near future it will cover all people’s needs for receiving information from the outside. When YouTube has the same budgets as TV now, the same thing will happen to television as once happened to publishing. People began to read books on electronic media, listen to podcasts on the Internet, and read news in news feeds. Physical books, newspapers and magazines are no longer so popular.”
Sergey Kefir
Twice Russian FIFA champion, multiple winner of various tournaments, YouTuber
“Yura Dud gave the correct comparison: video blogs are like porn. People like to see other people doing this thing. It's the same here. People watch other people play when they can do it themselves. Our main audience is teenagers 14–17 years old. They often don’t have money for a game or a new console. But you want to watch and get some pleasure, especially if the person on the other side of the screen shows unrealistic emotions and makes a good montage.
My popularity suggests that people need such a character - I’m an ordinary guy, I’m closer to the people than show business stars. Some consider us their friends - for example, when I broadcast live on Twitch, I tell my stories from life, about school, about Baumanka - everyone is interested. And emotions decide a lot here. If you look, the most popular video bloggers are those who make emotional videos. Nobody likes just mumbling on the Internet.”
We are ready to look you in the eyes on the best day of summer - August 3, at the Afisha Picnic. The Cure, Pusha-T, Basta, Gruppa Skryptonite, Mura Masa, Eighteen - and this is just the beginning.
