2.0 failed.

The sad thing is that Youtube, or rather, the Youtube of such monumental power as to be swallowed by Google for hundreds of millions of dollars, is dead.

You see, Youtube has had some major hits with user-generated content. But you see a producer’s dilemma in sifting through Youtube. For everything worth watching, there was an almost unlimited supply of crap. Tribute videos, for example. You ever wondered what if they did a montage of Gilmore Girls clips to Linkin Park? Then have we got the website for you! Also, guys getting kicked in the nuts, which is always funny. And the “Leave Britney Alone” kid, who I’m sure the gay community is proud to have as a prominent celebrity. A few years prior, an excellent homosexual actor Ian McKellan thrilled the world as XMen’s Magneto and inspired magic in viewers as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series.

This goes to show two things. The first is that there is a lot of crap. The second thing is that, by and large, the entertainment industry largely does it better.

The problem with current YouTube is that it’s not the old Youtube, which was filled with Daily Show clips and episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that lost episode from that television show you watched as a kid. In the genesis of the high definition age, people were tuning in to watch a shoddy bitrate.

But then all the industry players got ligitation-happy, and the whole party went to crap. It’s a lot harder to get content. And they pointed out, quite furiously, that DVD sales dropped during this timeframe. While this is true, they have not recovered despite much stricter copy write enforcement since the lawsuits. It hasn’t worked.

On Demand Programming is said to be a nexus, but I do realize that much of what I enjoyed on YouTube will never be free again. It’s a shame, really, as quality entertainment pushes and exceeds boundaries, freeing people to take on new and challenging works that they denied themselves, but were now instantly accessible for the low, low price of free. The sad thing the industries never understood was how much free publicity a low quality feed was. Now the website is left with “Chocolate Rain” and “2 Girls 1 Cup reactions”. That is very disheartening.

I am a believer that people gravitate towards quality. The problem with entirely user-generated content is that, after a while, you create a culture of performers who do not watch other people perform. The problem with online journalism is also this: everyone wants to write, nobody wants to read.

I believe sites like the one being developed in Rochester, Minnesota put power both in the user’s hands, but also in the hands of the creators of content. Because they are separated and one in the same, just like old Youtube. The reviews and opinions are the users, and the scores are the users, but the content being viewed is by the big boys. It doesn’t make the pairing equal, but it does derive entertainment for the viewer and perspective, eyeballs, and consumer data to the content creators. It’s something akin to performance theater, which the internet is exceedingly good at.

Here’s a show, now the audience is involved. They can see where they sit, see the stage, and react solely from their seat. They feel their opinions and output matter, and game creators are forced into a position where they know, deep down, they ought to be. Whether in comments such as the ones by EA’s Vice President about the deteriorating scores of EA Games, or in the Gerstmann-gate debacle, it’s quite clear that the extent of marketing is understood, even if they don’t always like to admit it.

Back to YouTube, its best days, as the great content equalizer, are now behind us. Internet 2.0 websites are fascinating, because they are usually best in their initial incarnations. Once sites like YouTube and Facebook and Google have to become profitable rather than revolutionary, their edge (and a great deal of their appeal is lost). How they could ever maintain their stratospheric sales projections is beyond me. It may even be beyond a dramatic gopher.