How to Win Friends and Influence YouTube
by Jeremy Foster

Ysabella Brave's rapid rise in popularity on YouTube is a remarkable story and a testament to the relative ease with which a talented person can now acquire, at the very least, the modicum of fame Andy Warhol dreamed forty years ago would be available to everyone in the future. The future is now — the user-generated content age—and if internet blogging was the alpha of this digital-epoch, video blogging may be the omega. The concept of people communicating their thoughts and their lives through web video has become, despite early fears that it was a flash in the pan, a fresh and enduring alternative to the tightly-filtered medium of traditional entertainment.

The popularity of video blogging came about, of course, in no small part thanks to the success of YouTube. The video sharing website was hailed in 2006 as the 5th most popular web destination, with 100 million videos viewed daily, and 65,000 new uploads per day. Naturally, many seasoned video bloggers looking for a bigger audience thronged to the rising YouTube and many would-be video bloggers found an avocation. Today, thousands of people upload video blogs daily onto YouTube — some doing it for fun, some to be a part of a growing video community, and some to grab their 15 minutes of fame and then some.

Yet the field of successful video bloggers is not as wide as one might suspect. Ysabella Brave's quick ascension to Internet stardom, while unintentional and unexpected, has rarely been duplicated, even though thousands of video bloggers vie for her degree of popularity on a daily basis.

In point of fact, most people are simply not talented enough for the camera. On YouTube, strikingly ordinary, bland and dull video blogs abound, causing one to almost long for the day when people kept their thoughts bound in private diaries. Yet the silver lining is, at least in my view, the YsabellaBrave's that crop up from time to time.

So, the million-dollar question is, "What makes a video blog successful?"

"It isn't easy to script online popularity because there is no proven formula for it," said Steve Jones, a communications specialist at the University of Illinois. "Typically what becomes popular is something that no one has seen before, that's funny, and that really stands out in some way, but the way it stands out is rather up for grabs," he said. "There is also usually some element of quirkiness to it, too."

Ysabella Brave says successful video bloggers need more than a garrulous mouth: they need special charisma, an engaging sense of humor, an intimate rapport with their audience, or some combination of the three.

And then, of course, there is the "being real" factor. Clearly, being real counts--a lot. In our reality-television hungry culture, people less often tune into television, much less YouTube, these days for fictional drama.

Take the case of Lonelygirl15, who quickly fell from YouTube stardom when it was revealed that she was a fictional character penned by two screenwriters from New Zealand. The screenwriters tried to plead to her jarred fans that fictional video blogging was "a new art form" but it was clear that the compelling thing about Lonelygirl was the perception that she was, well, a real person. As one of Lonelygirl15's disillusioned fans put it: "Well, that's no fun anymore."

Neither was it fun for YouTube singer-sensation Marie Digby when the Wall Street Journal recently revealed that the 24-year-old singer had feigned amateur status on YouTube to promote a recording contract she had signed with Hollywood Records 18 months before she even became a YouTube phenomenon.

"I understand, especially after the Lonelygirl thing, that people are concerned about being hoodwinked," said YsabellaBrave, who has had similar accusations of fraud leveled against her. "I figure that time will tell the truth.

"Really, the whole appeal of Youtube is its air of intimacy and truth, which seems to be lacking in the prepackaged and 'more of the same' mass media," she said.

Lori Harifenist, a popular video blogger from New York, attributes the success of her channel, TheResident, which has netted more than 10,000 subscribers since it premiered on YouTube a year ago, to substance. "Unless you get naked," she says, "you're going to lose viewers very quickly if you have nothing of substance to say."

She also says substance has to be coupled with hard work. For example, she can spend several hours producing a 5-minute video. "It's a part-time job," she says of her show.

Harfenist's cachet is a special blend of substance and humor. She describes her show as "an alternative viewpoint on today's culture...something much lacking in the mainstream media" and draws inspiration for her show's material from the news, pop culture, and anything that is begging for commentary.

TheResident has all the hallmarks of a good talk show: monologues, personal interviews, and vivacious woman-of-the-street interviews, a segment inspired by some on-the-street market research she did for an advertisement agency. But on her show, she doesn't ask people questions such as, "Is Marriage dead?" or "Who are you wearing?" to gauge market trends but to engage people in entertaining and humorous repartees.

In "Who are you wearing?", Harfenist is seen roving the trendy New York shopping district in a sporty red Gap t-shirt and essentially asking people why they are walking billboards. As with most of her videos, the segment is riddled with funny exchanges. One in particular shows her running down a checklist of name brands a guy nods to wearing until she catches him off guard by finally asking him if he wears the label "buy my label." Later in the segment, she asks a guy wearing a Vans parka, "Don't you feel like they should be paying you to advertise for them?" to which he responds, "All yellz yea! Everyone should be paying me for wearing their clothes."

"I love it when people say funny things," says Harfenist. "Sometimes people say things I would have never thought of, or would have never expected to come out of their mouth."

Harfenist says the feedback from her fans (or "peeps" as she calls them) helps her come up with new material. "I also take inspiration from the news, in pop culture, or basically anything that annoys me," she says. "I just hope to — whether it's a funny piece, an artsy piece, or a newsy piece — to get the viewer to think about the topic."

And beyond the humor, wit and fresh content, Harfenist acknowledges that her looks have helped with the success of her show. "Without a doubt, a person with looks is going to reel people in, whether you're a girl or a guy."

Looks, however, is just one of many ingredients that make up charisma. And charisma, as the recent Miss Teen USA South Carolina gaffe illustrated, is more than having a telegenic and a come-hither look.

Charisma, often described as a personal magnetism, is as hard to describe as it is hard to resist. As French politician Charles de Gaulle once put it: "There must always be a 'something' which others cannot altogether fathom, which puzzles them, stirs them, and rivets their attention."

"I think that while looks can get you clicks, personality can get you subscribers," said Esther Brady, or Fainstarlite as she is known to over 5,000 of her YouTube subscribers.

"Some of the appeal [of YouTube bloggers], I admit, is voyeuristic," she says. "If you're an attractive female, you're going to get clicks." But Brady points out that while looks may get your video the initial click, it won't necessarily reel in loyal subscribers. Brady insists that you need to have interesting content and put it out consistently.

Whether discussing weighty topics such as religion or politics or softer ones such as weight loss, Brady says she always treats her topics with an energetic and engaging manner and speaks to her audience as if she were having a one-on-one conversation with each and every one of them. "My goal is to have a dialogue with people," she said.

Another characteristic of a successful video blog is what Jones calls "the element of surprise."

Geriatric1927, an English video blogger with a following of 45,000 subscribers to his channel, said the element of surprise is his age. "The initial interest didn't come from what I had said in the video," the 80-year-old blogger said, "but the fact that an old man would ever contemplate doing such a thing or have the ability to do it." The element of surprise extends beyond Peter's age, however, as fans often tune into his videos to hear the stories of his life, from his years in the navy to life in retirement. Geriatrics, whose real name is Peter, has become, in the words of one of his fans, "my grandfather on my computer."

Said Caitlin Hill, otherwise known as TheHill88 to 50,000 of her subscribers: "Well, I'm Australian. People from overseas have this weird idea about Australia and we all like giving off an impression of being really rough, yet laid back and that we like to wrestle crocs and kangaroos on weekends and other rough stuff like that," she said. "They also enjoy the accent and find it refreshing. A lot also probably just want to contact me in hopes that I'll marry them and give them a Visa, which will be shortly followed by a divorce and a tearful vlog by me."

"There really is a vlogger out there for whoever you are," Hill said. "We have a wide range of people: intelligent, stupid, ignorant, charitable, people who tell us about their travels and people who pretend and 'make believe' their world. It's always going to be like high school out there...you are always going to want to watch someone who seems to fit in with your group, however the internet allows you to have a peek at the other groups that you've never been able to get, and now with the internet, you're able to "get them". It's very nice."

And her advice to aspiring video stars: "Some people aren't popular on the net because they don't know how to communicate with their camera. They can't let go. The cool thing about the Internet is that it gives these normally camera shy people a chance to speak up, but it often doesn't work. Just like actors everywhere, if you want to do good vlogs, you have to be somewhat full of yourself. It's horrible, but sadly true."

"Oh," she added, "Just don't dance in front of the camera like a whore! There are too many young girls doing that and it's frightening."

Some bloggers emphasize theme as an important jump-starter to success. "You gotta have a schtick," said CapnOAwesome, a 24-year-old blogger named Kevin from Washington. Kevin's schtick is religion, and he does not take AA's approach. Describing himself as an equal opportunity religion basher, Kevin says his popularity began when he took a controversial topic and spun it in an entertaining fashion. "The problem with the atheist bloggers when I came on the scene was that they were dry, intellectual, and very unpopular," says Muller. "I thought to myself, I can get all these arguments out in a much more entertaining fashion if I put on costumes, throw in fake explosions; add a little humor, a little pizzazz."

Indeed, Muller did all this (minus the explosions) but was surprised that there was an audience for atheism. "I was talking to a friend at work about my blog when it started and he asked how many subscribers I'd have, and I answered fifty," said Muller, who now has 7,000 subscribers.

"When I was at the YouTube gathering on 07/07/07, suddenly I realized I was an Internet celeb when a 100 people were coming up and saying, 'wooh, captain awesome we love you,'" said Muller. "And chicks were having me sign their chests, which was nice."

Muller's popularity, he said, came with a lot of hard work. A five minute video, he said, can take two hours to produce. "A lot of my success has been hard work," he said. "Time spent preparing for ideas, editing, et cetera. A lot of people think: 'I'm going to make a blog. They turn on a camera and talk about what happened in their day. Sorry, but unless you're the world's most interesting person, it probably won't be that interesting."

"Hard work is key," said Mark Amerika, professor of media at University of Colorado at Boulder. "My own preference is for self-directed works that are part performance art and part amateur daily show."

As these examples show, starting a popular video blog is not an entirely mysterious process, and yet it isn't for everyone. Yet sometimes the only way to find out if you are the next vstar is to make a blog. "If I were to give anyone advice who was trying to earn some kind of popularity or notoriety on YouTube," said Jones, "it would be to be themselves and have a camera running all the time."

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