YouTube creators who run their own channels and videos on the popular video service now have reason to rejoice. The overall qualitative worth of their content, as well as their revenues come from the number of times users view such content and the feedback they offer. As such, creators need to constantly check on ratings, number of views and their earnings on the site to stay updated and devise strategies for the future. Until recently, they could generate reports within the API by setting up their requests for the data they required or even statistics and graphs. However, the resulting data that they could access generated from the time when such requests were scheduled. To make the API more creator-friendly, YouTube has decided to enable creators to access historical data as well.
Launched a few weeks ago, the new YouTube Reporting API now offers creators historical data dating back up to 180 days from the day when a report is scheduled. This way, creators are able to view the performance of their channels and videos for an additional six months compared to what they could access prior to October. However, YouTube’s new API will be able to offer historical data from July 1, 2015 and those who scheduled any reports prior to December 28 of last year will not be able to access historical data older than 180 days from when such reports were scheduled. Nevertheless, the new feature in YouTube’s API will now make it a lot easier for creators to pull exhaustive reports on estimated earnings, ad performance, playlists, and assets. The timing of the update to the Reporting API seems to be perfect as Amazon launched a new service called Amazon Video Direct for creators earlier today, allowing creators to upload and share their videos with Prime subscribers directly. This way, creators will have access to a large audience and will be able to monetize their content through Amazon’s Streaming Partners Program which lets users access specific creators or groups by paying baseline subscription fees. Amazon has partnered with a number of creators and publications like The Guardian, Mashable, Machinima and Mattel who will offer exclusive content on their respective channels to Prime customers.
To retain YouTube’s market share and to compete on level terms with new players in the video streaming genre like Facebook, Snapchat and Meercat, Google is planning to launch YouTube Connect, a new streaming platform on YouTube which will let users live stream any available content, tag others on such streams, chat will fellow users and save videos both on the app as well as on the desktop site. This will also let creators add livestream content on their channels for users to view, share and download and to monetise such content through subscriptions. As per the original report, the new feature will be available on both Android and iOS operating systems but even though its release date is not known yet, the feature may get a mention at Google’s next I/O Conference later this month.