The Quest of YouTube Handles yourname@ in the Creator Economy
You are now offered a Handle @
Hey Guys,
YouTube is the “real show” when it comes to the current state of the Creator Economy, where a channel can reach its peak and most sustained generated revenue.
Introducing handles: A new way to identify your YouTube channel
YouTube while it has grown advertising has failed to grow a sense of community around its influencers and channels. Many of these create communities on Discord or Reddit or other places.
YouTube is now rolling out customizable @ handles to all its users. YouTube is still tops in long-form video and near the top in podcasts heard by active listeners.
A handle is not the same as a YouTube channel name of course: Handles, usually indicated by an @ sign in front of a name or nickname, are useful for people who want to create an identity, indicate their opinions, or make a joke — and many social networks, such as Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, have adopted it.
The Handles are supposed to make it easier to reply and create real conversations with fans.
Introducing handles, a new way for people to easily find and engage with creators and each other on YouTube.
It’s not entirely clear why YouTube is so late to the part of ID handles:
I guess it thought when you have Advertising and algorithms, who needs real interactions or community right? Sadly for struggling creators and ambitious channels, community (no matter how much of a fad) can help boost numbers.
Many of the ‘communities’ founded on Substack itself during the pandemic, no longer are thriving - so it remains to be seen how influencers, video channels, podcasts and real communities will actually work for most Creators. You likely need a threshold of monthly active followers MAUs, to make “communities” viable.
Simply put, not all content creators have the time or ability to manage communities or even multiple channels.
Every platform think it’s building the “home base” for Creators. Whether that’s TikTok, Patreon, YouTube or another place (usually it’s where you make your actual revenue!)
For many creators, YouTube isn’t just a place to upload and comment on videos, it’s a community and home base. This is not really true, but I can understand their pitch and wish that it was.
Until recently, the only people who had YouTube handles — individual URLs that allow people to find your videos — were those who had at least 100 subscribers. YouTube must be feeling the TikTok pinch if it’s suddenly trying to do all of these new things. The advertising cool-down of 2022 is real and should extend into 2023.
YouTube is sending out notifications via email or, if you’re already a creator, via YouTube Studio; at that point, you will then be able to choose your handle.
So what are YouTube Handles from the horse’s mouth?
YouTube thinks it’s suddenly also social like TikTok, well I’ll be damned!
YouTube is asking us to be more interactive as we make more YouTube Shorts to build our audience in a more engaging way.
So in short, YouTube wants to compete with TikTok, instead of giving way to it. However YouTube is not that optimized for mobile as TikTok is.
The Email and YouTube’s info about choosing a Handle is surprisingly confusing. TikTok is spending major marketing dollars on scaling its app even faster, about what Meta is pending on its VR Metaverse play, so realistically YouTube will be hard pressed to do anything about it.
To be clear, if you have created YouTube videos and so already have a personalized URL, according to YouTube, you should already have that as your handle.
Where will my handle appear?
YouTube says its rolling out handles gradually to all channels over the next few weeks. Once it has been rolled out to all users, your handle will begin appearing in a few places across YouTube, including:
• The Shorts tab
• Search results
• Comments and mentions
So fellow Creators, don’t just write, create Videos as well and if you are lazy like me, just focus on shorts when you are in the mood.
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