How were recommended videos introduced before algorithms dominated YouTube?
YouTube uses a powerful algorithm to pick up 'recommended videos' based on user viewing trends and genres of interest.
Before YouTube's Algorithm, There Were 'Coolhunters' - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/09/youtube-homepage-editor-google-algorithm-book-excerpt/671339/
YouTube, which started its service in 2005, initially watched popular movies and contents that match one's tastes mainly from links of movies sent by friends, links hit by Google search, links embedded in blogs, etc. I was making it possible. By 2006, YouTube had more than 100 million views a day, and later that year, it signed a deal with Verizon Wireless , America's number one mobile operator with subscribers, to bring YouTube to mobile phones. A limited version of is now available. At this time, YouTube hired a new person and programmed packages for partners such as Verizon. In October 2006, Google acquired the startup YouTube for $ 1.65 billion (about 200 billion yen).
Due to the partnership with a mobile company and the acquisition from Google, Mr. Mia Quarriero, who was a former manager of iTunes and joined as a new YouTube editor, welcomed journalists, radio DJs, and users who were posting on YouTube at the time. , formed a small staff team. The team will begin to sort out content posted on YouTube in fields such as sports, comedy, and politics to find movies that viewers may like. This staff team was called 'community manager' at the time, but the staff said that they called themselves 'coolhunters' that one of the members thought.
Each coolhunters staff member had their own way of finding hit movies. One of our members, Sadia Harper, scoured her list each morning from blogs and her own channels, finding interesting videos and adding them to her YouTube “For You” banner. At the time, the 'recommended videos' banner consisted of 10 rows of movies with small thumbnails, which coolhunters rotated every four hours.
In the years since Youtube was acquired by Google, its parent company, Google, has helped YouTube in its legal battles and funded YouTube's expansion, but has not interfered much with YouTube. was almost independent. However, Google's method will gradually penetrate YouTube. That's how it was recommended display by algorithm, which has become common these days. Former YouTube manager Andy Stack said, 'The way Google uses to solve the problem is to bring in machines, not people.'
Mr. Harper recounts a similar experience. At that time, when coolhunters pioneered new categories with the goal of spreading YouTube, Mr. Harper, who loves cars, posted movies about car racing and engines as recommended videos. One day, an engineer explained that he had developed an algorithm to design a homepage to get the optimal number of clicks, and started testing it in the car category that Mr. Harper had compiled. As a result, a movie in which a woman wearing heels in a luxury car stepped on the accelerator and ``idled'' the engine was picked up because it had a ``high click rate'', so Mr. Harper said, ``This is It's a fetish video and it's not our purpose to provide recommended videos to users,' he protested.
YouTube's algorithm has improved over the years, not just the number of clicks, but also details such as how long users watched the movie, when they started watching it, from where and what kind of people watched it. can now be measured. Also, software has been developed to automatically delete obscene content that was left to human moderators at the time. Along with that, as YouTube's profitability increased significantly, coolhunters, which aimed to increase and spread cultural value, became less and less compatible with YouTube's commercial future. Also, when YouTube is sued for copyright infringement, the manual work of ``selecting and featuring posted content'' is the cause of rejecting the claim that ``YouTube is a non-interference platform.'' was
Around 2010, a new YouTube product manager proposed a personalized algorithm. This allowed the 'recommended videos' displayed on YouTube's homepage to be more relevant to each user, and the coolhunters' job was completely taken over by the algorithm. Shortly after that, in 2010, coolhunters was dissolved, most of the staff were transferred to the marketing department, and the selection of 'recommended videos' was done by machines.
According to The Atlantic, 'YouTube wouldn't have become a pop culture staple without the coolhunters that created its first hit. But at the same time, had it continued to rely on human curators, YouTube would have become the gigantic platform it is today.' It may not have happened,” he said.
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