But "YouTube For Kids" reopens a really thorny issue that, when re-consumed, causes one to wonder why YouTube would re-open a matter in such a way as to run the risk of placing it in a bad light. As a YouTube Partner, I'm not comfy about what I'm about to present. Blogging about this is not fun, but it's got to be done, and now.
The Brief Story Of Totlol
The December 29th 2009 TechCrunch featured a blog post by Erick Schonfeld called "The Sad Tale Of Totlol And How YouTube's Changing TOS Made It Hard To Make A Buck."
Totlol was a platform created by Developer and Entrepreneur Ron Ilan, that consists of videos from YouTube that were created by parents for kids. Cool, except that Ron created Totlol using YouTube's API (Application Program Interface), and Erick reports that Google "just happened" to change YouTube's Terms of Service (TOS) to prohibit the creation of something like Totlol or any system using its API for commercial use on the same day that YouTube featured Totlol on it's Google Code widget.
In other words, Google stepped in at the time and said, "OK, now no one can make something that makes money using our product that we didn't create ourselves." On the face of it, that would seem to not impact Totlol, which was first created in 2008. Right?
Well, not exactly. The change in the YouTube TOS hurt Ron's ability to make money because he could not place ads on Totlol anymore. He asked for permission from YouTube, but got no response at first.
Then a YouTube rep did reach out to Ron in June of 2009, and tried to understand how to avoid such a situation in the future as well as "What types of business models would we need to support in order to make this worth a developer’s while?," but nothing benefiting Ron came of the meeting.
In an account that is no longer available online, even in its cached version, Ron explains what he thinks was "up" at Google, according to TechCrunch:
When the YouTube API team saw Totlol they liked it. At about the same time someone else at Google saw it, realized the potential it, and - or similar implementations may have, and initiated a ToS modification. An instruction was given to delay public acknowledgement of Totlol until the modified ToS where published. Later an instruction was given to avoid public acknowledgement at all.Now, Ron's site is down, as is any indication of criticism of YouTube, and the one bit of evidence that he created Totlol is on his Linkedin Page, which reads:
Founder / Creator
Totlol
(Internet industry)
February 2008 — September 2010 (2 years 8 months)
Totlol was an award winning, community-moderated Video Website designed for kids and powered by YouTube.
- Sole developer.
- Identified the market opportunity, defined product use cases, architecture and UI. Preformed several feedback and usability driven upgrade cycles.
- Features included access to 10s of thousands of videos, extensive personalization, an Age Optimizer for content and multiple Age Optimized Interfaces. Web application was available in custom mobile versions for iPhone and iPad.
- Drove product marketing and positioning as first website of its kind and leader of the segment. Website been featured in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today.
- Distinction and awards: Google Code Featured Project, Apple Featured Web App, PC Magazine Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites, Webby Awards Official Honoree.
- Working environment: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Zend Framework, YouTube Data API, Google Data API OAuth, JS, HTML/CSS and YouTube Chromeless Player.
Judging by the timing of things, where he shut down September of 2010, perhaps some kind of settlement was reached between Ron and Google / YouTube. One hope's so. Meanwhile, TechCrunch reports that "YouTube For Kids" is...
"a fully revamped version of YouTube designed specifically with children in mind. Heckmann says that children tend to use YouTube differently than adults, and obviously there is content on the site that kids shouldn’t be exposed to. What’s worse, sometimes kids stumble across this content accidentally because of the way the site’s automated suggestions work.
To remedy this, YouTube is building a version of the site that’s been reworked to have absolutely no text, save for the YouTube logo. Videos that do appear will be based off of whitelists, so there won’t be any chance of accidentally stumbling across something unsavory or scary. At this point it sounds like the project still has a ways to go (it was initially created during a New Ideas week last summer), but it’s on the way."
One clue to the current relationship between Ron and YouTube comes from his Twitter Page @ronilan. By the looks of tweets, he's got a cordial (ie: non-flaming and re-tweeting) Twitter relationship with YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and Project Engineer Hunter Walk, who's an all-around good guy, so by appearances it seems that Ron walked away happy, the case was closed, and YouTube's working on something based on what Ron developed.
I really hope I'm correct.
Stay tuned.