YouTube offers grants to education-focused content creators

YouTube has unveiled a new initiative named YouTube Learning, which will see the platform offering grants and promotion to support education-focused content creators, expert organisations and learners. CEO, Susan Wojcicki, said in a recent blog post that YouTube is also expanding its learning content team efforts and has a nearly dedicated product and engineering team working on building features for learning on YouTube."Our hope is to support those who use YouTube to share their knowledge with the world and the millions of users who come to our platform to learn," she said. She added that one of its key priorities in 2018 is to support the success of its creators. This would be done through the new products YouTube unveiled during VidCon in June this year - channel memberships, merchandise items and FameBit. FameBit helps brands tap into YouTube's audience by using the authentic voices of creators to develop unique brand content at scale.Wojcicki said these new products are designed to grow YouTube communities and offer more avenues for creators to earn revenue in addition to ads. Additionally, it will continue to invest in YouTube Originals, featuring original series and movies from creators, to help them generate more revenue. According to her, some creators have witnessed as much as a 20% increase in channel viewership after their Original was launched.She added that the company is "working hard" on brand safety and meeting with the renowned brands worldwide to share the stories of creators. "The results have been positive, and I continue to make this a priority," Wojcicki said.Other key creator priorities for YouTube this yearYouTube will also continue to prioritise communicating more with creators, be it through social media or delivering relevant information through YouTube Studio. It also combined its Creator Academy channel under the YouTube Creators channel, to offer a one-stop channel that offers creators with resources on make engaging videos, find their audience and grow their YouTube channel. Creators will also receive platform updates and news, along with performance about their latest videos via a dashboard that YouTube recently rolled out.Creator Insider, an unofficial channel started by YouTube employees, continues to provide weekly updates, responds to concerns and provides a behind-the-scenes look at some of YouTube's product launches. Wojcicki is also walking the talk of communicating more with creators, having started her own YouTube channel last year.Besides communicating more with creators, YouTube also wants to continue building two-way conversations between creators and fans, as well as among fans.Wojcicki said more creators are using YouTube's Stories format, which is a simple way of posting videos without editing or post-production, to engage with their fans as well. Its Premieres function also helps creators take advantage of live tools such as Super Chat and scheduling, allowing them to debut pre-recorded videos as a live moment on YouTube. Meanwhile, its Community tab helps build deeper connections with fans through GIFs, pictures, polls and text, with over 60 million users engaging with posts on that tab daily.YouTube's new Copyright Match tool enables creators to find copies of their content when it has been uploaded by other channels. It is also regularly updating its YouTube Community Enforcement Report, which provides data on the flags YouTube receives and how it enforces its policies. From January to March this year, the platform removed 9,790,083 videos, with 7,029,971 videos being automatically flagged by YouTube.Meantime, it also launched a feature within the YouTube app to remind viewers to take a break, as well as an option for users to get a single digest notification once per day from YouTube rather than live notifications."As we head into the second half of the year, I look forward to continuing to work with you to create communities and engage with people using video. You are building the next generation of media companies, and I’m humbled by the amazing work you do every day," Wojcicki said.