John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain on Networked Media

I won’t lie, I love this guy, his business (he’s got some fantastic people working with him), and a lot of his content and opinions. What I respect about the way he conducts himself though is how pragmatic he is with his approach to critique and discussion.

In the latter part of the video blog above, he mentions something very relevant to what we’ve been discussing recently in Networked Media, that being the ever-changing shape of YouTube careers and the undefinable job titles him and his colleagues have.

Skip to 19 minutes if you want to hear the bulk of this discussion, but of course I’d recommend watching the whole thing too.

Online Media is something I am particularly interested in. Where I want to produce media precisely I’ve yet to pinpoint but YouTube seems like a good starting point to consider. Unlike more regulated broadcast mediums such as TV or Radio however, YouTube is sporadic, eccentric, volatile in it’s nature and unlike Television or Radio the future of the medium may not be all that well defined.

How then do we approach the future in a medium whose platform is so unpredictable? Cautiously I would assume, but that’s a rather Techno Deterministic<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism> way of thinking. Although, within a chaotic system there is opportunity to help shape the future of the medium. I feel this is the biggest advantage to this new kind of media; we as writers have fewer restraints and regulations to abide by in terms of form, structure, and delivery.

I look to TotalBiscuit as a reference point for how to successfully build an audience out of the chaos of networked media – as he recently reached 1 million subscribers – and the continuous efforts into the content he produces and experiments with is nothing short of impressive.

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