So... What Do You Think About SourceFed?

Like many, I've been watching SourceFed and so far I like what I have been seeing. The channel features Elliott (on Twitter as @elliottcmorgan), Lee (@leenewtonsays), and Joe (@joebereta) as well as Kevin (but he's not in this video). Also, some guy named Phil something... Here is their first video since the channel really kicked off replying to comments from viewers. Hopefully this will continue.

First, Philip DeFranco does steal the show with his cameo, but I did laugh at Lee's "real voice" where she sounds oddly like the girls' gym teacher from my old high school (but that's another story for another time). I liked that they answered real comments left by viewers - both good and bad. There are lots of comments about Lee being pretty, hot etc., and yes, she is easy on the eyes, but more importantly, she is also funny. The other two, Joe & Elliott have their moments too and I think this will be a successful channel if they can keep up the pace. I like the currently top rated comment: "Can u wear a bikini next time thanks", which received the following reply: "Absolutely - Elliott".

Just in case you haven't seen any of their other videos from "20 Minutes Or Less" where they upload a short video about what news stories have caught their attention that day, here's one with Lee & Joe discussing "Movie speech stolen by Politician".

These are of course, just a few of the videos uploaded to SourceFed, and there is a humorous video where Lee drops in on iJustine called One on One: iJustine and Lee Sittin in a Tree and IJ seems a little ill at ease with Lee and her suspected "girl crush" on her. Still it is interesting to watch.

The SourceFed channel continues getting lots of new subscribers and since the channel launched January 23rd it has gone from having 103K subscribers to the current total of 221,745 so I guess that would be a fairly successful first week. It will probably continue accumulating even more subs as more youtubers stumble across the channel and we will see if they can continue putting out interesting stuff.

The Return Of Ferris Beuller?

Does this the mean the return of Ferris Beuller is in the air for 2012?

Actor Matthew Broderick brought the colorful Beuller to life why back in 1986 with Ferris Beuller's Day Off and fans of the movie have been clamoring for Broderick to bring him back once more and maybe, just maybe, there is something happening. The date at the end of this short clip is 2.5.12 which is February 5, 2012 - the same day that the New England Patriots meet up with the New York Giants for Super Bowl 46. Will Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, put in another appearance? And what about poor old Ed Rooney, Ferris' vice-principal? If they are planning on having Rooney's character try to thwart Beuller's plans on attending the Super Bowl they have to have Rooney try to stop him.

The Vlogbrothers Get A Small Hotel Room Upgrade

Like many who are subscribed to the vlogbrothers, Hank and John Green, I like seeing their videos when they are both in them but also individually. This one I found particularly appealing and funny as John starts out describing their loss of a hotel room...

This video is a bit shorter than most of their other Youtube videos but I was smiling all the way through. I'm pretty sure I would have the same reaction as John and Hank upon discovering that they had somehow been lodged in such stellar quarters. Just an amazing room. I loved the part where Hank is holding the Picasso print and John mentions that he is probably the first person to hold both a Picasso as well as a can of Pringles chips and Hank immediately exclaims "First!"

Just in case you don't know why the brothers are on the road for their "Tour De Nerdfighters" which is currently crossing the U.S. (with stops in Canada) in support of John Green's latest bestselling book called The Fault in Our Stars that you can grab off Amazon. Many fans of the vlogbrothers have already bought the book and are raving about it and it did hit numero uno on the bestseller list. I'd also like to point out that the song playing in the video is called "A Song about Anglerfish" and is one of Hank Green's songs which are available at their website dftba.com. If you don't know what "DFTBA" stands for is "Don't Forget To Be Awesome" but if you are already a fan of them you know that.

One thing I would like to state is that I think that Hank Green should be given the nickname "The Green Panther" if he does plan on embarking on a career as an art thief.

Hank Green aka The Green Panther declares "FIRST!".

Also, John Green did a video called "John Green's Message to Canadians" that was posted around the same time where he discusses a previous visit to Windsor in Ontario Canada and his latest book, that you might have missed. He also mentions that nerdfighters in Canada are, naturally, awesome. I would say that many Canadian fans would love to have both John and Hank stop by and eventually I'm sure they will.

Wil Wheaton Talks About SOPA, PIPA With The Young Turks

Recently the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was stopped in it's tracks by a general outpouring of distaste for the legislation from the people and companies across the Internet who felt that the act was too far reaching and draconian in its scope. Many voiced the concern that it was a naked attempt by the entertainment industry to flex it's muscles and could be used to cripple or stifle perceived competition for the more traditional distributors of information, entertainment and content. Actor Wil Wheaton was interviewed by Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks and Wheaton discusses the problems he sees with the legislation.

Wheaton is of course familiar to many from several movies and his role on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as more recently as "evil Wil Wheaton" on The Big Bang Theory but he is also a very good blogger in his own right at wilwheaton.tumblr.com.

I was interested in the points he made when talking with Uygur from his personal point of view concerning being one who does create his own work and wanting to protect that work which of course makes perfect sense. He makes a great point when discussing how one writer seemed to couch the debate as "you are either for artists' intellectual property rights, or you are against SOPA/PIPA" when the problems run much deeper than that. Personally I see (and definitely agree) that the work of people and companies that create this work must be protected but not by allowing a small group a vested interest in protecting themselves by being able to snuff out the work of others that is seen as encroaching on their turf. The problem with SOPA was that it potentially would allow one or more of the largest media companies to simply remove their much smaller competition if they felt that was in their best interest by dismissing them from the Internet without real due process.

More importantly, what do you think about SOPA and Wheaton's remarks? I've been following him for quite a while on Twitter (he can be found at @wilw) and except for a misguided allegiance to the Los Angeles Kings he does always tweet interesting stuff and has almost 2 million followers. You can also find him on Youtube at wilwheaton.

Philip DeFranco Gets New Office Digs And Launching Sourcefed Jan 23rd

First, here's a little SourceFed which is a new channel that Philip DeFranco started a while back but now it looks like it will be coming online in about a week (January 23rd to be exact). That link will take you to it on Youtube where 103K others, including me, have already subbed, There were 77K subbed the day before the video below came out.

Do you think this new channel will go anywhere? This new channel along with other stuff, necessitated a move to a larger studio and Phil takes us on a quick tour.

New Home For The Philip DeFranco Show

That's quite the office you have there Mr DeFranco! Good to see that you have Matty roped off from the general public and staff. Maybe get his door so it locks from the outside and leave him in there with just his computer and a motion sensor that yells "Get Back To Work!!" whenever he walks to the door. Hmmm, the secret Sourcefed set? Would have liked a peek in there.

But Phil, about that spare room - I'm callin' dibs. I see that as my own little office and... no? Okay. Like just about anyone else I would say ballpit or something similar. You could always make it like a room that other youtubers could use to film their own stuff, almost like a tiny recording studio (not music because that would be too loud). Maybe they could rent it out for a day or two here and there, maybe another small source of moola for the company and you and your crew might find "the next Youtube Star!" from a group of several out-of-town vloggers. Don't know if that's a good idea or not but it's an idea nonetheless. And the next video is Phil getting ready for the move.

Big Changes In Store

This is actually Phil's last video from his home office although I wouldn't be suprised to see a video or three shot there sometime in the future. When DeFranco and company left he old studio he moved everyone into his house and you see his editor Matty hard at work. Phil also mentions another of his projects called SourceFed which will be up January 23, 2012. The tag line for the channel is "Your only source for news" and there is one short video up so far but expect a lot of content by the time the 23rd rolls around. What kind of content? Hard to say. I don't think it will be stuff about Lyndsay "I'll Be Buried Me In A Y-Shaped Coffin" Lohan or just other celebs but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the channel.

Along with this move to a much larger studio and the unveiling of Sourcefed Philip DeFranco has been pretty busy for the last few months. He has been posting videos to both of his larger channels like The Vloggity and his main channel The Philip DeFranco Show (which recently topped 2,000,000 subscribers). If you aren't following him on Youtube, last October Phil and his girlfriend Linz did a tour of Europe and posted videos from different countries with a big bash in Ireland where he met lots of subscribers and then posted an hour and twelve minute video of the gathering.

Anyway, looking at the first video it seems Phil and his minions have tons of space to fill but I'm predicting that in a year or so he'll been looking for an even larger workspace to house his people and all the projects they are working on. And remember, he started all this with just himself in front of a camera not too long ago.

Subscriber Losses For Top Ten Youtubers

I just checked Youtube stats to see how the Top Ten Youtubers have fared with the potential loss of subscribers given the recent announcement that Youtube would be removing inactive and closed accounts from the total number of subscribers each channel has and it's not pretty.

The totals shown courtesy of Top 100 on VidStatsX, which if you go to their website you will find out how many subscribers the top 100 lost - although VidStatsX's numbers update daily.

Taking a quick look at the stats it looks like the channel that was hardest hit was machinima who lost close to 150,000 subscribers followed by RayWilliamJohnson who was hit with a loss of 138,629 as well as nigahiga who lost 125,169 subs. If you look at the Top 100 list everyone on it lost a portion of their subscriber base. I obviously don't know if your own channel has suffered a loss or not but the website does track the Top 2000 Youtube channel fairly accurately with the lowest listed having 63,500 subscribers. It does look like a LOT of Youtube channels have lost either a lot or a small fraction of their subscribers so you might want to take a look if your own subs are over 63K.

CammehYaBams Vs ThatsoJack: Tempest In A Teapot

I just saw a number of videos that I have to shake my head about. One is from CammehYaBams called How Not To Rant With ThatsoJack And My Final Thoughts On That Vapid Community where he criticizes ThatsoJack content using logic (as well as some strong language). Apparently Jack somehow heard via Twitter that CammehYaBams was going to upload the following video and sent him a message saying to forget about it or he would be sorry.

This was followed by Jack's own reply and I would guess that Jack will probably remove the following video from Youtube shortly but below the video are some of his comments about the video. He obviously took offense to what CammehYaBams said in his video but rather than addressing them himself he simply instructed his almost 70,000 subscribers to go and dislike, flag and work to get CammehYaBams banned from Youtube.

Actually I just read that thatsojack made the video private, meaning that now it cannot be seen on Youtube but what he said in the video to his followers is reflected below.

LOL Hater

"...and I found there was this video about from this guy that alot of you probably know. He made this video about TCProductionsX and he is the biggest...um, I'm not even going to go into detail. Basically all I'm asking you guys to do is to go to the link below (he provides a link to the CammehYaBams' video about him) and dislike it, give it a thumbs down, and flag it for bullying, promoting hatred, any of the things that would be relevant." Um, a better idea would be to ask them to go to the video and WATCH it first before forming their own opinion about the content rather than just automatically hitting the dislike button and flooding the comments with negative comments.

He continues: "If you have multiple accounts do it on all of your accounts. He says really mean things... All I'm asking you guys to do is help me get this guy off the Internet... hope this guy knows he's in for a little "treat", so you guys can go and dislike and flag that and don't worry cause he messed with the wrong person."

As far as "cyber-bullying" goes, doesn't putting out a request for around 70K fans to use "all of your accounts" in order to "help me get this guy off the Internet" sound a little like cyber-bullying?

What followed was tons of negative comments with little logic, attacking CammehYaBams' looks, etc claiming he was bullying Jack by posting a video criticizing his content. Also, suddenly there are hundreds of dislikes on the video and a bunch of comments crowing "FLAGGED!" but little in the way of intelligent comments about what CammehYaBams had tried to point out about ThatSoJack's content.

One Youtuber posted the following video in defense of CammehYaBams' right to express his opinion. His name is Undertakerfreak1127 who is one of the youtubers who also criticizes what is poor Youtube content and those who try to game the system for financial gain. There is some strong language in this video but the points he makes are relevant.

Thatsojack2 Sends His Fanboys to Attack CammehYaBams After Calling HIM a Bully

If you watch the video from CammehYaBams, be sure to watch the video responses to it (including Jack's call to action) because there are lots of insightful comments in the responses made about this entire tempest in a teacup basically mentioning freedom of speech and opinion and advising Jack to grow up a bit and learn to take criticism rather than trying to turn any perceived slight into an Internet war.

My thoughts are that rather than try to call on all of his followers to attack the video and work to get someone banned for not liking whatever he posts onto a public website like Youtube maybe he would post a rebuttal addressing the criticisms in a truly mature manner.