According to the YouTube blog the company will now be offering some of the premier content providers a piece of the pie, with a new revenue sharing program.

“Now some of your favorite YouTube members, including Lonelygirl15, LisaNova, renetto, HappySlip, smosh, and valsartdiary, will begin to participate in the same revenue sharing and promotional opportunities that are available to YouTube’s other partners.”

The company gave few details on the exact workings of the program, but what detail they did share is listed below.

“Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.”

The news was met with mixed responses from the more than 200 comments.

• Those left out of the initial pilot were trying to figure out how to get in, (which prompted YouTube to amend the post and add a link to allow other creators to express interest in the program)
• Those who disagreed with the YouTuber’s who were chosen to participate in the program (and felt others were slighted)
• Those who are against commercialization all together and want to be able to opt out of channels run by those in the program  

The news also sparked discussion about ownership and the unauthorized use of copyrighted material. What happens is a user is making money from a partnership agreement but their videos contain copyrighted music, news clips, or the video is a repost of something they lifted from another site?

What if they are issuing a video response? Can they include sections of another YouTuber’s video in their response? These are details that will need to be sorted out as the company tries to monetize mass collaboration.