I’ve been really curious about the YouTube revenue sharing thing, so thanks for the input on that. Good to hear from someone who is doing it. And, as always I think YouTube is a great place to start to get organic adoption of a video offering so I get wanting people to know it’s on YouTube.

Congratulations on all you current launches, and I look forward to seeing what is coming up in the next month.

@Herb Content is king as always and I love technology so hearing about black companies using the best and being innovative always makes me smile. I look forward to seeing the announcement in the next few weeks.

We don’t do much press, VIP events, etc. but this hasn’t slowed our rapid growth. Some of the items Eric mentioned (”old school” video clips, radio, maps) have been the cornerstone on BlackBottom.com for some time (”old school” Black video clips, BlackBottom.com Radio, and BlackBottom.com Maps) and have performed quite well (~1M uniques within the last 30 days alone), but we still have _much_ more to do. The community has been _very_ supportive with ideas for more features, content, tools, etc; we will be busy for the foreseeable future. As a technology company (with most stuff created and collected in-house vs. “partnering”), one of our chief goals remains the same – to lead the space in Black content delivery using the _absolute_ best technology and processes available. In fact, we’ll have a special announcement in about three weeks.

Thanks,
Herb Pinder Jr. – Founder & CEO, Netellectuals LLC

You will indeed begin to see more integration of the YouTube channel into EbonyJet.com in coming weeks. One clarification, though – there are 9 categories of videos on EbonyJet.com, not 9 videos. Once you click a category, all the others in that category repopulate the space. We try to opt for a clean intuitive feel without too many instructions. But you may have pointed out a flaw in that design if you didnot find the other videos. Thanks for that.

One problem with integration of YouTube – and a cautionary tale for others thinking about such a move – is that YouTube is revenue sharing. There are times when an advertiser wants the content safety of your space without much noise. The YouTube channel does not always provide that safety. Also, there are times when you want to keep all the money yourself, frankly, and your own player that allows you to control syndication makes more sense in that instance.

We also want to initially push people to YouTube. Putting all those videos on EbonyJet.com at first takes emphasis off YouTube when we want people to focus that way. One it’s established that it’s there, you’ll see videos in both places.

Good observation also on lifting up YouTube promotion above the fold, which is coming, but we also launched EbonyJet Radio and our Landmarks map at the same time, and for the site’s purpose, getting traffic to those places with paid advertising is more necessary at this point.

Keep checking us out – something even more huge to announce in about a month.

Eric Easter – Chief of Digital Strategy, Johnson Publishing