YouTube is about to change.

what does YouTube look like in 2050 well we spent the last 2 weeks with the CEO of YouTube some of the most Innovative creators and Mark Zuckerberg now all these experiences gave us a glimpse into what the future will look like and weirdly meeting Mark Zuckerberg actually taught us a lot about what YouTube will look like so throughout this episode we'll talk about how YouTube will change over the next year and then how it'll change over the next 25 years and to fully bring that 2050 Vision to life throughout the episode we're going to be

showing you futuristic mockups of YouTu that we made in collaboration with an incredible Creator named concept Central now we're also going to be talking about the tech that we've tried firsthand the insights we've learned and the actions that you can take to Future prooof your YouTube channel you want to know something else futuristic on okay the way we generated the thumbnails for this video Yeah and even the idea was pretty wild both of those came from the sponsor of this episode spotter Studio spotter studio is an AI powered brainstorm partner specifically designed for YouTube creators

now if you're a YouTube Creator I can't emphasize this enough you should definitely try this out it helps you brainstorm new ideas for your channel based on your top performing videos as well as the top performing videos on YouTube and the software continues to get upgraded already since the last time we told you about spotter Studio there is now a new thumbnail style called realistic which truly helps we can now look at way more realistic mockup versions of potential thumbnails these thumbnail mockups give us the confidence to move forward forward with producing a video and

also give us the idea of how to shoot and design our thumbnails now with spotter Studio you can start from scratch just by pressing brainstorm and it'll give you ideas or you can type in an idea to Workshop it's the best software to support you with your YouTube channel so if you want to give it a try we have a 60-day free trial that's Linked In Our description check that out connect your YouTube channel and start brainstorming all right YouTube in 2050 let's get into it I wish you could hear the sounds that these just

made yeah that's basically what they made yeah I heard [Music] it all right so here's how we're going to structure this episode we are going to talk about three actual things that we learned over the past three weeks from being both at YouTube as well as meta and how those inform what we think YouTube could look like in 2050 where does this story begin all right so this Story begins in New York City at made on YouTube made on YouTube is the event where YouTube announces all their newest features they bring a bunch of creators

together in a room and we get to hear from the CEO Neil Mahan firsthand about the priorities of YouTube and where they are headed sitting there in the seats the one thing that struck me the most was cinematic Channel pages and episodic view so this is the way that YouTube shows up on your TV screen they are now formatting it for big screen so that it looks very similar to Netflix eily similar to Netflix right you know yeah so this is something that's coming in the very near future for YouTube like this is like a

next year thing 2025 thing I I think one of the major things about this in terms of why it's futuristic it it's going to push the culture of how YouTube content is created um our good friend and member of the content closet tagis hore just made a series about attractiveness the science of attractiveness and he spent 6 months on this series the trailer that he dropped which he even dropped a trailer which is like not really that YouTube you would assume You' drop a trailer maybe on Instagram or X or something like that he drops

a trailer the thumbnail intentionally looks like Netflix yeah right and it's playing out episode to episode on his channel Banner right now it says episode two loading right right and it feels like something that could be on a streamer now tus is a creator with 880,000 subscribers right that's very hard to do what he's doing and it's not going to be something that I think you know anyone and everyone on YouTube can do I think in the future YouTube for new people is like you start out making shorts most likely sure but it's going to

be hard to stand out so if if we extrapolate that ad and go further new Creator Discovery gets really hard in my opinion because if you if you look at your own behavior of like opening the YouTube app on a TV you're not really navigating to like a brand new piece of content yeah and there's more at stake as a smaller Creator if you put all the time energy and resources into making something that could be on television that takes six months to make we went through this firsthand we tried to make really intricate docu

series and video essays on our channel four or five years ago and when it didn't go well it really stinks hurt our egos but also was like felt like a a waste of time it was discouraging yeah right and that's where I think hype their new like leader board for smaller creators between I think 50,000 and 500,000 subscribers comes in where you can ask your audience to Hype you or other creators can encourage people to Hype a smaller Creator and they'll show up on a leaderboard and I think that exists because it is harder for

smaller creators who are making things that aren't necessarily like algorithmically valuable right away to stand out the the the first of all with hype like I think it's a great idea I think everyone wants it I think it's a short term solution there has to be a mechanism to discover brand new creators uh CU if not as we look in the future of YouTube it's going to get like a platform that had a low relatively low barrier to entry when it first started the barrier to entry is increasing if you have to make TV quality

style uh content that has multi-episodic and is able to be binged if that's like the gold standard of YouTube um where how do you how does a new Creator break through if we if we play the that out now 20 plus years you've got hype right which is like this next version of a leaderboard yeah for smaller creators if you keep going down that Trend are there just going to be more and more leaderboards per different types of like genre like here's a leaderboard for scripted content on YouTube Here's a leaderboard for cooking channels tell

you what like the YouTube studio with the one out of 10 ranking as much as I don't like it sometimes because it like gamifies what we do and makes me feel bad it also sort of motivates me and makes me understand how to track if I'm doing well and I think a leaderboard also supports that also supports that of like oh you know what I'm the number two or I'm the number one channel in my category yeah this month they have that in music it's all about like top country charts top this charts yeah that's

true that's good I like that could happen that's good now YouTube also announced a lot of AI stuff right the like AI getting integrated into um your workflow AI getting integrated into dubbing right like so that basically AI will automatically dub your content uh into other languages that's really interesting I think that will culturally change what YouTube content looks like because that means people who make Universal Concepts as videos that can be understood across borders and languages will be the most Mass viewership videos 80% of the world doesn't speak English so there's a huge opportunity

to have creators who are like Global phenomenon but what I think dubbing shows us is a glimpse into the maybe more distant future where yes you have like an AI version of your voice that you can use as a Creator as a tool but we're also going to have ai video versions of ourself that I think we can use as tools so when we went to meta connect which is meta's basically version of YouTube where they announce lot of their new features Zuck was on stage with a Creator named Don Allen and alen Stevenson the

third yeah he's got a long name I abbreviated that so he's on stage with him but he is essentially FaceTiming the AI video version of him and Zuck is having a conversation with the AI avatar version of Don Allen congrats on the new book that you just released you know what's the main thing that you're hoping that people take away from it thank you so much yeah the main thing I want people to take away from my book is and yeah it takes a little bit of time for the AI version of Don Allen to

get his thoughts together yeah and respond and it does sound a little aiy but what is this world we're living in where you and I can have ai versions of ourselves as like a film making tool MH yeah like like imagine a YouTube back end where I am typing in or I'm using voice to Workshop or write a script and then I generate the video and the video that's generated is in our set and it looks basically indistinguishable and sounds indistinguishable from if I actually were to film it is that a tool you would use

uh as a consumer or as a Creator let's start with as a Creator would you use that tool well I actually it's it's a it I asked that question because I would use it if consumers liked it and I think I have to answer that question first as a consumer like let's say you're watching a Johnny Harris video yeah and it says made with AI somewhere under it and you don't know what part of it is made with AI but it turns out actually the video of Johnny explaining something right is an AI avatar version

of him but he's in his set it looks like him it sounds like him and you can't tell but it says made with AI in the corner yeah do you care no not not really yeah and Johnny if he's like in Hawaii for shooting a video but he's like I wish I was in my set for this one I wish I'm having trouble getting videos out yeah but then the but then the question becomes as I like extrapolate this further and further out it's like if I wish Johnny was explain like I would just want

to have access to ask Johnny questions there and that's what Zuck is doing that's what he's doing instead of asking Johnny Harris to make the video or instead of waiting for Johnny Harris to make a video yeah you're asking which video basically he should make and having a conversation in real time I mean dude the reality is like some of this already exists like I could probably train a model on every Johnny Harris video and then go explain this to me like Johnny Harris that that in a way already exists and then as you extrapolate

that into the future is that what the aif fication of creators becomes it was an eerie thing to watch on stage candidly and as I think about it more and more it's increasingly more eerie because originally when you know in 2023 meta connect Zuck announced like chat AI chat and he expanded that with new voices this year but like chat feels really safe it reminds me of smarter child from Aim aim or aim both are valid okay aim like we used to we've had text prompting AI for actually quite some time that feels safe but

seeing how photorealistic Don Allen Stevenson looked that's where it took it a step to go okay this does already exist the the latency of the voice if that that Gap gets closed is that a more interesting way to engage with creators than like the way they want to present information to you at least at this point I'm not super interested in that like for our brand I think it sort of pushes the bounds and extends the like parasocial relationship between a Creator and the audience when like an audience member can ask a specific question that's

pertains to their life and their interests and it can look potentially indistinguishable from real life even if it says made with AI I still think it has like it can have an emotional impact on someone of course and of course it can inevitably you would have to imagine that like kids would use it or anyone would use it and feel like they had a relationship with the Creator MH and I think about explaining that to a child who's like yeah like Johnny har is my friend and I'm like oh well no he's not your friend

and they're like but yeah I told him about my soccer game yeah and he chimed in on it mhm that would be a weird conversation between like a 12-year-old having a conversation about a soccer game and then Johnny talking about like World politics and borders yeah but it could happen sure and how do you explain that new reality where it's like I know what you thought you experienced on your phone or in an AR environment was was really that person but it wasn't and I know it's entertaining and it was tailored specifically to you but

so that that was truly like one of the most interesting parts of meta connect was seeing that so what do you do what is the action that can be taken if we're looking at a world where there are AI versions of creators that are essentially being the real-time storytellers and there you know that's this new form of content it's not like we make something you sit and watch and listen to it it's like we actually are just making something together yeah I think um my my honest opinion is that like trust and credibility is always

going to play a major role in the in storytelling and so like even when we look at that like the AI of Don Allen Stevenson only has credibility because of Don Allen Stevenson right now the fact that he wrote a book on AI that you can talk to him specifically about that subject matter I think that will still be you know the reality in the future we also could be I mean you guys tell us what you think about this but we could be um you know we see a lot of new tech and a

lot of future Tech and I think we immediately jump to like what if this is widely adopted the question becomes is it going to be widely adopted you know like and and and maybe it won't but the most defensible thing you can do as a Creator is like have a very distinct POV and a very distinct area of expertise right so that the obvious is like the audience knows exactly what to go to you for perspective matters Vision matters taste matters brand matters I also think verifiably human activities will really matter and and we're seeing

it in the rise of live sports right like live sports are so verifiably human like no one knows what's going to happen on either side and we watch and see what happens but we're seeing that seep into like you know like kais at did like the little basketball league right where he's playing in this like just totally up new basketball leag league and it's like funny CU it's a meme right it's also interesting because it's it's like sports it's competition and we know it's just like verifiably this is a human experience that's happening and we're

getting to watch it yeah wow I just thought of like a roast and now I have to do it because I thought of it okay and I'm sorry of me are you gonna play in the league oh my God all right man I apologize before I said it can we talk about wearables let's go okay wearables yes I am if you're listening I am wearing uh the ray band Meadows right now and the clear ones where you can see all the tech I mean it's uh wearables is always the most exciting thing in in any

of these announcements right like and the reason why wearables matter to this conversation of what will YouTube look like in the future is because wearables likely will play a role in how we consume YouTube If wearables are widely adopted uh in the same way that smartphones were in the same way that the iPhone was adopted then it will be a major screen for audiences in the future and that is why it matters that's why it's important now going to meta and spending the day there the biggest thing was Orion which is their new AR glasses

I would say the biggest thing was meeting Mark Zuckerberg yeah the biggest thing for us personally meeting Mark Zuckerberg the biggest thing that they announced was Orion the AR glasses um and those paired with these the rayb bands which are like the most Sleek best looking design design of wearables that I've personally seen um the Orion glasses and getting to try them I think correct me if I'm wrong we were like two of 100 people that's what I've heard that's what they said were like maybe a couple hundred people two of like hundred or maybe

they said like hundreds of people uh whove tried it and that there were only like a thousand made or something at this point yeah I mean look if you've tried Apple Vision Pro with like pass through you've seen something kind of similar um to what this looks and feels like but it's a very Sleek design it's very very very um easy to to put on and navigate it calibrates to your eyes your eyes operate as the cursor which is similar to Apple Vision Pro and then your fingers you wear a wristband and your fingers um

operate as the click so you can look at something and click on it if if you're getting a call you can look at the answer button and use your your two fingers to click you can go back home with the UI you can open up Instagram and you can actually um use your thumb to swipe through Instagram the amazing thing is how intuitive it is like they have built incredibly intuitive Tech into this MH now there's also this you know this demo that they show of not only like video calls were actually really interesting and

cool but like Holograms of AI avatars so now we take what we just brought up with Don Allen Stevenson and that um Creator you know AI FaceTime type thing and you bring that into wearable tech now I'm having lunch I'm wearing glasses that look and feel like this and I ceue up MKBHD to sit with me and go I'm trying to make a decision on what phone to buy next can we talk about it he's like sure what questions do you have yeah now when we think about that from the Creator perspective like we just

said like having a brand having something that you stand for would be the reason why I ceue you up with my wearables mhm but another quote from Zuck is is also important to uh recognize here where he says maybe in the future there will be content that is purely generated by AI by the system personalized just for you there will be AI creators and creators building AI versions of themselves I do think uh that is a reality that like a lot of these platforms most likely will in fact even use the data from our videos

that have already been posted to then generate new videos speciic specifically tailored to people and it might seem weird and strange now but there will be people growing up who probably see that as the norm and that is the most affordable video that those platforms can make that probably does not require Revenue shares and potentially satisfies the viewer in a way that human content cannot that's like we have to live in a world where that maybe is happening so then what matters what do you have have to believe and it goes back to verifiably human

like I do believe that humans will always put value on human Creations that they know are in fact human and like have imperfections you yeah I actually think meta will soon become more a hardware company than they are a a software company and that's interesting like they're actually gunning it to compete with the iPhone whether or not you believe me with what I just said that like glasses computer glasses could compete with the iPhone like I I I actually think if we look out years and years and years and years in the future it will

be odd to look at photos of us looking down at I I did have that feeling when I put on the Orion glasses of wow I just got my eyes and my hands back yeah and my like posture and my posture that's the crazy thing is you got your posture back you're like wait I'm still engaging with like everything I'm familiar with from an app perspective like my apps are in front of my eyes and of course that happens with apple Vision Pro but it's so bulky yeah it's too heavy on your face like these

glasses are so lightweight so yeah I think like the the the if you follow the track of like what entertainment will look like in 2050 you have to think about how we'll be consuming it like the phone changed our Dynamic from the movie screen the movie screen changed our Dynamic from the radio right all these ways in which we consume entertainment have changed the way storytellers tell stories in the ways that audiences want their entertainment I don't think we could have ever anticipated 15-second videos could create celebrities when we were you know when people in

1960 were watching movies and those were the biggest celebrities so we have to follow the track of going like where is this all headed while we were recording I posted on X and I said uh YouTube in 2050 what's it look like mhm and one of the top responses here is I can't wait till watch Michelle car's challenge accepted on my Apple Vision contact lenses and you know what that is not that far it's not that far from the vision that we're kind of painting here that you will be wearing some sort of glasses and

watching creators slash interacting with them yeah in real time all right let's talk let's talk about like the the the biggest hits here in terms of YouTube let's talk about thumbnails let's talk about subscribers let's talk about monetization how did those evolve over the next 25 years when it comes to titles and thumbnails I think in the very near future we're going to get the ability to AB test titles as well right now we can ab test thumbnails but to take it a step further kerion who we had on the show uh said that you

know on Netflix you'll get served a thumbnail for a show that's right for you so like if you're into romantic comedies there may be an action movie that also has a subplot that's kind of like romantic comedy but you like action so it'll show you the version of the thumbnail that's good for Action right I think that will most likely come to YouTube uh AI generated thumbnails that are tailored to what you like to watch yeah I think the whole theme is like how can this get increasingly more personalized to the viewer okay what's next

subscribers subscribers uh subscribers I don't I don't know when we were um when we were at YouTube in New York Ryan Tran made a suggestion that I really loved which was you know on Spotify where it says monthly listeners say like 3 million monthly listeners uh what if we had monthly viewers on YouTube it's really interesting because it kind of shows you actually how hot a Creator is in any given month um it's a better indicator potentially than subscribers yeah it's a better indicator subscribers is such a legacy metric that I don't know when or

if YouTube adjusts that and that's that's too big of a way to like um it potentially would bum a lot of creators out to have that public metric of oh my gosh month viewers oh yeah if it goes down it'd be a huge bummer for your audience to know like damn really tough month for you and the industry already looks at you know public performance and like how you're doing like there's all our metrics are public you you can still figure that out you can go on any other platform and figure that out of how

many monthly viewers this person has right now but it's interesting to think about like do subscribers still matter um how small do you think play buttons are going to get how digital are they going to get they're going to be digital they probably like a little nft that comes to you yeah um all right monetization how does how does revenue sharing work in a world where we saw like Donell and Stevenson right like are you licensing your face in that context like definitely yeah I think there's a world of like if you choose to licensing

your like an AI version of yourself or making it available to certain models um making that even like a paid experience is it time time spent like what if the platforms paid you based on how much time was spent with your AI Avatar like hours yeah I don't feel good about that like is it hours spent is it like oh man you you like people logged uh a thousand hours with your AI this month so you get a sh you get like a monetization based on that oh probably I mean that is kind of the

way like right yeah yeah I don't know and and and do like does wearable cpms go higher than television cpms lower because you're distracted because you're actually like only watching the video off to the right yeah or is advertising in wearable in the wearable World totally different is it like digital Billboards yeah and then you pay for like a premium version where you don't have digital Billboards but like you're wearing these glasses and then I'm looking at you and like an ad pops up here I don't know maybe it's it's total a totally different version

of advertising that uh looks and feels different or does like a Creator pop up holographically and go like hey let me tell you about pops up like like you're making coffee and it like pops up behind the coffee maker and it's like hey Samir have you thought about espresso pods I see you're using a chemx yeah whoa maybe maybe right so then monetization maybe looks totally different than we even know it today okay some takeaways here for how you can future proof YouTube channel that deep that was a deep heavy conversation yeah yeah okay let's

talk with a short-term takeaways of like how do you future proof your YouTube channel for the next year do I do I look insane in these glasses yeah well if it's them I prefer the ones that are not clear okay but we'll carry on here it fits the episode first takeaway from our last two weeks is that if you are making YouTube videos I would think about how you can make long form videos that can be in a series something we are not doing yet but we are looking at very seriously of like hey here's

a one-off episode could we actually do four episodes on that topic I would ask yourself like what are the things you think you could dedicate four episodes to because I do believe that that's how people want to watch and I think it's a good narrative for your channel too it's good to have a brand you brought up tagis if Tes is just making oneoff videos I may miss what he's making and not really understand what the narrative is of tagus but I know he's making a series right now about the science of attractiveness yeah right

so he's top of mine for me and his brand is is growing so that I think is really important I think on that subject matter as we go into the world of like the AI ification of content uh having an incredibly specific perspective is what's really important right now when we think about like this maybe is something we've talked about in the past and seems relatively obvious but like views for views sake I don't think matter that much anymore at at all actually I think like views in the context of your own unique expertise your

own unique uh perspective the thing that people can know you for is incredibly important because your brand is defensible over long periods of time views are not that defensible yep and then the third is probably just like get your hands on on some wearables yeah I think the third in general is like get on board at least with trying new tech because the moment you stop and I say you in terms of myself like there was a moment where I really was not using AI that much just to like prompt and to learn and I

realized I was getting worse not that I was staying the same I'm actually getting worse and falling behind and I have uh fear of like letting it go too far and feeling too behind yeah I think learning how to how to prompt is really important and right now that's mostly through text um but just understanding like stretching the bounds of what what it feels like to engage with and conversationally work with AI is actually I think a really important piece of the future that might again happen with voice in the very near and and Midterm

future but starting with text um if you're a YouTube creater starting with spotter studi is really interesting playing around with even like the the the thumbnails that we got for this episode like they'll just expand the bounds of what you can do and imagine but meeting Mark we should talk about meeting Mark meeting Mark Zuckerberg yeah that was a crazy experience I felt like I was meeting someone from one of my history books like I remember being in High School junior year and someone introducing me to Facebook and being like hey you should join and

I remember I looked at it and I never was into Myspace or anything like that so I said no thanks but that was at the end of my junior year by the time fall came around in my senior Year everybody was on Facebook including myself like was just this thing that took over especially in college like it just felt so novel and interesting and I never would have thought back then I would meet the guy who made this yeah I mean to to me he's like he's a movie character right like watching The Social Network

or like seeing him on screens or knowing like like he is a larger than life figure the amazing thing in meeting him was how like he's pretty chill and comfortable yeah um which was fun to like meet him and he's also uh the same height as me which was exciting I can't tell if he looks more like you or more like me what are you talking about he looks more like you zoom in on your face I don't know I think your faces look a little more similar I would have assumed me but I don't

think so the I I do like how much he's engaging with creators I think that's really cool like going on Cleo's Channel um he did a ton of short form content with a bunch of creators like um I I think it's important for a guy like that who's pushing the future uh to be a good communicator and a good Storyteller and uh I think the uh the the amazing thing is like he's been working on these Orion glasses for the past 10 years the crazy thing for me to think about is like what are they

working on now that they're going to unveil 10 years from now yeah I I think when I look at meta and Instagram I think they're a little bit uh less afraid to push the boundaries into the Future For Better or Worse like I'm sure people feel certain ways about it especially when it comes to AI but I think they are interested in being at the Forefront mhm that's the sense I get from them it's like very Tech focused how are we going how is the everyday person going to engage with tech when we spend time

with YouTube it's very much about how are creators using YouTube yeah right I mean there're very different companies meta and and obviously YouTubes with Google but like YouTube specifically and meta are very different companies and and I do give meta credit for pushing hard into the future as crazy as it is I think like the reason we're even talking about Mark Zuckerberg in an episode about what YouTube will look like in 2050 is because I think they're out there releasing products that will impact like you said the way we even engage with YouTube all right

those are our predictions for What YouTube will look like in 2050 if you have predictions or things that we missed things you disagree with let us know in the comments and make sure to subscribe to the channel hopefully by 2050 we'll get to 2 million subscribers [Music] [Laughter] [Music]