YouTube & Adobe Partnership: It Happened!

In March I wrote a proposal for a “partnership between YouTube and Adobe”:http://jayneely.com/2007/03/28/a-profitable-partnership-how-youtube-can-re-revolutionize-personal-publishing, suggesting that by providing video editing tools to YouTube users, YouTube could help generate more of a community around content creation. I was catching up on my tech news from the weekend today when I saw this TechCrunch story: “YouTube Remixer: Edit Videos Online at YouTube”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/16/youtube-remixer-edit-videos-online-at-youtube/. Powered by… you guessed it, Adobe Premiere Express. Even though the implementation isn’t exactly what I had imagined, I still feel like flashing lights and throwing confetti in a Colbert-style “I was right!” moment.

Adding captions and transitions obviously isn’t going to cut it for even amateurs who are serious about creating video content, but these are good baby steps for those who aren’t at that level yet. I still think a -student- YouTube edition of the actual Adobe Premiere software would be a good move for the company; providing the next small step up toward the real thing. If Adobe is worried about losing revenue to people who will just download a free limited edition instead of paying for the full version… let’s face it, people who don’t want to pay are just going to pirate your software anyway.

If you give them a free version that has most of what an amateur user needs, you’re building customer loyalty, and making it much more likely that they’ll reach a professional level at which they’re willing to pay for a full version. For more analysis, ideas, and (hopefully correct) predictions, make sure you’re “subscribed to my feed”:http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialStrategistAtom.