Online Community Conference - YouTube's Hong Qu

YouTube sent Hong Qu to OCS2007 to talk about their special program for non-profit organizations. (That's me on the left.)

According to the the promotion on the home page of http://youtube.com/nonprofits

"Your Nonprofit channel includes:

* Premium branding capabilities and increased uploading capacity
* Rotation of your videos in the "Promoted Videos" areas throughout the site
* The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout "Donate" button"

Apparently approved non-profits aren't limited to 10 minute videos.

Among the participating partners is one of the organizations that Omidyar Network supports:
http://youtube.com/youthnoise Check it out and you'll get some sense of the possibilities.

I really liked Hong Qu because he was so humble - the opposite of a public relations person. He's an interface designer. Just like Google/YouTube to send a UI person. For example - when someone predicted YouTube's downfall, he didn’t get defensive, he just said “we’ll have to wait and see.” When asked how non-profits were selected for special promotion he admitted that he didn't know. He shed some light about the management process at YouTube - he said they got a memo that a human had to review all the non-profits before they are allowed to use it – and the memo asked for volunteers.

Small world: Hong Qu works with Hunter Walk at YouTube. Hunter and I worked together at Linden Lab in the very early days of Second Life.

At this point organizations must have 501c3 nonprofit status - that means sorry to Canandians and others living outside the USA. But it's a nice start.