Assignment 3: Vlogmas 2015 (Timed Column/Opinion Piece)

Now a week into December, many YouTube content creators have started uploading content every day in the build up to Christmas in an event known as ‘Vlogmas’.

YouTubers and millions of teens around the world are starting to replace traditional media like TV and print magazines for videos put on video-sharing website YouTube – videos anything between 3 minutes and an hour featuring any kind of content from sitting talking to a camera about recent purchases (a ‘haul’), playing video games or even just filming their day.

This ‘Vlogmas’ event, acting as the advent calendar of YouTube, allows content creators to share more with their dedicated audience. People with few subscribers that make videos for fun, or to be more like their favourite YouTubers, up to those full-time YouTubers, such Brighton based Zoe Sugg, known as Zoella, the 50^th most subscribed channel on YouTube, are participating in Vlogmas.

Becoming a full time YouTube creator is both easier and harder than it’s ever been – YouTube as a platform is growing infinitely to audiences of all ages, all around the world and whilst the audiences are there, the ‘YouTube game’ is harder to get into than ever, with YouTube’s new algorithms making it harder to find smaller, but just as talented, YouTubers.

Aforementioned beauty vlogger Zoella, known for her tutorials and fashion hauls, is participating in Vlogmas on both her main channel and her ‘second channel’ – a side channel where she posts vlogs of her daily life, sometimes nearing thirty minutes long. She is posting a video on her main channel, with over 9 million subscribers, every day, talking about Christmas related topics and making fun videos with her friends.

Last December, Sugg faced criticism following the launch of her tween book ‘Girl Online’ and the revelation that the book was in fact ghost written. This forced her to stop making Vlogmas videos with an announcement on her twitter profile: ‘taking a few days out and off the internet because it’s clouding up my brain’.

However, Sugg appears to be returning to Vlogmas 2015 with a bang having successfully uploaded videos to both of her channels every day so far.

With her second book, sequel ‘Girl Online: On Tour’ having been released two months ago, it’s unlikely literary criticism will stop her.

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In my writing seminar today we were given about 35 minutes to write an opinion piece on whatever we wanted to work on finding our 'voice'. My journalist 'voice' is much more formal than my 'blogger' voice but I find it relatively easy to write nonetheless and finished in twenty minutes.

I'll let you know if the feedback is good or bad - I could have got the wrong idea entirely!