If you haven’t noticed yet, YouTube says they’re trying to be more transparent for the creator community — so much so they’ve hired its first “head creator liaison”.
According to a recent blog post from YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, this is something that’s been a long time coming. The first-ever head creator liaison at YouTube will be Matt Koval. He is a former YouTube creator that began uploading videos to YouTube all the way back in 2008. He eventually was hired by YouTube to work as a full time lead content strategist in 2012.
What will Matt Koval’s job entail as head creator liaison?
Most of Koval’s entire career within YouTube has revolved around creator content. However, as head creator liaison, he will be addressing the needs and problems of the community and tell YouTube what those needs and issues are. He’s essentially a representative of the creators inside of YouTube. His job requires him to raise the issues of creators on the platform and work with YouTube to address those issues.
“Goal is to help creators understand YouTube, and vice versa,” Koval tweeted. “Complicated stuff on both sides.”
Will Koval make YouTube more transparent?
YouTube has been working hard to make YouTube much more transparent. For instance, just this week YouTube for the first time released data regarding the removed video reinstate rate. Wojcicki said back in April 2019 that YouTube will “be making a big push to meet creators where they want to communicate— through social, video, and one-on-one sessions.” She has also gone on record saying “creators say it feels like an inconvenience when we run experiments or make changes.” It is a huge inconvenience when YouTube runs internal tests without even letting creators know they are doing tests.
Koval hopes to keep the tensions between the two parties down. The idea behind his position as head creator liaison is he’s had experience working as a creator and with YouTube. So, in theory, he will work well as a mediator between the creator community and YouTube. He will communicate more directly with creators, “including via social media, blog posts, videos, and IRL at creator events,” according to TubeFilter. He’ll also run the new YouTube Liaison Twitter account.
We will see how well Koval can decrease the tensions between the two parties because tensions are at an all-time high. It won’t be an easy job, but we hope that the creator community will have a much stronger voice inside of YouTube with him acting as their representative.