One of YouTube’s largest International stars, Rémi Gaillard, has always been a crowd-favorite when it comes to YouTube. With over 3 Million subscribers, his videos regularly get more than 1 Million views. His most popular video features Gaillard in a high-powered Go-kart in full Mario gear chucking bananas at cars as he drives around town; he’s also known for being a great soccer (trick) player, as well as his catch phrase, seen above “It is by doing whatever, that we become whoever.” Indeed, the anonymity of tomfoolery ultimately sky-rocketed Gaillard into a perhaps unwanted spotlight, and his most recent video featured some unwanted nudity that triggered YouTube’s censorship.
Gaillard has always held a Dailymotion account, though the bulk of his social media pushes and followers reside on YouTube; however, where YouTube saw censorship, Dailymotion saw a front-page opportunity.
“Rémi Gaillard returns with a censored video”
The Dailymotion team has pounced on the opportunity, pushing the video to the home page of the site, communicating the #NSFW video via Twitter & Facebook.
Rémi Gaillard fait son grand retour avec une vidéo censurée ! Découvrez-la vite: http://t.co/xBdfXDaAa6 #NSFW
— Dailymotion France (@Dailymotion_FR) September 9, 2013
While Dailymotion remains, by far, the 2nd largest UGC video site behind leader YouTube, there is clearly still room for improvement. At a recent YouTube event, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis spoke (and subsequently blogged) about how YouTube is creating unsustainable working conditions for its artists, and sooner or later, many of those stars will begin exploring alternatives.
Gaillard won’t be deleting his YouTube account anytime soon – in fact, even Calacanis admitted his company will still post videos to YouTube – however, it is clear that YouTube’s power over its artists must, and will diminish in the coming years. Large players like Netflix & Amazon Instant Video are looking at YouTube & Dailymotion with envy – zero investment in the artists, and phenomenal returns.
It’s not all fun and games in the web video industry; however, for now, we can still enjoy the fruits of their labor.