Intro

We have set up Joystream as an open source platform for video streaming services with a view to support innovation in the content production and consumption, which has been long dominated by incumbent closed corporate Web 2.0 platforms, such as YouTube. The overarching problem breakdown and our solution is covered with much detail in our lightpaper.

In order to further reduce the upfront costs for creating such video streaming services we’ve built Atlas, an open source video streaming App that works with the Joystream platform “out of the box”. While Atlas codebase is available for anyone to operate or build upon, Jsgenesis, the founding company behind Joystream, made a decision to operate a single instance of Atlas, under its own brand - Gleev.

At launch of Gleev, the Jsgenesis team has deliberately chosen to focus on the single, specific niche - the Crypto creators mainly to reduce the onboarding and adoption friction for the new users who are being introduced to the Web 3.0 concepts and test the early product.

To minimize the barrier of adding new content to Gleev, our team has built a YouTube Sync service which helps to add new videos from existing YT channels without any additional effort. The service simply required to sign up with the Google account and get all the videos synced to Gleev for a reward. This approach has quickly paid off and the number of channels signing up quickly grew from a handful per week to hundreds of new sign up daily!

While ironing out the operations we’ve also been carefully collecting the feedback from creators and identified a number of improvements for the YPP program and Gleev product which we are happy to announce in this post.

The most frequent feedback, however, was about the possibility to invite / subscribe the creators which are producing content outside of Crypto and Web3. Despite the marketing and sales efforts been focussed solely on the Crypto community, the word of mouth, creators promo videos and referrals activity resulted in the vast numbers of new channels that signed up being from all paths of life, and not just crypto.

Following a strategy review session and carefully considering the creators feedback, Jsgenesis team is bring a new release of Gleev YPP program spanning

• Revised set of criteria and tiers for creator rewards
• Expanded category focus
• Improved YPP dashboard
• Refreshed landing page

Read on for more details on each.

Quality first

In the past we have been automatically assigning tiers to the verified channels, based on the subscriber count only. Subscriber count served as benchmark for channel popularity and quality, and we used it as proxy for the value that YT creators add to Gleev App by syncing their content.

While it served us okay, the limitations in distributing the rewards based on “merit” were already covered above so we wanted a way to handle this better. We will now start rewarding channels based on the quality of content first, and only then consider popularity.

We’ve arrived to the 3 paid tiers (silver-diamond) and 1 tier that is subsidized purely by providing the access to the distribution infrastructure and sync service (bronze).

We believe this would allow us to be inclusive, but also not forced to reward nor to exclude the channels that are spending much less effort in creating their content, but do not violate any terms and simply have the right to exist. Below I am covering each of the tiers in more detail.

💎 Diamond

Quality: Absolute gold standard of quality. Professionally done with great quality of sound and effort put in post-production editing of video.
Popularity: Recognized influencer status. Very large subscriber audience, likely 100k - 500k and higher. Average views per video ~ more than 15k per video.

🥇 Gold

Quality: Popular, great quality, very well done, interesting to watch even if not interested in the narrow topic that channel covers.
Popularity: Subscribers likely to be > 25-150k. Average view per video ~ around 1-2k per video

🥈 Silver

Quality: Original good quality of content. Likely to be interesting to watch if interested in the narrow topic and can forgive the quality of the content when comparing to professional production. Sound may not be that great either.
Popularity: Subscribers likely to be > 5-25k. Average view per video ~ around 1-2k per video

🥉 Bronze

Quality: Lower effort production.
Popularity: Followed by friends and family. Follower base likely to be <5k. Average view per video ~ less than 1k per video

Broad content support

Arguably the biggest change in the YPP terms is opening up Gleev to a broad range of categories. Creators will be able to map their YT channels to one of the top level categories at the point of signing up. Categories discovery for the viewers, will only gradually appear, once the critical mass of content is reached in each of them.

More popular categories that we expect to appear sooner are marked in bold while the full set is presented below.

• Art
• Animation and Film
• Autos and Vehicles
• Business and Finance
• Crypto ⭐
• DIY
• Education
• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Memes and Humour
• Music and Music Videos
• Nature
• News and Current Affairs
• People and Blogs
• Pets and Animals
• Sports
• Technology
• Travel
• Unboxing
• Video Games

Enhanced program participation experience

Based on the feedback from the channels and support interactions we’ve added more info to the YPP dashboard and happy to be presenting the updated version

1. One of the core changes is that Dashboard will now be available to all channels on Gleev from the get go. Also, regardless of participation and verification status on YPP, everyone who has a channel can benefit from the referrals program!

2. The verification status and assigned tier will now be taking a prominent place in the top widgets row. In case of suspended channels the reason will be displayed right in the dashboard.

It would be also easier to sign up from the dashboard for mobile users by clicking the “sign up to participate” button right in the widget.

3. Ypp Sync Service status is improved with displaying the precise position in the syncing queue, counter of videos queued up as well as the ETA to full sync.

4. Payment widget will feature the next payment date and link to the page with historical statistics.

Accents on the core in the early onboarding

Web3.0 unique content monetization and community collaboration features is what puts us apart from the industry incumbents. One of points that our product team attempted to achieve with the refreshed onboarding experience is to equip the channels who are signing up with a better understanding of what we are all about, and the features they can expect for the channel monetization.

The features are:

• Creator Tokens - due for MVP release before the New Year. A huge milestone for our project and an incredibly powerful tool to fundraise and get consistent revenue for your channel shared with your fans and audience.
• Tipping - due early next year. A nice and useful feature for someone who is seeking for a quick thank you, without getting into the weeds of joining a more involved option of creator tokens. Something that is quickly becoming an industry standard.
• Members only (gated) content - due mid-next year. The last element to the full set of content monetization we are bringing to our creators. This feature is in the early concept stage and will deserve its own blogpost when designs are cooked and ready.

Gleev App is verified by Google Auth and YouTube teams, and this process took months of scrutinizing of our API and product design to get obtained! This status wasn’t communicated well enough in the earlier version, so following the feedback from the creators who signed up not without pinch of hesitation we decided to expand on this topic right on the sign up page.

Last but not the least, with the landing page we wanted to make a lasting first impression with strong bold typography and an easy way to start the sign up journey right off the bat.  We’ve taken the opportunity to bring it closer with Joystream.org website to make the transition smoother for the organic traffic.

The Future Looks Bright

The release was shipped on the 6th of October, paving the way for the Gleev App and its community to steadily grow in the direction we are moving - the empowered creators, in full ownership of their content, monetizing it in the ways that work for their best interest while serving it in the best interest of their audience.

It will now take some time to process the already suspended channels and re-introduce them to the updated experience and we are planning to do this in stages, a fraction of the channels over the span of several weeks.

We will continue to listen to the voice of creators while improving the platform and of course there are more features that need to get added to Gleev for the viewers benefit. For their delight we have a packed roadmap full of major improvements like adaptive streaming, playlists, enhanced recommendation engine, which we are well aware of and already have a solid plan of introducing them as part of our growth and product improvement roadmap.

Watch this space for more news to follow!

Disclaimer

All forward looking statements, estimates and commitments found in this blog post should be understood to be highly uncertain, not binding and for which no guarantees of accuracy or reliability can be provided. To the fullest extent permitted by law, in no event shall Joystream, Jsgenesis or our affiliates, or any of our directors, employees, contractors, service providers or agents have any liability whatsoever to any person for any direct or indirect loss, liability, cost, claim, expense or damage of any kind, whether in contract or in tort, including negligence, or otherwise, arising out of or related to the use of all or part of this post, or any links to third party websites.