YouTube launched a new generation of creators. Now what?

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It's been more than a decade since Google purchased YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion in shares. The digital world of today has changed a lot since then.

And this Canadian YouTuber has been there for the ride.

This video from YouTuber Corey Vidal, posted in 2008, has been viewed more than 21 million times and helped launch Vidal's successful YouTube career - making $10,000 the first month and an additional $40,000 through marketing agencies, and advertising agencies, and selling some licensing.

Vidal has been making YouTube videos for 11 years on his channel — doing it full-time for the last nine years, making YouTube specific production videos for big brand companies like Tim Hortons, Intel and Canon.

In 2013, Vidal also started a second business, Buffer Festival — a film festival based in Toronto specifically for YouTubers all over the world. 

Vidal tells The Current's guest host Nora Young he's doing all right financially.

"Personally I am making six figures each year — Canadian. As a business we're dealing in the seven figures — Buffer Festival costs, you know, a couple of million dollars to throw."

Vidal tells young that YouTube is successful because "they beat the system. They were there first."

He suggests other platforms like Twitter or Vimeo aren't doing as well as YouTube because they are limited.

"I have a YouTube video that's two-and-a-half hours long, right?" And tens of thousands of people have watched it."

Tessa Sproule, CEO of Vubble — a company focused on shortform video curation — tells Young that YouTube has helped many people create established businesses.

"And it isn't you know cat videos anymore," says Sproule. 

"There's a guy out in Ladysmith, B.C. who's done very well with a woodworking channel and into his retirement he's funding his local hockey team."

"I think YouTube's done a wonderful job of trying to help lift people that are wanting to be creators but don't have access, or didn't have the ability to reach out to the conventional spaces to tell their stories," Sproule tells Young.

According to YouTube, Canadians share 15 per cent more videos than the average user — a factoid that may explain why Canada was recently chosen as the first country to get access to a new social chat platform within the YouTube app.

Sproule says that Facebook launching monetization will put some pressure on to YouTube.

"Facebook has such enormous reach and so much presence and dominance in the lives of Canadians — 86 per cent of Canadians say they go to Facebook every single day."

She suggests if YouTube wants to continue to be a leader, it has continue to support its creator base and encourage them to to evolve with their narrative storytelling.

"I think it needs to do what it's been doing but do it in even bigger and better ways — particularly with the Canadian community, we are such a huge country, we have so many amazing storytellers from coast to coast to coast."

Listen to the full segment at the top of this web post.

This segment was produced by The Current's Shannon Higgins, Ines Colabrese and Peter Mitton.