We could already imagine it last year, and finally in October YouTube confirmed that its annual compilation, the once very popular Rewind, had come to an end. This is not something that should surprise us, in truth, and it is that if we retrieve the numbers of its latest editions, Rewind 2019, 48 hours after its publication, had already become the third video on the platform with the most negative votes . Rewind 2018 was not excessively better, with 2.9 million positive votes versus 18 million negative ratings. We had to go back to 2017 to see more positive votes, 4.5 million, than negative, 2.3 million.
I recognize that when YouTube stopped showing negative votes, I saw the possibility that they would consider recovering the format, although with a new name and some change, but in the end it will not be like that. Instead, and as the company itself has reported, instead of the traditional compilation This year what it will offer is a 24-hour live and interactive event that will take place on December 16, and that will begin at six in the morning (Spanish peninsular time). And good news, the event will take place in several languages, including Spanish. This is the full list: English, German, Korean, Spanish, French, Indonesian, English, Japanese, and Portuguese.
The event will be repeated in three large blocks, or chapters, as YouTube calls them, in which videos and information related to everything that happened this year will be shown (it should be understood that with special attention to what was experienced on the platform itself). In addition, the audience will participate in a kind of question and answer game. The reward for winning? Access “surprise” musical performances. And I enclose it because it has already been leaked that, among these artists, could find themselves hyperpopular boyband Korean BTS and Californian rapper Doja Cat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weKT_FsgtZU
The model of repeating the event in various time slots adopted by YouTube reminds us of the one already employed, for example by Fornite with the Rift Tour of the singer Ariana Grande, which had no less than five passes distributed throughout the weekend that the event lasted. We are therefore talking, and with great probability, of a false direct that, nevertheless, will offer us actions in real time, such as the game of questions and answers.
I don’t think anyone will be surprised that YouTube has opted for live mode rather than video accessible on demand (although it is to be expected that it will also be offered in this format later). As we have already told you on several occasions, YouTube watches Twitch and other streaming services closely, to which many of his youtubers have moved. The last two years he has been working on measures to improve the platform’s live functions, and now by replacing Rewind with a live one, he seems to intend to further underpin this strategy.
