| "What does that mean?" All I really meant is known commodities with proven track records in kid's learning and edutainment properties. Reading Rainbow (cited in the blog post) is a good example. Disney might be another hypothetical example. "I'm one of those minecraft weirdos and I can authoritatively say based on many hours of entertainment viewing that Direwolf20 and Pahamir have never said anything non-G rated, at least in their team video series so far as I've seen. So that's boring and no point discussing." I'm not saying these folks aren't kid-friendly. I certainly didn't mean to draw a qualitative distinction between, say, Disney and Direwolf20. I didn't mean to create a category "kid-friendly" in which these sorts of creators do or do not fall. I was speaking more broadly -- and speculating, as I mentioned -- about what Google seems to be up to. All of this is speculation on my part, based on having closely followed this space, having followed YouTube/Google's job listings very closely over the last four or five months, and having had casual chats with friends at Google and YouTube. "So video training a 3 year old to walk around the house saying "damn it" randomly is not going to fly, but how about a kid who's in his last months of preteen? Especially if the video is 99.9% G rated?" My understanding is that Google is focused very specifically on the young, young demo. A 3-year-old fits into what I understand of their thesis; an 11-year-old might not. But again, this is my best guess. I can neither speak on Google's behalf, nor claim any special knowledge above and beyond what is publicly available. |