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"As YouTube continues to ramp up original programming and push for its partner channels, viral video stars of the past are beginning to feel the heat.\nAt the web culture conference ROFLcon, Matt Harding (Where the Hell Is Matt?), Judson Laipply (\"Evolution of Dance\"), Liam Sullivan (\"Shoes\") and DeShawn Ray (Parody Rap Battle) discussed their fame on YouTube and how the platform's recent changes have affected them, for better or worse.\nAll of the panelists were making videos before YouTube launched in 2005, and some didn't discover their video's success until it was brought to their attention.\n\"You have that one thing that makes you memorable,\" says Judson Laipply, whose \"Evolution of Dance\" was at one point the most-viewed video on YouTube.\n\"I was not an online person at all,\" says Sullivan, explaining that a friend had to tell him when his video went viral. In fact, Sullivan didn't even put his video on YouTube \u2014 someone had taken it from his website.\nBefore Google acquired YouTube in 2006, creators relied on brand sponsorships for their video to be monetized. Harding, who was sponsored by Stride, says that he was fortunate to have creative freedom from the corporate company.\n\"[Stride] said 'We really like what you do, we want you to do it again for us and we don't want to change anything about it,'\" says Harding. \"Every company would say that, but very few sincerely mean it.\"\nToday, creative ad agencies and social media departments within companies are more likely to just create videos themselves. YouTube has a partner program, a revenue-sharing platform that pays users a portion of money for ad clicks.\n\nSEE ALSO: Entertainment in Flux: How Nerdist Stays Ahead of the Curve\nThese channels and partnerships create consistency, something Laipply notes is YouTube's advantage when it comes to marketers.\n\"They don't want one video to get a million views; they want somebody to put out a video a week for 40 weeks that gets a million views per video,\" says Laipply. \"It creates a mutual audience, and audiences are always easier to sell marketers on.\"\nNow production studios pool together YouTube talent, providing the resources to make content. Maker Studios is one of the most well-known of these companies. Some of its services include production, management, distribution, sales and marketing. \n\"It's like old Hollywood right now,\" says Sullivan, who now works with Maker Studios. \"You get together with all these other people, and you make all the stuff you want to make that the big studios would say no to.\"\nAccording to Maker Studios' co-founder, Lisa Nova, the company was founded on the belief that YouTube is the future of entertainment \u2014 partly because of advanced tech.\n\"Our belief in the YouTube platform has only been strengthened and supported with technologies like connected TVs that further blur the lines between TV and the Internet,\" says Nova. \"We see the devices as one in the same, as our content can be seen on both online and through connected TVs.\"\nDo you think there's a future for viral video stars? Share your thoughts in the comments.\nImage courtesy of Liam Sullivan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/05/09/youtube-killing-viral-video-star/>