The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers
It was 2011, and YouTube had a problem. The company, which was then a hub for low-quality cat videos and user-generated content, wanted to attract more premium advertisers and raise the quality of its programming. To that end, executives had been paying special attention to a growing class of users who were attracting large audiences of tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of subscribers. These users were loosely referred to as “YouTube stars.”
But the term wasn’t a perfect fit, and it was just the beginning of a nearly decade-long saga over what to call people who got famous online. Over the years, there have been Viners on Vine, Musers on Musical.ly, Pinfluencers on Pinterest, and more. In the late aughts, YouTube branded its stars as “partners,” but the term was vague and ill-suited to their work. It wasn’t until 2011 that a series of corporate maneuvers and happenstance resulted in a name that stuck: creators.
Why YouTube’s power users are called creators has been the subject of debate for many years. When asked for comment, a YouTube spokesperson couldn’t even tell me the origin of the term. the name evolved from “content creators” such as bloggers. A postured that men are more likely to self-identify as creators, while women more often continues to be pervasive, and it’s the same reason that may ultimately lead to the title’s demise.
