With collaboration videos proving to be fun and rewarding, YouTubers started to get ideas for collaboration channels. Collaboration channels are any YouTube channel shared by more than one user. Usually, these users make videos communicating to a particular audience of shared interests or simply to the other users on the channel. The vlogbrothers, John and Hank, held the earliest collaboration channel that I'm personally aware of, but the trend wasn't popularized until January 2008 when five female viewers of the vlogbrothers created their own home on YouTube to communicate to each other. Those viewers became known as the fiveawesomegirls (Figure 8-7). Their channel idea was unique; they would each take a weekday, vlog about their day, or answer questions the other girls had posed in hopes of making new friendships and strengthening old ones. (See the "Interview with fiveawesomegirls" sidebar.)
Soon after the fiveawesomegirls created their channel, I was contacted by YouTube user charlieissocoollike. He proposed starting a spin-off called fiveawesomeguys. I loved the idea and quickly grew to love the fiveawesomegirls channel. After a few weeks of watching, I took Mondays; Charlie McDonnell (charlieissocoollike, www.youtube.com/charlieissocoollike) (URL 8.12) took Tuesdays; Alex Day (nerimon, www.youtube.com/nerimon) (URL 8.13) took Wednesdays; Todd Williams (Toddly00, www.youtube.com/toddly00) (URL 8.14) took Thursdays; and Johnny Durham (johnnydurham19, www.youtube.com/johnnydurham19) (URL 8.15) took Fridays.
My first video on the fiveawesomeguys channel—the first video on the channel—gave a shout-out to the fiveawesomegirls who had inspired us and explained what we hoped to accomplish with the channel. Seven months later (as of this writing), we're still vlogging to each other every weekday, only finding replacements if we happen to be seriously ill or without an Internet connection (both occurrences are, thankfully, few and far between). The fiveawesomeguys channel is the project I am most proud to be involved with on YouTube, and with an audience of almost 30,000 subscribers, we have a great time connecting with each other and having fun with our viewers.
After the fiveawesomeguys channel was created, numerous spin-offs, parodies, and response channels have been made following the fiveawesome____ formula that the girls created. So many channels were created, in fact, that the phenomenon was spoofed in a video by YouTube user JohnCocktoston called FiveAwesomeDipSh!ts.
Sharing a channel on YouTube certainly comes with an unavoidable amount of risk; the more people who have the password to a particular channel, the less secure that password is. A number of the collaboration channels on YouTube have been hacked via various password-phishing methods, so if you do choose to participate in or organize a collab channel, make sure everyone involved understands how sensitive your password is and understands how phishing happens so as to avoid it.