Facebook and YouTube fight for Bieber's love
After YouTube apparently blocks the upload of the video of Justin Bieber's new song "Pray" due to copyright issues, the singer accuses YouTube of being unfaithful and pledges his commitment to Facebook.
Justin Bieber is a powerful young man. A hurt one, too.
The dauphin of a demography's destiny seems to have become embroiled in a deep and cutting love spat with YouTube. Which has caused him to turn to Facebook to get over YouTube's apparent unfaithfulness.
According to Forbes, this painful state of affairs appears to have begun last weekend when YouTube blocked the appearance of a new Justin Bieber video. The song is called "Pray" and one can only imagine that there may be those at YouTube who are now doing just that with respect to Justin Bieber.
For the singer whose hair even New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is accused of envying, immediately dedicated his talents to writing a song called "YouTube, You Just Tubed Your Way Outta My Life."
Alright, I may be exaggerating slightly. But Bieber did the next best thing. He took to Twitter.
"Dear youtube...we started this journey and now u r cheatin on me with this vevo chica...i see how it is...i will be over here with facebook," were his words, no doubt written through tears that dampened his locks.
This Vevo chica, should you not have ever met her in your local bar or laundromat, is a corporate love-in between Sony Music Entertainment, UMG, and Abu Dhabi Media. Its role in generating more fever for Bieber is to control Bieber's YouTube syndication.
YouTube, it seems, had blocked the video from appearing on Bieber's own YouTube love-in living room because of "copyright grounds."
You might have thought that those grounds surely shifted beneath YouTube's feet on seeing Bieber's tweet. But, no.
In a tweet of painfully thoughtless hubris, YouTube tweeted: "sorry about the upload pain around 'Pray'. That's between you and your label but we love you [both] so let's figure this out!"
Oh, YouTube. Oh, Google. This isn't Eliot Spitzer. This is Justin Bieber. He speaks, you listen. He sings, you kneel. And pray.
You certainly don't tell a miffed Bieber what to do. For the fine young Canadian gripped ahold of his video and immediately uploaded it to his Facebook page. Where it was devoured whole by his more than 16 million fans.
Like a Picasso expert in a lonely old garage staring at 271 new paintings, Facebook knows a real Justin Bieber when it sees one.
While you jitter with anticipation over the next heartache, may I tell you that the Pray video is now at least available on the Justin Bieber Vevo YouTube channel, though not yet on Bieber's personal YouTube offering.
If you shuffle past some of Bieber's more recent tweets (sample: "London girls, u go hard") you will discover that just yesterday Bieber tweeted an olive branch to YouTube: "so proud of this song and this video... @vevo and @youtube got me right now. I sing this one from the heart...."
"You got me right now" is surely but a lukewarm offering of affection--and certainly nothing when compared with "London girls....u go hard."
I worry that a fine young singer who owed much of his early success to his performances on YouTube may never again be able to look at his first love in the same way.
Oh, YouTube, I fear sending flowers will not be enough.