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YouTube Growing ... Like Cancer?
PreacherTom writes "The success of YouTube has been staggering: they currently field 100 million videos per day and have attracted the attention of influential people like Bill Gates, who may be planning his own video hosting service. However, growth does not always equal profitability. Incorporation of ads risks their very base. If that were not enough, like Kazaa, they struggle with the Damocles' Sword of Litigation hanging over their head each day while bandwidth and server costs continue to rise. Is this phenomenal growth only rapidly killing our favorite video warehouse?" From the BusinessWeek article: "YouTube could easily alienate its users by overwhelming them with ads. And the startup has to figure out how to attract a broader group of marketers by filtering more for copyrighted or offensive videos and by creating more channels of similar content. Aware of the risks, YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are moving slowly to ramp up advertising. They have been wary of asking viewers to sit through a 30-second ad before a two- to three-minute clip. Instead, YouTube is developing new formats, like ones rolled out in August that let marketers build their own video channels or pay to place a video on YouTube's popular front page."
Is this phenomenal growth only rapidly killing our favorite video warehouse?"
Which one would that be? I don't rent videos. More likely it's a sign that people are more interested in content than quality. Many of the videos I've seen are very poor grade, while the few who really care about HD-DVD and Blu Ray squabble off in the corner.
YouTube could easily alienate its users by overwhelming them with ads.
This has in my experience been proven unfounded with Yahoo, Google, eBay and slashdot as examples. Bring on the ads.
[legal threat] hanging over their head
I expect this is due to the fact many videos are edits from television, easily spotted by the Sky or whatever logo in the corner.
pay to place a video on YouTube's popular front page."
Oh the vanity! People really do that??? If I want you to see my video I'll put it on my own site and mention it somewhere, maybe even slashdot and it it's interesting word will get around, if it's not, my ego won't be crushed. I will be pissed if those weasels at thinkgeek steal it for another merchandising product.
It is rather amusing to look back several years, if you remember a particular broadcast of some dot-commer telling someone at CBS(?) they would be burying the network, with whatever the heck it was this particular dot-commer had to offer over the budding internet. His company, IIRC went bust with a lot of others. Now look at the rabble scrabbling on YouTube, Google Video, their predecessors and whatever else will come along.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"YouTube could easily alienate its users by overwhelming them with ads. And the startup has to figure out how to attract a broader group of marketers by filtering more for copyrighted or offensive videos and by creating more channels of similar content."
YouTube could easily alienate its users who are mostly there to see the copyrighted and offensive videos to start with. Cleaning up YouTube might attract new marketers at the start but when the numbers decline what will YouTube have left? Sadly funny home video sites are a dime a dozen, YouTube has survived off its own lawlessness...kind of a catch 22 for them. I know I wouldnt want to own stock in them.
YouTube could easily get away with putting a static ad on the movie before it plays the first time. This wouldn't be too annoying and tied in with google adsense would work really well. Maybe it could be a transleucent so you could still see what the video was. I wouldn't mind that much, but any ad I have to actually sit through means a adblock on http: //*youtube.com/*
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Honestly, I don't get this web 2.0 "problem" of more adds = angry community.
It's no secret these massive community sites cost a lot of money, anyone expecting to get it for free should expect to be subjected to some form of advertising.
As long as they don't overwhelm the user with 1024x768 flash popups forcing you to watch a 15min coke add, I don't see the big risk of adding more advertising. WAKE up... money makes the internet tick.
Does this fly directly in the face of Paul Graham's "Just make it popular and the money will follow" spiel?
All the social networking and video clips companies are just leading the charge to the next bust. The business model seems to be:
1) start "social" website
2) grow user base
3) ??
4) get bought out by Big Company X
5) profit!
6) site dies because it was lame to begin with
7) SUCKERS!!! - Precious Roy
Five million videos of stupid kids with webcams dancing to the Numa Numa song.
Except the song will be removed due to copyright violations.
I honestly would have to agree that it's finally come time for YouTube to start thinking about the whole "revenue model" thing.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I think the folks at youtube are aware that a ton of ads will piss off and lose them some users. I don't see any problem with introducing revelant, inobtrusive text ads. Why is everyone jumping to the conclusion that the only way that Youtube can survive, "in the real world," is to hold its users' heads under water with a torrent of advertising?
It doesn't have to be that way.
Speak for yourself. Google Video is my favorite. It has a picture that scales to fill up unused space in my browser window. Plus, as a content creator, I can upload videos larger than 100MB which you can't do on YouTube. YouTube's limitation can make the quality of your video suffer if it is too long (20 minutes or more).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
If a YouTube is anything like a "u bend", then you pretty much know it will be transmitting large amounts of crap sooner or later, ads or not. Based on the last time I checked, sooner.
Oh no... it's the future.
People look at the front page of youtube? That's news to me. Only time I ever see youtube is when a video's linked to by a blog mentioned on a slashdot web 2.0 competitor's website...
All the more reason to keep the net neutral. - services like this will not be able to operate under a non-neutral Internet.
The problem with pay-for-play and other models is that there are big fees in the processing of the transaction. They should set up their own little financial system where people can transfer $5 from their bank account and then just directly transfer the money from there. ING Direct does this transfer for free for me, so I can't see there being any expense for them to do this on small payments. It'd require some overhead, but it'd be worth it as it would quickly infuse their site with a lot of cash. They could then just charge literally $0.01-$0.05 per transaction and make good money. That way, a $0.25 tip would earn several times more than it would on iTMS for the artists.
I'm not sure if such a legal argument is tenable and as I'm not a lawyer I'm not going to attempt one. But the overall scheme is that sharing clips of copyrighted work without profiting from its sale should be considered fair use. The majority of television networks understand that the sharing of clips amongst Internet sites in the long run benefits them. It promotes their show and their network. That is why there isn't much of an uproar about copyrighted content on youtube. Of course entire works should be barred.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
There have already been many examples of videos that would have never seen the light of day. Videos that would never be seen on TV, but can reach the same amount of viewers or more via the internet. Like videos of guys teaching you how to shave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjhIy9rgWQU
I made some lovely graphs to illustrate this growth. These graphs use actual thumbnails from youtube as data points.
That's right - the medium is the message!
Charge a membership fee.
Now, before everyone goes bonkers, lets think about this critically. Servers, the power to run them, the buildings to house them, the people to keep them running, the people to write the code that makes the site run -- these are not free. If you don't have a huge wad of cash burning a hole in your bank, then you've got to find a source of funding, one which won't suddenly dry up and leave you with no way to run the show.
So charge for the service. Plumbers do it, lawyers do it (excessively it seems), hospitals do it... why not an Internet service? You pay your $20 a year and get free unlimited uploads. For those who don't like the model, you can have a free account, but we charge you a nickel for every upload. It might cut down on the megatons of crap that get uploaded, which would ease the strain on infrastructure and storage, generate constant revenue, which would ease money headaches, and generally improve things. And then, when YouTube gets so successful that it's ubiquitous, its CEO can embezzle huge amounts of money and leave the company broken while he sails away on his yacht.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Someone needs to take the YouTube, et. al. concept and convert it into a P2P system that is easy to use. The p2p client could have a web interface to make it feel like current services and even use flash to show the videos downloaded locally.
Posted this in a related Fark thread, and I believe it still holds:
I think that, somewhat ironically, TotalFark shows how websites will survive in the future.
Even with the increase in ads and ad revenue, consumers are wisening up and finding ways to block them, and soon that well will go dry. So you can either overload your site with ads (which, ironically, means none of them get exposure since the overload causes the user to ignore them all), or you find another method of income.
The solution? Payable accounts. Take Fark as the main example. The majority of users enjoy a few hand-selected odd stories surrounded by ads. These ads are actually targeted towards the general Fark demographic, so they get a better CTR.
Then there's TotalFark. A verifiable anarchy of submitted stories, good, bad, and ugly. There are dozens of threads a day from people whining about the mose inane shit. Half of the links are repeats. Once a day we get a headline telling us to Google "miserable failure". But you know what?
A few thousand people pay $5/month to see that stuff, myself included. And all it really boils down to is getting more of the same stuff that the free people do.
This is how most internet sites will eventually turn. You have free stuff and then you have better stuff that costs money.
YouTube could offer high quality videos to paying customers. Offer the ability to help "distribute" content for indie producers. They pay a fee (probably more than those that just get the higher quality stuff), and they get content featured on pages, more options for uploading, and other goodies. YouTube could even offer a service where producers can have made-to-order DVDs of their work for purchase by regular users. YouTube and the producers would split the profits.
It would cost about $2 to make a custom DVD and package of something an hour or two hours long. Sell it for $5-$10 + S&H, and there you go.
They could get started by allowing uploaders to "share" their stuff, and a regular user could pick clips adding up to, say, an hours worth and pay $10 total for a DVD of all that. You would have an issue with people uploading shows and what not, but they would be able to either hire people full time to police copyrighted stuff or have a volunteer network, where the volunteers get free DVDs/free upgraded accounts for helping to report copyrighted stuff.
A lot of sites are already heading this way. LiveJournal has a pay service. You get a bunch of extra features, but mainly it's more of the same. MySpace will probably start locking some features behind a pay barrier, like streaming music, if ads don't make enough.
Some sites, like general news sites or just general all around sites will meet some problems with this, but they will just do this in bits and pieces rather than the entire site (Yahoo! and MSN have already started on this path, and I wouldn't be surprised if Google starts charging for some new extra goodies).
The way of the web, most media, will eventually decrease advertising as people are able to pick and choose what they want instead of being forced into packages.
Slashdot's own pay-for service is another example of the trend, though the features you get with it are lacking. (Sorry, guys, but seeing a dupe a bit eariler than someone else, removing ads, and getting a nice * next to my name is not really worth the money.)
Reminds me of the dot com boom.
You remember, right? Back in the days when you didn't need a business plan?
If YouTube hasn't already answered all these questions, then it truly learned nothing from the bust.
There are pirated TV/movies and other copyrighted stuff on it - which draws lawsuits and alike. But unlike Kazaa, YouTube does not depend on those to be kept alive - there are SO MUCH users created content it's not even funny. And I'll bet at least half of the use are for those purposes. At least for me, all the links I got from others in YouTube are all users created content.
I knew the Interweb boom was back again! We lose money on every transaction but we make up for it in volume!!
Now, where's my 5000 TB EMC disk array?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Most "commercials" are boring and pointless, and just focus on "you need this product!"
If companies would make good, entertaining videos that people would actually want to watch, then they would have a perfect place on Youtube. They'd spread throughout the internet via e-mail and message boards and would be great exposure for the product just like any other viral video.
The advertising firms just have to get more creative...
YouTube is adding 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. The value of this company easily exceeds 1 billion. I wonder if this is the fastest growing company ever.
Let's see, go bankrupt or alienate some visitors.
Unless it's worth going bankrupt over and having a heck of a time getting financed for the next project, I'd say it's not a hard decision to risk losing some visitors in order to not go bankrupt. It's pretty pathetic when owners of a large site believe in the bandwidth fairy and fail to recognize they're the fairy. They're the ones paying for it.
It's time to either start putting some limits in place to get costs below revenue or to raise revenue. And if some visitors can't deal with it, then good riddence to them. You don't need a bunch of leechers driving you into bankruptsy. They obviously don't care about you so why worry about them?
Work Safe Porn
People often assume that something like YouTube, Palm, Tivo or whatever becomes big because someone had a unique insight. But, more commonly, it's simple cost and demand. Palm succeeded because chips and displays had gotten cheap enough to build a usable handheld. Tivo succeeded because harddisks and compression hardware had become cheap enough. For YouTube, bandwidth had become cheap enough to allow putting lots of video on-line and distributing it toe end users.
However, even if things have become cheap enough to start a business, they may still not be quite cheap enough to sustain it; if YouTube needs to make more in revenue than delivering video content costs them, and it's not clear that they can. And whether they can depends less on any brilliant insights they may have, and more on consumer behavior, ad revenues, broadband availability, and bandwidth costs.
My first thought was that this title was a Hackers movie reference...
HAL:
A rabbit replicates till it overloads a file, then it spreads like cancer.
MARGO:
Cancer?
Even if it is pretty ridiculous, you have to admit it's a cool movie.
The example they gave of a 30 second ad before a 3 minute video clip. Like a user wouldn't be willing to spend 15% of the time viewing ads.
I know this is groundbreaking, but it's my contention that a user just might be willing to watch, say, 20 minutes of ads for every 40 minutes of programming. Yes, I know this sounds CRAZY but trust me on this one....
One of these days, advertisers are going to have to realize that there are more americans interested in 'offensive' things than there are interested in 'wholesomeness', and accept that if they want to reach the largest market possible that it's ok if their ad runs next to a list of results for 'asian schoolgirls'.
paintball
So you finally married the old Goat.t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4748292.s
And moving to whatever it is that Google Video uses. (I believe its just a simple embed tag or whatever it is that pulls in the video file directly)
Theres not many videos on youtube I'd pay to view, and ads would certainly wind me up big time, but if they charged me say $20 a year for unlimited site access, I'd happily pay up, I get $20 worth of laughs just from watching TV bloopers.
This assumption that ads will save all web companies is flawed. the existance of technology like adblock renders it useless in some cases, and there are only so many advertising dollars to go around.
If subscription doesnt work, then paying to be the top video in categories might work too, but as a 'consumer' i'd prefer that the top videos were independetly ranked, rather than just bought up by Sony and Pepsi.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Occasionally I'll get on YouTube's site and search for something or browse through the top viewed/rated. I might sit through one 15 or 30-second ad, but often I watch a video for less than 10 seconds anyway. I'm not going to watch a 15 sec ad for that.
Another time I see the videos is stumbling on some blog with them embedded. Usually there are several embedded in the blog. If the video or the description looks interesting I might give it 5-10 seconds to decide whether to watch it or click stop.
I don't think I am the only ytuber like that. With anything more than 1-2 seconds I'm just not going to watch it unless I *know* it's something I *really* want to see. And I can't imagine kids having more patience than me.
There are already a ton of commercials in the YouTube content already. They just have to figure out how to tap into that. Companies are already getting free advertising when their funny/stupid ad gets uploaded and has hundreds of thousands of views in a few days.
I've got it. They should send a letter to the ad agency or product company explaining that their ad is being watched by viewers without them having paid YouTube for showing it. They can threaten litigation or to delete the ad unless they pay to support the "free" advertising. Heck, start a subscription service where a company's or ad agency's commercials will not be automatically deleted. Instead they get unlimited viewing privileges. There's probably a model for that idea floating out there somewhere...
In the pilot for the old Max Headroom series, Network 23 pioneered a new type of advertising called "blipverts", fast, tightly-compressed burst of audio-visual information designed to prevent viewers from switching channels. Unfortunately, they had the side effect of making their "perpetual, more slothful viewers literally explode" but a similar idea could work here. YouTube doesn't have the advantage of conventional television, where people are watching a minimum 30 minute show, and will sit through a 30 second commercial spot in order to get back to what they really want. YouTube is offering what are essentially extremely short TV shows as their primary product with no real possibility of a commercial interlude. On the other hand, a two second advertisement presented at the beginning, if entertaining (or startling) enough, might be very effective yet not turn viewers off to the service itself.
Heck, if they want this to really work they should offer a plan that would reward submitters for presenting typical YouTube videos formatted as advertising for specific products. Those videos could then be shown to advertisers, who could pay to have the ones they like presented to regular YouTube viewers as advertising.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
who gives a f@#k about ads as long as the ad people keep the f@#k quiet about content. its all the gabbing about the ads is what is annoying. people have to make money. let the people at youtube get theirs.
They are not the only way to garner revenue from a site. Look at eBay. It costs me nothing to browse the marketplace there and if I want to bid, my account is free. If I want to sell my wares there, it'll cost me. However, because of those fees, eBay's ads are not intrusive and barely noticable.
The whole allure to YouTube is the fact that it's free to watch. I REALLY can't stand going to a site to watch some linked video only to have to sit and wait for the ad to load first and then I have to wait for the ad to finish playing and then I still have to wait for the video I went there to see to finish loading. I'll click out of that browser window before the ad even finishes playing. It's a waste of time. What is even more infuriating is depending on server load, it can take forever to load that ad because that same ad is being loaded by millions of computers all trying to view different videos.
That is what kills these sites, these excessive ads and membership fees. I think eBay has one of the best revenue generating models out there. Whether they are profitable or not is in the hands of thier management. I think that if YouTube wants to stay on top of the game yet be attractive enough to get investors to infuse capital then they need to start looking at a fee based system subsidized by ads and maybe a premium, fee based viewer service.
Charging the average viewer to see an amateur video that quite possibly will suck more wind than a Hoover is a sure fire way to piss off your viewers. Bombarding them with ads just to make them wait and surf through the crap only to view that same amateur crap mentioned above will also alienate them. After all, most of us could live a full and healthy life without ever viewing little Jimmy's guitar rif video on YouTube. However, little Jimmy might just be dashed in his dreams of being a guitar hero if he can't get his video out on the internet. So charging the viewers who don't have the necessity to see the video will not work. They won't be as willing to pay for something they don't need. For that kind of pricing to work, you actually need a commodity that people want. I'm not going to pay to watch someone else's crap. If it's free for me to watch, I will gladly go for the lark. However, if I have a video that I just gotta have out there and YouTube is my place of choice to host it then charge me out the wazoo to get it up there. After all, that perceived need to gain acceptance of my internet based peers who will view my video comes pretty damn close to making hosting services for my video a commodity. Therefore flat fee pricing would work there.
Now if YouTube has issues with excessive bandwidth and offensive things being posted then, charging a nominal fee to post the videos will help squash those problems. It will help because people will be less likely to waste thier money posting crap and then linking to it from many other sites. The viewership will not likely drop off in that respect but might actually pick up because like what was said above about quality vs. massive content, you will gain viewers looking for quality viewing and not just massive amounts of content.
I am ninja!, every one a classic
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
The content creators, especially the original content creators are generating value to Youtube, and should be rewarded for their effort, not having to pay for the privilege. Viewers (such as me) only add to the bandwidth costs.
Why is the chant always, "ads ads ads"? If millions of people love the site then it should be possible to work out a subscription model that works. Look at livejournal for an example of a tiered functional subscription model.
Advertising is not the only way to run a business in the modern world.
Has anyone ever seen that frontpage? I usually only click the links sent to me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bill Gates, who may be planning his own video hosting service
I'm not too sure I want to see any of Bill Gates's own videos, thanks very much ...
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
A previous poster already mentioned that adverts before or during the video stream are highly annoying to users. But there is another concern that even remains valid if you thought about text-based ads next to the video (if you like, the Google model): As the Economist recently pointed out, the trouble for advertisers on youtube is that you simply don't know what's in the video next to which you are advertising. Google is highly effective in putting not only the adverts in context to the search, but also the search in context to the adverts. This, of course, is because Google shows you text.
In a Video, however, there are no keywords. Imagine you are, say, Nike. Would you like your advert being found next to a video of someone stumbling over his feet and breaking his leg in the process (YouTube is full of crap like that)? Or say you are Microsoft, and YouTube manages to put your advert next to the video of a guy rambling on about how shitty Vista will be. Worse, what if your advert shows up next to a video of someone making a racist slur?
The real trouble with YouTube, from the advertisers point of view, is that the content comes from random people, not YouTube, and that unlike in Google's case, there is no way (yet) for a machine to match the content to the advert and the viewer.
With all due respect to YouTube, I think that MySpace is the site that's more analogous to cancer.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Commercials that don't insult the intelligence of the viewer, and are actually worth watching?
..
Nahh
Apply directly to the forehead
you insensitive clod
:)
woohoo, it actually works this time
How many people have intentionally downloaded commercials?
I know I have.
If advertisers would be a little smarter about their advertising, and make their advertising work for the consumer, we wouldn't be so annoyed with commercials being crammed down our throats.
Commercials need to be funny, or perhaps provide you with a url to print a coupon for a product (that'd work online really well), or something. If commercials weren't so bloody annoying, things would be so much better.
Many commercials have annoyed me to the point that I boycott the product. Old Navy commercials are a great example. They're not entertaining, they're irritating. Whether its annoying jingles, bad actors, etc.
Yes, I realise you can't please everyone, but most commercials nowadays aren't pleasing anyone.
I, for one, know I wouldn't be bothered so much if commercials were just a little bit entertaining. I love the commercials Bell is currently running here using the two beavers. I intentionally watch those commercials when they come on because they're funny.
If company execs stop hiring idiots to do commercials, and make good, entertaining and/or informative, actually useful commercials, and put 5-10 second clips on the beginning of youtube movies, I'd happily sit through them. Alternatively, they could do as they said, and sell space on their main page for movies put there by advertisers. If they're actually entertaining, they will get watched.
Advertising, imnsho, isn't the evil, horrible thing, most of us make it out to be. Of course there's a limit on its obtrusiveness, but if they make good commercials targeted at the kind of people they're trying to sell to, then people wouldn't get so pissed off with them.
Going to show a video about a car? Run a BMW commercial before it.
Going to show a video about some guy opening a beer bottle using only a piece of paper? Show a beer commercial before it.
Just don't make them suck.
With the number of page views they get, adsense is already paying them close to 2 mill a month.
u be-is-already-wildly-profitable/
http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/yout
Nevermind the ads. Copyrighted and offensive videos are pretty much all I use youtube for. If you take them away, why would I come back?
It would seem that if bandwidth is an issue, why not offload the bandwidth to the users? Distributed networking and file sharing has been around for a while now, a service like youtube could benefit greatly with a customized version of it. Instead of having the users get the movies directly from the site, use a distributed system similar to or even built upon bittorrent.
One thing I notice is a lot of users post their favorite music videos.
In fact, when I get the urge to see a video from a favorite band, i search youtube rather than turn on mtv (since mtv doesnt even seem to play videos anymore)
I think it should be easy enought for them to approach the music industry and have them pay to feature music videos on the site.
allowing yourself to avoid paying for the bandwidth of hosting a lot of videos on your website.
If there was a way to have embeded videos play ads, but not the ones on the youtube site.. that might be a good solution, as people who see those videos currently don't even see the youtube text ads.
YouTube will have to offer advertising based on the most popular or most favorited videos. There's no sense in paying YouTube for space on a video that nobody watches, or that everybody hates. If YouTube is selective in what is sells advertising for, if it only touches on non-questionable materials that show up on the front page, say, then maybe Youtube can make money AND sustain the "black market" of free expression where (nearly) anything goes. We should hope so because the "black market" is the most interesting, honest, and human-centered space.
Otherwise, when the marketers come to town, YouTube will have to clean up, for the obvious reason that advertisers do not want their brand linked to 12 year olds stripping to the Popcorn song. But 12 year olds like stripping to the popcorn song, and doing a whole lot of other crazy shit. The marketization of YouTube will probably kill it, just as it did for Napster.
There are tons of smaller sites that are a hellofa lot more firendly. My favorite so far is Go Fish.
Why is everyone saying they aren't making money? I'm pretty sure that if the cost of their servers and bandwidth is $1,000,000 they aren't going broke. I agree with some of the other posts though half of the crap on the site is just that crap. Some 16 yr old acting like a jackarse and fliming it then throwing it up on their site. What the should do is say, "Hey webmasters you want to leech our bandwidth? That will cost you 25 cents a video." That way they at least get some return on them.
Last night on the local 1/2 hour news show there were 12.5 minutes of ads. Occasionally I tune in to a show like "CSI" or "Grey's Anatomy" and tune out about the second round of commercials. I can tolerate 2 or 3 ads, but 7-10? No Way! The content has to be exceptionally good for me to watch a commercial program these days. I think "Dancing with the Stars" may qualify, but they don't seem to have as many ads.
I never go to Yahoo! Music to watch videos anymore either, because I have to put up with the ads first. I want to select a bunch of videos, usually the same type (Jazz, Pop, etc.), without having my entertainment interrupted by ads.
The person who figures out the balance formula for paying for services with innocuous, acceptable advertising is going to make millions of people happy and become rich at the same time.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
lol
My tube hasn't grown in years. :(
Step 1. Build wildly popular video-on-demand service [check]
Step 2. Have ad agencies bid to sponsor clips (with a time limit on the ad that plays before the actual clip) [not yet checked]
Step 3. Steal underwear. [not yet checked]
Step 5. PROFIT! [not yet checked]
Back in the days when you didn't need a business plan?
YouTube is in a very different situation. The failures in the dot com gold rush were speculative web site concepts. "If we build this type of site, maybe we'll get a kabillion visitors and from there, we can do XYZ to make money from the traffic." People were investing in the possibility of these schemes being successful at attracting traffic.
YouTube has already crossed the traffic hurdle. They've built amazing brand awareness with NO ADVERTISING. In the failed dot com model, the idea was always to build awareness through massive traditional advertising campaigns.
If YouTube were to have its nuts removed over copyright violations (ala Napster), there are plenty of companies out there that would purchase it for the brand awareness they've already built. If Ted Turner were to get interested in pay-per-view internet video streaming, which might even have a very different offering than YouTube, buying YouTube for $100 million would be attractive because starting his own brand would require a similar investment in advertising to draw visitors.
That's why Bertleman bought Napster after it had been disembowled.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They're also developing an entertainment channel. Right now it's a reality TV show type thing called "America's Dream Date". The grand prize isa trip to Paris. People are sending in some bizarre videos to win. If they keep this up, they will have an actual and viable business model...
HH
Sig FREUD!
"...attracted the attention of influential people like Bill Gates, who may be planning his own video hosting service." Once again... WHY does Microsoft have to copy perfectly good stuff that's already out there??
/* No Comment */
Please excuse the juvenile toilet humor...
A few days ago, after posting my first YouTube videos, I searched for "zit" and then "fart light". I'm sure a company that sells acne medication and anti-fart pills would love to put a banner on the results page. They could also put a small banner on the bottom of each video.
No, I will not work for your startup
since all content that is uploaded to utube grants all rights to utube... they should use their rights and take it all and create a moderated tv channel. broadcast over sat, cable and iptv -- 24/7. everybody loves that shows where people send home videos. this is the next generation of home videos. millions submit their videos, viewable online 24/7 in low quality and in sdtv or even higher resolution on tv.
;)
statistics from online usage/viewage/country distribution/etc could be gathered to create localized tv programming... THIS is how u #tube can and imo will make huge amounts of money... a combination with google's interest and personalization based advertising systems extended to streaming video services would be a logical extension (to gain even more income).
ok, maybe i am just hallucinating, but since tv and the web WILL (and already is) merge(ing) in the near future(now) anyways, why not start with the most popular online video service there is?!
steal my ideas or hire me
There is one benefit of growing. The larger you get, the lower infrastructure costs get per-user. The more bandwidth you order from a single provider, the better per-megabit costs they'll give you (You can bet they'll give somebody leasing a 10 GigE connection a way better deal than someone leasing a 100mbit FastE connection). The same applies to hardware, the larger your data storage requirements, the cheaper it gets. You can start taking advantage of things like Sun's 48-drive fileserver.
Yes, the "rule" applies less to hardware than bandwidth, but in general, the more money you've got to work with, the more you get for each dollar.
no one mentions infiltration by ad agencies to dilute the credibility of amateur videos.
...spin...I am so sick of it...sorry for the rumble.
ex: lonelygirl15 (IloveBees kind of thingy for a future horror movie)
ex: Political parties pretending to be "just average joe who loves america" (all parties are guilty)
ex: inflated hits as to generate the most viewed videos to show up on the front page. (im sorry i have no proof but lately i been noticing videos which are very politically or music promoting motivated.)
subversion of the medeum by focus groups is driving me slowly away from it.
ALl that PR
Lonelygirl15 is fake: Tops YouTube Ranking. Check it out: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/09/lonely girl15-is-fake-tops-youtube-ranking/