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YouTube Growing ... Like Cancer?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-want-that-kind-of-disease-problem dept.

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."

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Content, ads, legal, pay to play by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Content, ads, legal, pay to play by b0r1s · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This has in my experience been proven unfounded with Yahoo, Google, eBay and slashdot as examples. Bring on the ads.


      The difference, of course, is that most of YouTube's bandwidth (read: expenses) comes from embedded video players on other sites. The people embedding these videos want the videos - not the ads. Unlike the examples you cite, where ads are placed around content, ads in videos must be placed before, during, or after content - replacing the content for the duration of the ad. This interferes with user experience, which is why it's fundamentally different than Yahoo, Google, eBay, and Slashdot.

      --
      Mooniacs for iOS and Android
    2. Re:Content, ads, legal, pay to play by bitflip · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The trick isn't that the ads are not part of the content, the trick is that they are mostly unobtrusive.

      If they try to put a 30 second, or even 15 second ad at the beginning of a two minute video, then it is highly likely to drive people off.

      But what about a two-second video, consisting mostly of a logo? Before the video starts, you see the "Intel Inside" logo, with their trademark chime, for example, which then quickly cuts to the desired content. If it is quick enough, then it will be effective at building brand awareness without giving the viewer time to hit the "back" button.

      I'm sure that advertisers would like us to sit through something longer. I'm sure they'd like for us to do nothing but watch ads. They need to make the ad fit the medium, in this case short videos.

  2. The emperor has no clothes by grapeape · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.