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72 Comments
- zblackeagle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+37"...and better then google video."
However, I do like being able to easily download video and view it offline if it's something that I like, as opposed to chewing up my (and the site's) bandwidth every time I want to see something again. - anonatron, on 10/12/2007, -4/+37Ahh yes, give the emo kids a good quality, high cost service for free and they still find a reason to whine about it.
- vanlandw, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32Those are two angry bloggers. In the past month I know about 20 people who are addicted to that site. Also the advertising is at a total minimal and for a free service IMHO it's pretty badass and better then google video.
- voodooray, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26Save youtube format videos (among many many others) : http://keepvid.com/
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+27The problem is that YouTube has no sustainable competitive advantages to help it deal with adverse business conditions, and they haven't reached critical mass yet. Yes, they are large, but they're not large-and-sustainably-profitable. Their only advantage right now is brand-recognition, and that's the most fragile advantage you can have on the web.
- they have no unique technology. I know the guys who work there (they're all from the engineering team that built PayPal, as am I), and they don't have any special proprietary technology - it's all easily-available open source stuff. This is obvious even if you don't know this fact, because they have lots of competitors who can clearly do the same things they do.
- they have no "moat" (defensive network effect). People don't go to YouTube because of the friends and groups functionality, they go there to watch videos. So if a guy who wants to share a video gets pissed off at YouTube, there are plenty of other video-hosting sites to use which he can just as easily point his friends to - you lose almost nothing by switching, unlike if you're an auction seller who switches away from eBay
- their main revenue comes from ads. this is a fragile and unreliable revenue source with the web-savvy first-adopter crowd, which is apparently turning into a first-abandoner crowd.
- their secondary revenue source comes from deals with big companies, who emboldened by the RIAA's example of being able to litigate Napster to death, understand that they hold ultimate final power in dictating what material can and cannot be shown. That is a bad position to be in relative to larger partners on whom you are dependent on growth. And let's be honest, when I look for video on the web, it's to find a clip of something from a movie or television. You can't build a business on just the viral videos.
Their key challenges right now seem to be: Can they navigate the legal, PR, and business development challenges they need to in order to survive? The group there is technically very strong, but frankly, I know they don't have the experience in those areas, so they might need help on the "corporate" personnel side from their friends at Sequioia more than they need the VC cash. PayPal had to go through similar challenges in the early days (luckily, YouTube doesn't have to contend with the mafia), but they had a boatload of good business people via Peter Thiel's side of things - YouTube's team is just the engineering group.
In the end, I like those guys (and MRD), so I'm rooting for them, but it's not really a situation I'd like to be in. - rohizzle121, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19:( this will eventually happen to all cool sites
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20The slowness of YouTube is what makes it totally suck.
- Wilson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I didn't like when Yahoo acquired Launch (now Yahoo Music) which was an online service I had used a lot up until that point, but I didn't have the urge to ruin them. I have a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to services provided for free.
- pigsbladder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12It's certainly a lot slower than it used to be.
- Saintlink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11http://youtube.com/results?tag=unpimp&sort=video_view_count
It is all about the VW videos. The kiddies playing around don't count towards watchable videos. - trylleklovn, on 10/12/2007, -6/+16A friend of mine who uses YouTube is also angry with their changes, so it isn't "just" 2 bloggers.
- evilgod69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9youtube works fine under linux (ubuntu dapper drake beta 2 6.06)...
- Xevallah, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Long time fans? So what....6 months?
- rompom7, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11the community may be better, but i think google's system is better, you can download the movies to watch them later, and the flash player is a lot smoother and doesn't glitch as often as the youtube player.
- chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8do some searches...
do a search for "weird al" and you will be hooked for hours - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11I just don't get how people can watch such dreadful quality videos of stupid teenagers being stupid in front of a camera (for the most part).
However, it doesn't seem any slower to me that it always have. - ArchivalQuality, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Grrrrrr... How dare you restrict this service that I pay nothing for! I am outraged!
- func, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6There is some other funny business going on a youtube.com. The video of Steven Colbert speaking at the White House Correspondents' Dinner has been pulled and replaced with this message: "This video has been removed due to copyright infringement". The odd thing is that Bush's comedy routine from the same event has been left untouched, apparently it is not an infringement. Damn strange.
- navster15, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@deaxes
You are probably right about "true" emos being cool people, but what people are making fun of is the legions of poser emos following the latest MTV craze. This always happens with nay brand of hipster. They come out with some new "radical" philosophy and then MTV co-opts it for profit. Then we make fun of the losers that buy into that crap. - pap3rw8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"He is particularly galled that a single alert notice from a "puritanically minded" fellow user can result in a video being deleted."
Its probably just kids angry at youtube because video of themselves microwaving their cat didn't make it the homepage. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Umm, YouTube works fine on Linux.
- iSlayer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5These 2 complaining are nothing but whingers! Please...Youtubes burn rate is only a cool million every month. If they want to survive then they'll have to live with that slow speeds. Stupid morons in my honest opinion. These must of been those kids in primary that dobbed on all kids in school just to make themselves feel better.
- Schrade, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'd venture a guess as to why it's slower - it's because people have to load a page TWICE when they want to use the new player. First they load the old page and then they have to click on the new player link.
Why not just make the new player default?
(And yes, I know you can add &watch2 at the end but that doesn't non knowledgeable people.) - ardnut, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yea apart from that annoying flash audio bug, meaning all videos have their sound playing 1or 2 seconds behind.
Hope flash player 9 is out soon and fixes that for linux. - Chozabu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"it doesn't play in Linux"
well.. thats just plain wrong
i just tried it out, and watched a vid fine
running dapper, used easy ubuntu ( http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/get.html ) to install vid codecs, flash7 etc
admittidly, having to fall back to flash is not really "linux frendly", not until gnash or something fully suppoprts it - but it works - bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It costs that much because they are serving a TON of data. TON TON TON. Videos are uploaded, viewed on the site a number of times, viewed off-site via embeds, etc. That adds up pretty quickly.
- jhoskins98, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5So now they are trying to go legit - work on the copyright issue (new policies), cut down their costs (new software and interfaces) and deal with objectionable content (acting on complaints). Well as usual in these efforts, they are pissing the people who are most to object. YouTube is doing all this in order to get either more money or get sold. In either case, the people looking at it don't want a service that has no way of every making money.
- b.m.a.n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4First off, the site was always slowish. Yes they probably are trying to make more money, who cares it's a company now and thats what they do.
- zblackeagle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"- their main revenue comes from ads. this is a fragile and unreliable revenue source with the web-savvy first-adopter crowd, which is apparently turning into a first-abandoner crowd."
In a way that isn't too bad. The web-savvy crowd, which I'll arrogantly include myself amongst them, are more likely than the non-savvies to be making use of an alternative (non-IE) browser with inline ad-blocking features, so they're not necessarily that much of a revenue source anyway.
Kudos to those that actually do support YouTube through their ads - Moparx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have never had a problem viewing anything on youtube.
I run Arch Linux & Slackware. - idesign562, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5totally with you man.
i am the guy who clicks on the links to try and keep youtube going.
i dont mind the "slowness" if any or the "distracting" ads.
i just think that they a effin idiots and should go to sleep for a few hours. - InternetUser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33 million.
- JasonPrini, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I like both Google and Youtube. But I found Google can take up to 12 hours to approve my upload, while Youtube does it in a few minutes in most cases. I don't like Youtube's new pig ugly player though...
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And the 10 minute maximum video length. I've given up on watching longer videos there because consecutive parts aren't always linked on the page of the first part.
- catoutfit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2URMmm
I really don't think many people are complaining about the RIAA protecting copyrights but more their methods and propaganda. - rabiddogma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I've known about it since they started about a year ago. I submitted a Digg on it 258 days ago: http://digg.com/movies/Flickr-like_site_for_Video
In Internet time a year is a pretty long time.
I've since discovered a few services that I think are better than Flickr. Like Blip.tv where they let you download the videos in their original format (they still do flash transcoding with embedable players) and they are opening up a revenue sharing program for content creators (50% split) and a bunch of other cool stuff. They also seem to be attracting people who actually produce original content--unlike YouTube that seems to attract copyright violators. It doesn't seem like a viable business model to build popularity by allowing people to share other peoples content--it didn't work out so well for Napster 1.0. - spect3r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Really.. why are these guys complaining... ITS FREE.
"Screw you YouTube" comments make me shake my head... it's not like they owe anything to anyone.
Strange. Some people. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with the parent comment. The people who are up in arms about YouTube are in the minority. I am a relatively new user to YouTube, and their new video player looks like butt, however, everyone I know loves the site. It's a great, FREE (as in beer) service that isn't cluttered with advertisements.
- TheNino85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article reminds me of when people complain that they have no privacy on Facebook. When'd you figure that out, genius? Isn't that, I dunno, the point of Facebook? The reason you signed up in the first place? You put up your video on YouTube, on someone else's server, and they broadcast it all around the Internet at no cost to you (or relatively little cost, in the case of subscriptions), and you get mad that they take down some content off of THEIR servers? When did people get this crazy notion that they're entitled to anything and everything they want on the Internet at no cost? Facebook and YouTube are services that, believe it or not, bend over backwards to give their users an enjoyable experience (I'm not a fan of them, but I know many who are) and demand little to nothing from their users, and the rare times the services exert any control over their own websites, the users repay them by protesting and starting boycotts.
- pauldonnelly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh, come on. Deep down, emos like to be mocked. It's just another oppurtunity to whine.
- catbeller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nothing too funny about it, although after the events of the last twelve years I can understand your suspicions.
A Bush fan simply reported the Colbert clip as copyright infringement, and after review, management had to remove the clip under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act rules or be liable for lawsuit.
And the Bush fan(s) didn't bother to report the clips that made their hero look folksy and funny. Okay? This leaves you the obvious retaliatory measure of reporting the Bush-is-Funny clip as infringement.
But because of this d*cking about, the copyrighted material and the fun erotic material is disappearing from Youtube, which means their ad revenue is dropping, which means Youtube will inevitably die.
- Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's the joy of finding talant like Brandon Hardesty that makes fishing thru dozens of idiot teens with trash camcorders worthwhile. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k4O_id93o0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2y9Gqx5NMA - cessax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i'm not to keen with youtubes tech support - i specificially stated in an email that i wanted to upgrade my account from a regular one to a directors account, instead of signing up for a new account (which means reuploading all my videos and starting from scratch - way too time consuming at this point). they wrote me back saying "sign up with a new account"...HELLO, thats what i said i don't want to do - why would you reccommend what i've already considered? and how could youtube NOT upgrade my account for me? it can't be that hard...
- masonreloaded, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1They have to pay the ISPs something to give them all the connections, datalines and bandwidth. ISPs don't give it away, think of it as your monthly home internet bill x several hundred thousand.
- SIDSI, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"deciding that he has only one thing left to do: "Ruin YouTube" by systematically reporting all of the site's traffic-generating but copyright-violating videos"
Ha Ha HA I love how people bitch and complain about the RIAA going after people who violate copyrights. Now when he dosen't like something about Youtube's changes he resorts to the same tactics. Hmmmm sure are alot of hypocrites lately. - caluml, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, that was the last part of my original coment:
"Or are people saying that their peering costs are $1m/m, in which case what kind of bandwidth are they leasing?" - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's amazing how naive people are when it comes to bandwidth costs at the data center level.
No, you don't pay for bandwidth by the gigabyte, you pay for bandwidth by what is called the 95th percentile of sustained traffic. So, for example, we have a full 19" rack at a tier 1 facility with a 100 Mbp/s feed. We committed to 1 Mbp/s of traffic. So, in our monthly bill, we get charge X dollars for the rack and Y dollars for the bandwidth. About $1000 a month. Every 1 Mpb/s of sustained traffic costs us $100 US. So, if we where to use the full 100 Mbp/s all the time, we would be paying $10,000 a month in bandwidth bills. Now multiple that a wackload and you can easily get that kind of monthly bandwidth bill. - notman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1WebSense is blocking it at my job now... so I rarely go there anymore (I usually find another source for most videos before I go home).
- endurablegoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Jason Calacanis called this weeks ago.
http://www.calacanis.com/2006/02/20/youtube-is-not-a-real-business/ - caluml, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I but I'm assuming they aren't paying for data by the gigabyte, or whatever. That's why I said: If you have your server cluster in a datacentre, peered with the top ISPs, where do the extra costs come from?
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