YouTube, is it really the next big thing?

[Jason Eaton]

With a quick rise to popularity in the media for its controversial sharing of both legal and copyrighted works, followed by buyout talks from many would be corporate suitors, it seems as if we can't stop hearing about YouTube. Today we pose the question to you, our readers. Is YouTube really worth it all?

This is a two part question. For the first part, if you visit YouTube, tell us how long per day you spend watching the videos. Then join us in the forums to discuss how YouTube has changed your media viewing habits, if at all.

[cameron]

I picked 1-2 minutes, mainly because I am occasionally tempted to click on a link to a specific video on youtube. However, I don't actively seek out content on youtube, nor do I go to any other videos after watching the one I went to see.

[Vincent Ferrari]

As someone who generates a lot of content, YouTube is a God-send for me. Sure, I could just throw the video files up on my site and let people grab them, but YouTube eliminates codec issues, playability, and even bandwidth issues both for me and my readers.

As someone who runs a site and is a content churner outer, I can't see doing it without YouTube. There are better out there (Vimeo, for example) but none of them offer the flexibility of YouTube (Vimeo only lets you upload a little each week. Nowhere near enough).

Google was smart snapping them up. I only worry about copyright lawsuits crippling them now that companies like Universal know they can hit up Google's deep pockets with a huge settlement.

I also love being able to search for pretty much anything and actually find it because the truth is, YouTube is the greatest archive of obscure video you'll ever find. Everything from 1970's commercials to old TV skits. It's a goldmine of stuff you can't find anymore.

Worth it?

100%.

[Felix Torres]

I've been there maybe twice.
Not impressed. Video quality is just bad. Streams smoothly but the colors were faded and the whole thing looked overly soft. I realize that is a function of Flash video, but then; I'm no fan of Flash video, anyway.

I've stopped by soapbox twice, too. The first time it looked great; large video, smooth, sharp, and good color saturation. It was in WMV, of course.
The second time I was redirected from a techie site for some videos of VISTA in action and those were smaller and a bit fuzzier.

My guess is the draw is the content more than the site itself. Not sure how long it may last once there is competition. And competition there will be; I expect AOL and Yahoo to show up any day now. Andvpretty much everybody with aspirations in the social-networking/file hosting areas.

If google had done google video right they wouldn't have had to buy this brand. As is, they can afford to waste a billion-plus in monopoly money plus whatever it takes to settle the horde of lawsuits. I imagine half the traffic at YouTube today is likely paid paralegals seatching for pirate content. "Lawsuits and video at eleven.";-)

[Vincent Ferrari]

Two points...

One: Competitors don't compete just because they're there and YouTube has the massive benefit of mindshare. Kind of the way Apple does with iPods and MS does with OS'es.

Two: Google actually made money buying YouTube. It cost them $1.65 billion, but because of the stock movement, they made $1.2 billion on the deal (that's after the purchase). In other words, it cost them nothing. When you consider that they're building that facility out west, I reckon bandwidth isn't going to be a big issue soon anyway, so the only way they could hemorrhage money at this point is a sudden burst of lawsuits, which we'll have to see about.

Frankly, Google's stood up to content creators before, so I don't see them doing otherwise now.

[Felix Torres]

Dunno, but I seem to remember a few other folks that had massive mindshare at some point; Lotus, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Word Perfect, Netscape, Altavista, AOL, Broadcast.com, Mp3.com, Napster...

And if iPod and Google are so golden as to be invincible, you'd never believe it by the number of folks lining up to take'em on. To say nothing of MS; last I looked, Google was lining up to take on Office despite Office's 15 year lead and massive mindshare...

As for YouTube, itself; how long has that been around?
One year?
Lots of internet-bubble wonders seemed golden for a year or even two.
In media, content is what's golden.

Mindshare comes and goes like a soap bubble...

[Vincent Ferrari]

But YouTube is all about an active content-making community with millions of captive eyeballs. That's not to be ignored, especially if you're Google and most of your income (if not all of it) is based on ad sales.

Do I think they overpaid? No, and only because they made money on the deal. This was a natural progression for them, and I'll be money that it's only a matter of time before they employ a technology like Podzinger.com uses so you can actually search inside user-created videos.

Google doesn't make acquisitions lightly. This isn't like the first bubble where outside forces were buying up zero-value dot coms for exorbitant amounts of money. In this case, a web company that's been hugely successful bought a company that was in the same industry.

This is certainly not the same as some crazy-assed VC throwing a ton of money at Peapod or something similar.

As for your mindshare argument, you're right. Lots of companies had it and lost it. However, tons of people competing with you doesn't make them legitimate competition. No one competes with Apple in the MP3 market. No one competes with Microsoft in the OS market. Other players exist but are relegated to catering to smaller more vertical groups. It's the long tail in action, so to speak.

[jeffd]

Vince summed up exactly what I was going to say. youtube isn't ABOUT contreversal vids. Its not ABOUT chic. It's not about posting your illegal warez. Its a TOOL! Until now, posting ANY video on the net required the provider himself to provide the video and issues with playing its format, the storage to place the video on, and the bandwidth to host said video. The first isnt to hard.. the 2nd is a little trickier, the 3rd is the nail in the coffin. If a video is even remotly popular, your video is either shutdown, or you pay out the ass in fees AND get shutdown.

Untill youtube came along. Now not only is the crossplatform codec and player issues solved, it cost nothing to host videos you want to post to the net. All at the cost of quality, oh well, thats one in a very small list of things that needs improvement.

[Jason Dunn]

Some interesting, spirited discussion. I said that I spend 6-10 minutes a day watching videos. Someone will usually send me one video a day, and I'll usually click around for a bit if I see something interesting. I've also noticed that more and more sites (usually blogs) are embedding YouTube videos, so I end up consuming YouTube video without actually visiting YouTube. YouTube has some amazing market velocity right now, but my fear is Google will screw it up - not all Google "magic" turns out to be good (witness Picasa 2.5).

I'm REALLY hoping that Flash 10 will be a dramatic bump in video quality - that's what sucks most about YouTube, is the really bad quality. :?

[Vincent Ferrari]

There's no inherent quality loss in Flash itself. The quality loss comes when you have to keep filesizes down. If you had a high-megabyte Flash file, the difference between that and an MPEG or something similar at the same resolution would be barely perceptable. Unfortunately Flash file sizes are massive and to get good video quality you'd have to have a large pipeline coming in to view them.

I don't see it improving anytime soon, either, because of the nature of Flash as a "play it on the web" medium rather than a "here's my flash file, let me put it on this device" medium.

[Jason Dunn]

There's no inherent quality loss in Flash itself. The quality loss comes when you have to keep filesizes down.

So you're saying that a Flash file at 300 kbps looks just as good as a 300 kbps WMV file? I find that hard to believe to be honest, though I haven't done much work with Flash video compression...

[Vincent Ferrari]

If you could even play a Flash file that large.

Check out the latest episode of This Week in Media (http://www.twit.tv/twim23). They talk about it for quite a bit.

[Jason Dunn]

If you could even play a Flash file that large.

Ok, so the issue is still about bit rate then - YouTube should bump up the bit rate quality for Flash files. I did some Googling and no one seems to know exactly what bit rate YouTube uses...apparently it's based on Flash 7 tech though, which is a bit outdated and is improved in Flash 8 and Flash 9.

I just want better quality from YouTube, that's all.

[Vincent Ferrari]

I do too, but I have a feeling that would be at the expense of people on slower connections actually viewing your content which is why they haven't done it already. I have to be honest... Even on a reasonable DSL (768k), some streaming audio and video is just unbearable, but YouTube is fine.

Flash will improve over time, I'm sure, particularly as broadband gets faster for the average consumer. For now, mediocre quality is just the way it is (I totally agree with you on that; I only disagree on the cause of it).

Oh, and just some more food for thought. Stage9's video quality is mindblowing. And it streams. Over the net. Relatively quickly. DivX is just that damned cool.

[Jason Dunn]

I do too, but I have a feeling that would be at the expense of people on slower connections actually viewing your content which is why they haven't done it already.

So why not have a speed toggle, and those of us with 10 mbps cable modems can get a higher-quality feed? Yes, it would increase their storage/streaming costs, but if they ever want to get to the point where quality becomes important (right now it's not) they'll need to take that step.

Why are you being a YouTube apologist? Do you work for them or something? ;-) I understand what YouTube is all about (convenience over quality), but I'm not "wrong" for wanting higher quality streaming.

[Vincent Ferrari]

Hey man, I never said you were wrong at all. Definitely not apologizing for YouTube, but I think people express disdain for parts of it where it isn't meant to "compete" (not you in particular, but others). I think the switch might be a good idea, but in their mind, that kills their bandwidth as well as my earlier point about people being disconnected from your content.

I want higher quality streaming. I have a 15 meg cable modem and watching something in granular 320 x 200 is not my idea of a good time. That being said, I'm willing to make that sacrifice for the depth of content YouTube has (aside from the karaoke videos... blech!). Logistically, allowing double the quality would be a nightmare for them. They already have a 100 meg per video limit (that would have to be raised) and their bandwidth bill is already just outright silly.

You're not wrong for wanting higher quality, but I'm just saying I don't see it fitting their business model.

Yet.

Who knows what Google taking over is gonna mean.

[jeffd]

No, it IS a bit rate issue, and I seriously doubt youtube is sending 300kbit streams. From the start it was clear that yahoo could support free video streaming because the flash player was allowing for very low bitrates. And as much as you may WANT a high bitrate option, as long as its free, that wont happen.