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The Internet Media Television

YouTube -- The Flickr of Video? 90

Posted by CmdrTaco from the baby-stepping-towards-something-cool dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A new folksonomy website that seems to be catching on is YouTube, a service similar to Flickr, except that it is for sharing and hosting short video clips instead of photos. Like Flickr, its core functionality is implemented in Flash. Videos can be tagged, searched, discussed, etc through a social network. YouTube has developer APIs, RSS feeds, and the ability to embed videos directly into other web pages. The website was recently profiled on TechCrunch as an up-and-coming Web 2.0 application."
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YouTube -- The Flickr of Video? More

YouTube -- The Flickr of Video?

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  • While it works well in Internet Explorer, I couldn't get videos to play in Firefox. In Opera, they started to play but after a few seconds it stops and wants to report a serious error to Microsoft. The second time I tried in Opera, it caused the screen to black out and rebooted my computer.

  • Would osmeone please be kind enough to explain... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Would someone please be kind enough to explain how this site can be profitable or even break even for that matter. The bandwidth costs of a video site will NOT be offset by advertising revenue. I can't even believe that Flickr pays for itself through advertising.

    Anyone that can offer real insight, and not the usual Slashdot-know-it-all-speak, would be greatly appreciated.

  • Thank god... (Score:3, Funny)

    by InsideTheAsylum ( 836659 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @09:49AM (#13315850)
    That they're not calling it pod-viewing (although I assume eventually there will be something similar), videoblogging (although people already use that for other things), or something similar. It's a video om the net and that's all it is!
    • yes, but if they used subscription to RSS feeds to automatically deliver new videos from a particular author and auto-syncing with a portable video player then it WOULD be "video-podcasting" or whatever the new term would be.

      there are so many people bitching about the term "podcasting". I'm sure it must just be hatred/envy towards Apple because I don't remember any of you guys slagging off "email" as just being mail on the internet and nothing more so whys teh new name oh noes!!!11
      • The problem people have with podcasting and the like is that the term implies that there's a new innovation involved. Email was a new innovation, mp3 was a new innovation, rss was a new innovation. Combining mp3 with rss is NOT a new innovation, it's simply using a two tools in concert.
        • to me podcasting implies broadcasting to ipods. who do you think is claiming innovation and why do you think it is undeserved? (IMO RSS + audio file + auto-sync + dynamic art is innovative as it's an order of magnitude simpler than manually doing the same thing)

          if you don't like podcasting then what do you think it should be called?
        • All of those innovations are just building on other technology. Email is mail, but using the Internet. MP3 is digital music, but with compression. RSS is HTML content, but in a subscription format. On topic, YouTube is Flickr, but for video. And yes, podcasting is RSS, but with MP3s.
          • How is 'podcasting' innovating anything? It is simply using RSS the way it was intended to be used. Of course all technology is built on other technology, but new technology needs to add something new to the mix. Podcasting does not, it is simple RSS.

  • Flickr requires Flash? Really? (Score:5, Informative)

    by nile_list ( 812696 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @09:54AM (#13315856) Homepage
    Actually, only the Organizr requires Flash. The Organizr is required to sort your photostream (all the images you've uploaded) into different sets as well as adding images from your photostream into the photo pools of groups you belong to.

    Of course, you can also use it to do other neat things, like mass-tagging images. But it is definitely not the "core functionality" - uploading, tagging, adding descriptions, browsing, adding tags and comments, etc, photos all do not require Flash.

    Have a nice day! =)
  • ... until I see how they handle Slashdot!

  • Why in Flash? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 )
    I don't have Flash on my computer, and don't want it.

    At one point and time, I had the following on my computer:

    • Flash
    • Real Media Player
    • Quicktime Player
    • God knows how many codecs, I lost track.
    • DivX Player
    • WinDVD
    • Others I forgot the name of

    I needed all of those just so I could play video, since every website had its own different format. And my system was crawling at a slow when it loaded. When I looked at the system tray, it was filled with 15+ icons.

    So I got rid of them all. I got tired of keeping

    • 1. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 create huge files compared to MPEG-4 codecs

      2. They can't show you advertising while you wait cause there's no 'buffering' with MPEG

    • I think the final straw was the slashdot story saying how Flash was not secure, that programs could exploit it.

      Just curious, but which story was that? I was wondering if Flash had serious exploits, but the stories I recall were regarding how it could be used for making pop-unders and nothing more serious. I think that flaw has been fixed- I'm not getting them anymore, either because I have a newer browser version or plugin version.

    • To be fair, there is no QuickTime format. .mov files are just wrappers for other formats.
    • When I looked at the system tray, it was filled with 15+ icons. [...] So I got rid of them all. I got tired of keeping track of what program was calling home.

      Flash is just a plugin. If you use FireFox, it's no different than installing an extension. It fast, small, and doesn't load any icons into your task tray.

      The other problems you had could have been solved quite easily: Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net].

      Looks just like a stripped-down version of Windows Media Player 6.4 (before skins and bloat). It's a 4 meg exec
    • Few reasons:
      1) The Flash Player is standard across all browsers and operating systems. If the Player is implemented correctly (and for the most part, it is), the video will play correctly on every computer that has flash, regardless of the specific video codecs installed. While you can assume every system has an MPEG player, not all have the same MPEG players (1 v. 2 v. 4), and other formats get even worse (AVI+DivX, Qt 6 v. 7, etc).

      On other video blog services [vobbo.com], users are given the opportunity to upload in
    • When I looked at the system tray, it was filled with 15+ icons. [...] So I got rid of them all. I got tired of keeping track of what program was calling home.

      Fortunately for everyone who hasnt uninstalled every single plugin for the above reason there is another way to get rid of ALLL of those icons... Go into the programs properties and set it to not run on startup.. that'll speed your boot. Then when you come across the random web site that has something other than flash(I personally don't see TONS
    • You should check out videolan. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [videolan.org]. It even plays DVDs.

      As for quicktime or WMV or whatever, they sometimes offer lower bitrates than mpeg for a given quality, and lots of proprietary codecs came out between mpeg2 and mpeg4, offering mpeg4 type features long before the standard was final.

    • you just up and deleted the players because of too many icons in your tray at startup? pray tell, have you heard of using 'msconfig' to disable programs at startup? i've disabled all of those unnecessary players at startup, but when I need them, the software is still there. ;]
    • "Why can't everyone use one standard like MPEG? What is wrong with MPEG? It is perfect, anyone can play it, it does not require anything extra."

      It requires extra bandwith. It is not perfect for mass delivery on the internet simply for that reason. Compress a 320 by 240 WMV at 150KB (not kb) a sec, and it'll run circles around MPEG.

  • Folksonomy? (Score:4, Informative)

    by frostman ( 302143 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @10:08AM (#13315892) Homepage Journal
    Ah, blogospheric neologisms...

    "Folksonomy" apparently refers to keyword-based organization and tagging and such.

    Folksonomy is a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people cooperating spontaneously to organize information into categories. In contrast to formal classification methods, this phenomenon typically only arises in non-hierarchical communities, such as public websites, as opposed to multi-level teams. Since the organizers of the information are usually its primary users, advocates of folksonomy believe it produces results that reflect more accurately the population's conceptual model of the information. Folksonomy is not directly related to the concept of faceted classification from library science.

    From the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].
  • I took a peek under the hood of "player.swf" to see if they were streaming a wmv/qt/etc

    The operative bit of code is this:
    file = "get_video.php?video_id=" + _root.video_id;

    So take whatever video_id you're looking at and paste it onto
    http://v3.youtube.com/get_video.php?video_i d =

    instead of anything useful, I got a buttload of raw crap dumped in my browser window.

    Hopefully some other /.er can tell me what format its in.

    P.S. The site ran fine in FireFox

    • Flash has it's own native video format now(flv), which is useful for developers seeking a cross-platform audience (since the Flash plug-in has a wider installed base than any of various video players out there...except perhaps Windows Media...and makes it possible for developers to integrate the video into the page however they like)

      The Flash video format is not too bad if you pony up for Sorenson Squeeze...otherwise, it sucks.

      I didn't test the url, but my guess is that it what they are using, if the site
  • The service indeed seems to remove technical and convenience obstacles to clip-publishing... leaving the prognosticator's question of whether something like this could somehow make its way into the pantheon of lasting, widespread user habits (like weekend movies, or video games, or blogs, etc...)

    I watched two of its offerings: the zucchini-eating baby (which YouTube proffered), and the article's "all-time favorite", Matt Dances [youtube.com]. The latter did have a certain something, no doubt about it... but neither in

  • Not the first.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Sunday August 14, 2005 @10:45AM (#13316027) Homepage Journal
    There are other sites doing this, though with different audiences, formats, etc.

    Vidiac.com [vidiac.com]
    PutFile.com [putfile.com]

    In my experience, the quality of the videos posted are often quite poor. The owners of the sites battle copyright issues constantly and risk being held responsible if their users post material illegally. Finally, the range of the audience affects the overall quality of the site. Videos that a 12-year-old finds funny may not be worth my time.

    Not all the criticisms apply to this particular site or to all uses of the site, but it's there.
    • Vobbo.com [vobbo.com] does the same sort of thing, but is focused more on video blogs - lots of tools for embedding video in other pages (such as MySpace). Also have direct webcam recording, ability to upload arbitrary filetypes, ability to post by video/camera phone, XML/RSS feeds for arbitrary search terms (if you want an RSS feed for every post mentioning 'puppy' or 'boobies', go for it), and the list goes on.
    • and of course, vimeo.com [vimeo.com] as well

  • Video of Air France Flight 358 crash on YouTube (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A few minutes after the crash of Air France 358 in Toronto, a YouTube user who lives in Toronto uploaded this footage of the smoldering wreckage. Apparently he just happened to drive by at the time, and was able to shoot this video from the freeway. You can hear the announcer on his car radio saying that spectators are running across the freeway to make videos of the crash with their cameras and cellphones. Under the video the YouTube user also provides a Google Maps link that shows precisely where the vi

  • or without ads.... (Score:2, Informative)

    by aleatorybug ( 635939 )
    there's Our Media [ourmedia.org] ("We provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches."). &if you want to host your own site that lets people upload tagged video and dist via bit torrent, there's BroadcastMachine [participatoryculture.org].
  • I'm happy they didn't follow Flickr's "fuck vowels" attitude or we could have ended up with something like YuTub or YoTbe or Tb
  • http://www.vobbo.com./ [www.vobbo.com] You can Record live video directly to sever (no upload required). Upload media (videos, images, audio) for later playback. Post entries via email (camera and video phones). Form communities, groups. Create your homepage using your own URL. Mark your messages as private so only your friends can see. My wife and I use it to show make/show videos of our baby to family all over the country.
  • They switched over to DHTML a while back after people comlained.
  • Videos aren't images. It takes way longer to watch even the shortest video than an image. Its much easier for an amateur to make a great photo than a great video. Etc. Of course, sharing videos on the net is inevitable but it'll be different in many nontechnical ways.
    • It's also has the potential to be much more meaningful - consider that it takes an amateur a great amount of time to learn the concepts that allow them to make 'great', meaningful photographs - composition, lighting, patience, whereas it takes only seconds to record a video of a baby stumbling around.

      Given the opportunity to send a few great pictures or a single quick video to friends and family, I'd choose video every time.

      And judging by the number of baby videos on vobbo [vobbo.com], I'm not alone.

  • Watch the Terms of Use for copyright ! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Watch the Terms of Use:
    http://www.youtube.com/terms.php [youtube.com]
    Under section 4, it says:

    The content on the YouTube Website, including without limitation the text, software, graphics, photos, and videos ("Content"), is owned by or licensed to YouTube, subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights under United States Copyright Act, foreign laws, and international conventions. YouTube reserves all rights not expressly granted in and to the Website and the Content. Other than as expressly permitted, you m

  • I used to be more into video, and may get back into it when HD cameras are a little cheaper and when distribution over the internet is easier- but currently I find taking still pictures much more rewarding.

    The first thing wrong with video is that it has a default and sometimes fixed playback speed. Some players have fast forward and so forth but it is usually clunky to use, and some compression formats make scanning the video difficult. The result is most videos are very boring. With a bunch of pictures,
    • I mostly agree with your opinion, but I do have to say that there is something that only video can capture.

      When the subject changes, grows, or dies there is a certain magic about even the worst video that will make some people watch it over and over and over again until even you (the photographer) can't stand it.

      I took a video of my sister waiting in her car outside of a gate for the guard to come and open it. It was just okay footage of a car outside a locked gate. You couldn't see her at all. But the guar
      • I think some of the life you mention can be captured with a more candid shooting style (perhaps combined with a decent telephoto lens)- you can get very wonderful non-posed pictures. This is a little more sneaky than video (but less annoying in the long run), where you gain the candidness by breaking down defenses- they aren't going to stop taping so I'll can't be "on" all the time so I give up and will be natural.

        It also says something about most of the moments you describe being very personal- you can pu
  • This wired article [wired.com] on vlogging highlighted a number of new video sites including one called RocketBoom [rocketboom.com]. RocketBoom's author, Amanda Congdon, puts up new video content everyday, Monday through Friday, and by all appearances does a great job. Each day is a separate html page providing quicktime, winmedia and torrent versions of her clips.

    A typical clip runs about 2-3 minutes and the .mov and .wmv files run about 20-30MB in size. To properly experience the site requires a good broadband connection, which I h
  • FWIW I'm one the co-founders of http://vidiac.com/ [vidiac.com] Mentioned above by "lukewarmfusion", and yes we do offer a similar service, though we specialize in offering free video hosting branded under your website, and then let web site owners decide what sort of video content they want their portal to specialize in.

    I'll answer what questions I can that I've seen posted here.

    1.) Does advertising pay the bills? Yes, but it's very low margin unlike picture hosting and the like. There are many ways to make a living

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