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YouTube Founders Interviewed 122

An anonymous reader writes: "FORTUNE's Adam Lashinsky interviews co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. 'In just five months, YouTube has gone from beta testing to part of the national zeitgeist. The website is a place where anyone with a home video can post it online and create an endlessly entertaining diversion for bored office workers -- who've been watching 40 million clips a day.'"
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YouTube Founders Interviewed

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  • by js92647 ( 917218 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @12:42AM (#15315340)
    ... is because the site is still working.
  • Fluff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Friday May 12, 2006 @12:43AM (#15315344)
    What I'd like to have seen asked is how they plan to deal with copyright infringement on the site with the vast amounts of content which they host. Both technical and legal answers would be interesting, I think.
    • Re:Fluff (Score:4, Informative)

      by flooey ( 695860 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @12:48AM (#15315368)
      What I'd like to have seen asked is how they plan to deal with copyright infringement on the site with the vast amounts of content which they host. Both technical and legal answers would be interesting, I think.

      From what I most recently heard, they use a basic system where a copyright owner can object to a particular movie, and it's manually taken down by someone on their team. When a movie is taken down, their system also fingerprints the movie and automatically rejects any further submissions of movies with the same fingerprint.
      • Re:Fluff (Score:3, Informative)

        by apflwr3 ( 974301 )
        From what I most recently heard, they use a basic system where a copyright owner can object to a particular movie, and it's manually taken down by someone on their team. When a movie is taken down, their system also fingerprints the movie and automatically rejects any further submissions of movies with the same fingerprint.

        If this is the case I can't imagine this system will last-- it's certainly not the copyright holder's responsibility to cruise YouTube to make sure no one is appropriating their works, an
        • Re:Fluff (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rayde ( 738949 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:05AM (#15315435) Homepage
          how would youtube honestly have any fundamental difference to any other host.. say geocities, which is just as capable (albiet not as user friendly) of hosting videos? just because they offer a convenient means of playing the videos back doesn't necessarily mean they should be treated differently than any other host. they wash their hands of it and let the content providers take up issues on a case-by-case basis.
        • Re:Fluff (Score:5, Informative)

          by flooey ( 695860 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @02:55AM (#15315782)
          If this is the case I can't imagine this system will last-- it's certainly not the copyright holder's responsibility to cruise YouTube to make sure no one is appropriating their works, and sooner or later an irate infringee will not be happy with a simple "sorry, we'll take it down" and sue for damages (I would imagine an example could be a scene from a movie still in production.)

          Actually, according to 17 USC 512 (c) [cornell.edu], it is in fact the copyright holder's responsibility. Copyright law has a special section regarding systems that allow users to upload content and spells out exactly how the system operators need to deal with it.
          • That's correct. The copyright holder has to find it.

            How would you honestly expect anyone (whether it is a site like youtube or a magazine printing copyrighted photos in ad copy) to know whether submitters held permission to use what they were submitting. It's kind of a pain for small companies that hold a lot of copyrights (like advertising photographers) but when they do find it, the court royalty damages if they dont agree to pay before court are quite good (and they levy the damages on the person who

        • They are considered a service provider. By legal precedent, they're not required to police the content their users post for copyright violations. SO a scene from a movie in production is posted to YouTube. How is YouTube supposed to know the person posting it isn't a marketing rep for the studio who is generating pre-release buzz? The policy that's outlined here is keeping with the same copyright policies that other service providers (mYSpace, AOL, etc.) follow.

          It is the copyright holder's responsibility
      • Here's an actual example [youtube.com]. This video originally showed a fight from the latest event in the Pride Fighting Championship in Japan, now it just says; This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Pride FC - Dream Stage Entertainment, Inc because its content was used without permission

        Youtube have been removing a lot of Mixed Martial Arts videos at the request of Pride and UFC..
    • INAL, but could copyright issues be more problematic once they start making money off these videos? I mean, I know no label really wants to sell old Prince videos, but somehow they're huge on YouTube. Do you really think content producers (record labels, movie studios, musicians, maybe even regular users) would be okay with that, or would they want a piece of the action? I mean, they own the copyright, and I don't think that posting entire music videos online could be considered fair use.

      That's the reason Google News doesn't have ads, after all - if they did, they'd run into legal issues (or so I've heard).

      P.S. This is a pretty short article with only a bit of information - and it's vague info at that. What gives?
      • Actually I'm pretty sure that the fair use status of Google News blurbs wouldn't be impacted in any way by posting ads. If something is non-profit a judge might take that into consideration and it might help a little, but it's not like Google is a non-profit corporation. Wikipedia is non-profit, and copyright (especially fair use-issues) is one of the major concerns. Also, Google do the EXACT same thing to normal webpages (copyrights-wise anyhow) and they make plenty of money from AdWords. How would Google
      • This is a pretty short article with only a bit of information - and it's vague info at that. What gives?

        You must be new around here. You'll learn.
      • I mean, I know no label really wants to sell old Prince videos, but somehow they're huge on YouTube.

        A little offtopic, but bootlegged Prince stuff is very popular, and I have a neat conspiracy-conspiracy theory to follow.

        There is tons of "bootlegged" Prince stuff out there, and Prince freaks buy it just like they pay $300-$400 for tickets to see him every time he plays a live gig because they always sell out. The most infamous bootlegged album is "The Black Album" that came out in the late 80s. I knew a
    • I think they only care as far as needed. Do a search for Morning Musume (a jpop girl group) on youtube or video.google and you will find a shitload of vids most of them copyrighted.

      So they definitly ain't removing the stuff on their own. Granted the japanese do call Music Videos Promotional Videos instead and who would object to the freehosting of ads but still.

      I think this stuff is too new for the copyright owners to have woken up yet. Just wait for it.

  • by Amouth ( 879122 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @12:54AM (#15315388)
    That was more like a side conversation while three gusy where waiting for coffee in the morning.. I want to see details (servers, bandwidth, cost, space) what they use to manage it.. (i know it is home built but what is it like?)

    that is a lame interview and told us nothing more than we all already new (except that they work for paypal)

    not trolling here just pointing out
    • yeah i was a bit confused that an interview for Fortune was allowed to have only 3 questions with vague answers..
    • by bedessen ( 411686 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @02:17AM (#15315697) Journal
      The Forbes article from a few weeks ago [forbes.com] states that thier bandwidth usage is approximately 200TB per day, the cost of which "may be approaching $1 million a month".
      • The Forbes article from a few weeks ago states that thier bandwidth usage is approximately 200TB per day, the cost of which "may be approaching $1 million a month".

        200 TB / day
        8.33 TB / hour
        8529.92 GB / hour
        142.165 GB / minute
        2.369 GB / sec
        18.952 Gbit / sec
        19406.848 Mbit/Sec

        Less than dual 10gigE

        Since when does a 10gigE or OC-192 cost $500,000/month?

        Some people have 12 mbit cable models for $40/month. This works out to about 1617 cable modems or about $64,689.49.

        Bandwidth is probably cheaper in bulk.
        • by bedessen ( 411686 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @05:14AM (#15316091) Journal
          You cannot possibly be suggesting that you can compare some shitty cablemodem to the kind of thing you get at a datacenter. Residential broadband is almost always highly asynchronous (the upload is only a fraction of the download rate), it has tons of restrictions (usage caps, cop-out clauses, etc), and it is typically oversold by ratios of 100:1 or more. This means you aren't actually paying for the true cost of the bandwidth, you are paying a fraction of it because most people don't come anywhere clost to using the full amount.

          "Real" bandwidth has none of this BS. You get a SLA. You get an engineer on the phone when it breaks. You get a dedicated and provisioned port on a router. You can run it flat out at full duty cycle (100% utilization) continuously without any kind of "you've used too much" bullshit that residential ISPs like to pull. The speeds are synchronous and are contractually guaranteed, none of that "up to X mbps but sometimes much less because you have crappy wiring" stuff. Your equipment is stored in a location that has redundant power supplies, diesel generators, raised floors, heavy duty cooling, and sophisticated fire alarm/control systems.

          "Real" bandwidth costs real money. The stuff you get with a cablemodem is not real bandwidth, and it appropriately costs only a fraction. When you realize the difference between the two you will realize that from a cost standpoint comparing what you get from your residential cable company to what a large site like youtube has to use, they are in totally and completely different leagues.
        • Our two T1s cost $1,200. 10Mb of OC-3 will cost us about $3,200. Make sense now? That cable modem analogy is crap. 12Mb down if you're lucky and you'll never get 12Mb outbound.
        • At the tier 1 facility we use, we would pay $10,000 US a month if we sustained a constant 100 Mbp/s.
  • What is the cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @12:54AM (#15315392)
    I wonder how those guys pay for the bandwidth. How are they handling this? When I visited their site, I saw no advertising - none!

    My request though, is to have full video controls on thier player. The same applies to Google Video by the way. Many a times, the videos simply need some light.

    But many thanks to thier effort.

    • Re:What is the cost? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They're funded by venture capital just like a 1990s dot com.
    • Light? They need bitrate. For stupid clips (that I love by the way) it is great, but for anything worth watching Google Video and YouTube and all the other offerings fall far short when it comes to quality.
      • Youtube tends to be much worse than Google Video for quality, though (at least in my experience). I agree wholeheartedly - the videos on both youtube and GV tend to look about ten times worse than 16Kbit MP3 sounds. Of course that's due to the nature of audio versus video, and the fact that low bitrate audio is just empty-sounding, not all blocky and artifacted. I suppose something to the effect of a subscribers pass, say $10/month, could work - allowing paid members to view unlimited higher-quality cont

    • So says Leo Laporte's TWiT this past weekend.

      I have 11mil$... I spend 1mil$ per month on bandwidth... how long
      can I stay in business for assuming no additional funding...

      Hedley
    • they have ads (Score:3, Interesting)

      by centuren ( 106470 )
      Look closer - there are Google text-ads on nearly every page.
    • I wonder how those guys pay for the bandwidth. How are they handling this? When I visited their site, I saw no advertising - none!

      They have Google Ads now, but let's think about this anyway:

      In a blog entry from January 9th they said they were serving over 45TB of videos per day [youtube.com]. If traffic is, say, $0.10 buck per GB, that's less than $2M per year. Plus the cost of its employees and the fact that they're probably serving even more video now and I'd say a reasonable estimate of their costs would be maybe $5

    • No kidding. Its funny....I always kinda thought of YouTube as "the TiVo of the internet" in terms of its business. Fantastic innovative product that shakes up the world....and then bigger competitors with deeper pockets who already have gobs of marketshare in complementary markets come in and crush them because they don't have a good enough business model.

      If I was a YouTube founder I'd sell and bail. But thats just me, and mostly because I have bills I need to pay and little money to pay them with right

  • by Anonymous Coward
    I think a better model would be for dedicated BitTorrent-like software allowing downloading of video files instead of streaming using Flash or some other ridiculously stupid and intrusive Flash-like technology.

    A site which abjures all DRM and which basically said instead "here, download this .mpg and use this software to easily convert it to DVD format so you can watch it in your DVD player" I would think could be even more popular.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      yes because most people want to spend the time to burn dvd's of strange japanese tv shows or koreans playing starcraft.

      the site is popular BECAUSE it uses flash which allows for easy watching of short clips that would not be worth the time to download and play with a local decoding solution.
    • really ?

      more popular to most of the web users than say....a site that says click here to play ?
    • I'm not a huge fan of flash, but it does have it's uses. It does work for quite a few platforms and it abstracts the viewer from having to download appropriate codecs that an uploader might have used. It's alot simpler than telling a less computer savy person to download and install the necessary codecs. Also the benefits you mentioned about downloading this mpeg and burning could be turned into a hunt for proper codecs and approriate software to convert, a benefit that only us techies might appreciate.
  • One simple question: How does YouTube plan to make any money? Right now they're making $0 and spending tons on bandwidth. The main reason people visit the site in the first place is for content that's infringing on someone's copyright: TV shows, commercials and similar fare. There are a few user-created videos that actually draw traffic, but still, that traffic is pure loss. The only thing of value they have is the brand name. Everyone at my college talks about wasting time on YouTube, but their technology itself is worth next to nothing because it's so easy to build. That's my YouTube has so [google.com] many [vimeo.com] competitors. [revver.com] If they don't get bought by anyone, they're screwed.

    Ladies and gentlemen, it's a good time to be living off of VC money. It's fairly clear that many of them are being advised by underpants gnomes.
  • by eBayDoug ( 764290 )
    If google rapidly integrated video search, would that screw youtube's plans?
    • Google Video isn't the end-all, be-all of online video content. YouTube clearly has the upper hand when it comes to quality.

      Also take into account that, while Google Video is still in beta, GV is not as feature-rich as YouTube. In all honestly, Google Video seems like a rushed product - rushed to market to claim at least some market share from YouTube. And it shows.

      Anyway, I really think that YouTube has the upper hand - it shouldn't worry about Google Video (not for the moment, at least).

      -WeAz
    • How do you search video? Upload a similar clip and see if the server can find similar clips? Upload a video of yourself describing the video you desire?
    • Google would have to do a lot of infrastructure work to match YouTube's.

      Mind you, youtube's search & subscription functions are NOT perfect.

      For example, I have a subscription to the keyword "1980s" for any sort of 1980s nostalgia(music, tv shows,etc). If I do a serach of the latest videos that contain that, I often get hits that have nothing to do with the 80s, nor anything showing up for '1980s' in keywords. Yes, I get stupid crap videos from teenagers that should be friends only/private. But I don't m
  • by Chemkook ( 915402 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:19AM (#15315498)
    I like YouTube because you can upload files and view them with Linux.

    I hope Google video supports Linux soon!
    • Google video works under Linux now. As far as I know, it always has.
      • Both use flash (wich opera has a problem with at the moment at least under linux, something to do with how flash requests the video) but google also allows you to download the file in several formats.

        So you can play it in a decent player with some filters to make it look good. The difference in quality (at least on linux) is staggering.

        Youtube has the tagging wich makes it easier to find stuff.

        • Unfortunately both requires the use of non-Free software by streaming through Flash. Last I checked, there is still no 64-bit implementation of Flash.

          • I don't think so. The page loads in links and gives you the option to download. So google for the win!

            Yes the in browser player is flash and is indeed evil and mean and nasty and kills puppies for fun.

            But you can also just download it in several other formats. As I pointed out already. If you can't play any of the available movie formats. Well then that sucks. Serves you right for having a fancy CPU.

          • Your only hope for a better Flash plugin on 64bit is the Gnash project. It doesn't have sufficient support to cope with YouTube yet though, at least at the 0.7.1 release point. So I hear about this stuff on YouTube but I have no idea what I'm missing because there is nothing to see (for me).

            Still, beats wasting time actually watching the movies :-)

            Cheers,
            Toby Haynes

            • I've gone without Flash for quite some time now and I find the experience lifting. Gone are the days of (usually) colourful flashy things giving me eyesore! Most of the time they're either annoying or meaningless.

              I suppose I'd rather not have a Flash plugin at all. Too bad for those Flash sites...

        • google also allows you to download the file in several formats.

          This is the killer feature for me. Youtube just doesn't have the bandwidth to be able to stream videos. I can't remember the last time I was able to watch a video on youtube without it pausing to catch up every few seconds. Google has a similar problem (albeit to a lesser extent). However, Google lets you download the video and watch it offline. That to me makes Google Video usable, and Youtube unusable. How it's managed to get the bulk of the

        • FUD. I have no problem with Flash in general or YouTube in particular in Opera on Linux.
  • by Jonboy X ( 319895 ) <jonathan.oexner@ ... u ['i.e' in gap]> on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:24AM (#15315521) Journal
    I'm sure I'm not the first to think this, but this YouTube thing kinda reminds me of the early days of Napster. They get VC, they spend it allowing people to share copyrighted media, they try to conjure a revenue stream out of a free service, they hope to turn "legit" before the federales shut 'em down, they go halfway and alienate all their users, et cetera. I don't know why these doofuses think this will turn out any differently.

    Could it really be that the VC's know this, and have decided that getting the name "YouTube" branded into young people's minds and associated with internet video is worth all the blown money?
    • Quite possibly, the second iteration of this site (the one with the actual business plan) will get traffic and notice because of this iteration. Think Napster vs Napster 2.0.

      So really, what the venture capitalists are thinking of is spending all this money marketing a name that will eventually do something entirely different from what the site currently does.

  • by rewinn ( 647614 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:25AM (#15315528) Homepage

    While it would be naiive to suggest sites like youtube would fully replace entertainment developed for the masses, noticable audience share may be drawn away as Youtube & its ilk not only radically drop the transaction costs of (short) video entertainment but, more importantly, provide search and rating capability .

    For example, which is more likely to provide a solid hour of laughs: watching an hour of Saturday Night Live and hope for two or three funny scetches, or searching YouTube for a dozen bits of comedy that have been highly rated?

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Dude, where the porn at yo?
  • Is there any chance YouTube will upgrade to some better codecs and/or higher bitrate streams?
    • Is there any chance YouTube will upgrade to some better codecs and/or higher bitrate streams?

      Considering the rate at which they're burning money on bandwidth, I'd imagine higher bitrate streams are unlikely.
  • Just a fad. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ImaNihilist ( 889325 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:39AM (#15315585)
    YouTube is just a fad. As soon as the venture capital dries up they won't be able to afford the bandwidth without massive advertising. As soon as they add that, visitors will start dropping like flies. YouTube is no different than AtomFilms or iFilm. Same shit, different day. AtomFilms used to be the big video content host. Then the adds started poppin' and the hits started droppin'.
  • by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @01:41AM (#15315594) Homepage
    YouTube doesn't currently the one video I would love to see -- a tour of their server farm, network, dev offices, etc. I would love to have a behind the scenes look.
  • Meanwhile, that U.S. National Zeitgeist [zeitgeist.us] is forbidden.
  • by DA-MAN ( 17442 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @03:17AM (#15315837) Homepage
    I think that YouTube is going to be a major player in the near term. The tv companies have completely shot themselves in the foot and someone is going to dethrone them as the king of captive eyeballs.

    Fact #1)The TV industry has changed from real productions to idiots with camera's (aka reality tv). By doing that alone, they've dropped the cost of creating a show to little more than a camera, a stupid idea and idiots.
    Fact #2) Digital Cameras have gotten extremely cheap
    Fact #3) There are millions of untapped idiots with their own camera's worldwide

    By shoving reality tv down everyones throat, they've basically commoditized the creation of television content. YouTube is poised to make a killing, if just by putting basic ads on idiots doing stupid shit on camera, the same thing the tv companies do except over ip.

    Already old media is feeling the force of podcasts, converting their existing shows to allow users to listen to what they want when they want it (and usually commercial free). It's only a matter of time before YouTube (or someone else) does the same to video. Keeping the clips short seems to be a good idea since most people don't have much of an attention span these days (if you've read this far, you're probably ahead of the curve).
    • Great point regarding "reality TV" as a precursor for "video blogs". I never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.

      However, the big question remains, how does YouTube intend to make money from all of this? Ads? Selling content (a la Google Video)?

      As others have mentioned, the technology is easy, the hard part is a profitable logistics model that works.

      • Great point regarding "reality TV" as a precursor for "video blogs". I never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.

        Thanks :)

        However, the big question remains, how does YouTube intend to make money from all of this? Ads? Selling content (a la Google Video)?

        That's probably going to take something creative. I have no clue other than ads. All that matters is how the ads are done, it could be done very tactfully.

        For example, people tag the hell out of these videos. All they need to do is write a channel en
    • I disagree. Reality TV is already rapidly dwindling, with only a few (Survivor, American Idol, etc.) remaining popular (did anyone actually watch Unanimous?) Quality actors like Hugh Laurie (House) and John C. McGinley (Scrubs) are creating a rennaisance in network television, reminiscent of the pre-reality tv era, when you could pay big bucks for talent and still turn a tidy profit (The Cosby Show, Friends, Seinfeld, etc.) The Reality TV fad is dead. Basing an entire revenue stream on it would be finan

      • I disagree. Reality TV is already rapidly dwindling, with only a few (Survivor, American Idol, etc.) remaining popular (did anyone actually watch Unanimous?)

        I disagree. It is still in the process of being shoved in front of the people because it's cheap for them to produce. Ever wonder why so many new reality tv shows keep coming, but very few good tv shows are released?

        Quality actors like Hugh Laurie (House) and John C. McGinley (Scrubs) are creating a rennaisance in network television, reminiscent of the
  • Tired (Score:4, Funny)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @03:27AM (#15315857)
    How many times can you watch the StarWars kid ?

  • by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @05:10AM (#15316086) Homepage Journal
    I go to YouTube once or Twice a week, I'd go more often if I could download individual clips from the site rather than play it in my browser. I want to keep them on a longer term basis rather than keep downloading something over and over again if and when friends come round wanting to watch something.
    • Type {download youtube} into Google, and something COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED [javimoya.com] shows up.

      On the other hand, as others have noted, most YouTube videos are pretty low bit-rate and not that great for keeping around. Often with a little more work, you can find a higher bitrate version of the same video elsewhere on the net.

      • Yes, that is a great extension! However, .FLV-files aren't seekable by any non-official flash players AFAIK. You can convert it non-lossy to ASF (yes, ASF, because I think .FLV-files can have variable framerate, and neither the Matroska- nor OGM-tools support .FLV yet) with FFMPEG [sf.net] like this:

        ffmpeg -i inputfile.flv -vcodec copy -acodec copy outputfile.asf

        The resulting file will play great with MPlayer and VLC and is fully seekable. I haven't tried any other players.

    • I go to YouTube once or Twice a week, I'd go more often if I could download individual clips from the site rather than play it in my browser.
      That's just the point -- no, you wouldn't. You'd likely go to the site less often if you had your favourite clips waiting for you on your hard drive. Each time you want to show a friend a clip at present, you have to give the site another visit, and hence potentially more ad. revenue.
    • You can grab the files from your browser cache, rename to .FLV and download an FLV player to view them with.
    • There is a Firefox extension that downloads Youtube videos: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/ [mozilla.org]
  • by mgabrys_sf ( 951552 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @06:39AM (#15316251) Journal
    Redundant concern I know - but consider this lil' nugget.

    This Week In Tech (TWIT) broadcast for this week (ep 53) mentioned a bandwidth cost of more than 1 million a month. That's peanuts to a network (or network affiliate), but considering their cash flow is investment derrived, they're going to have to do something - and FAST - or become the pets.com of the web 2.0 era.

    I'm rooting for them because some of the material is fantastic, and I'm noting more sites using it for hosting videos for other sites and blogs - which I think is it's best case for being. I know my sites couldn't handle a slashdotting - and neither could my pocketbook - but youTube makes for a great video podcasting solution.
  • by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Friday May 12, 2006 @09:14AM (#15316722) Homepage Journal
    Look at the original Napster. Before it was shut down it had built up a community, people were rating each others' files, they were selling stickers and t-shirts at Hot Topic, they were pissing off Metallica, and people were saying "Napster" in TV shows and movies. You can't go out and buy that sort of brand identity, you just urge the masses to build it up in their own minds. All that is the sole reason the current Napster is doing anything remotely close to the business it does today.

    These guys, although apparently not evil (sure, they used to work for Paypal, but on the other hand, they used to work for Paypal) have already built up the user base and mind share to basically ensure that Youtube makes money whatever they end up doing to go "legit."

    I think the most ingenius move of theirs so far is the embeddable player. How cool is it to be able to stick that little flash gadget right in your website/blog/myspace/whatever? And, once they do start running ads and things, each one of those embedded files will become a tiny branch of their revenue stream.

    • Ingenious! I hadn't even thought of the fact that all those stupid little embedded videos in people's stupid little MySpace pages could have a stupid little ad at the beginning, without the page owners themselves even noticing for a while. YouTube is betting that most bloggers are too lazy to get rid of the YouTube clips that they've already linked in, and I think it's a good bet.

      Heck, maybe after content is torn down from YouTube's servers because of blatant copyright violations, links to non-existent vi
  • ..google is just a fad. I mean it has only these tiny little text ads. They will never make any money with this. It will just end when the venture capital runs out. History repeating? Probably. I visit youtube.com everyday , and not to watch copywrited material but check out all the cool E3 vids that are out now. Or watch AskANinja . Or some other clip. Or a music video clip. Or something. It really is amazing . I would think that simply having a video on the top page will get you 1.000.000 people watchi
  • Why do I feel like we're setting up for another dot.com bust? I know this has been talked about before, but still. It seems like these things will be fads and in a few years they won't be "cool" anymore even with the fresh generations coming up. Who is to say what this gen finds cool the next will as well?
  • One way that youtube or the youtube wannabes could differentiate themselves:
    Let you upload your own .swf files, rather than forcing you to upload linear videos files only (QT, AVI,etc).

    Why? Because then you could upload videos with your own interactivity added.

    Yeah, but why? Because the internet is an interactive medium, and linear videos on it are as unsatisfying as early silent movies, which put actors against a theatrical backdrop. They haven't adjusted to the medium.

    You mean like [insert name
  • What service or product does YouTube sell? I don't know but I'm too lazy to find out. I thought that the 90's taught venture capital the importance of finding a company that actually produces something saleable.
  • This type of site, along with many others like it (ww.com for instance) loses its luster rather quickly with me. I went to youtube.com, and within minutes I was totally bored out of my mind. Maybe it is me, but don't folks have something better to do with all their overtime-off-now-I'm-at-home hours? Like posting my drivel about this 'story', I'm pathetic.

With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm?

Working...