YouTube Founders Interviewed

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.'"

Fluff

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Does it change once they start making money?

[ragingmime]

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?

I'm surprised YouTube works

[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.

YouTube and Linux Support

[Chemkook]

I like YouTube because you can upload files and view them with Linux.

I hope Google video supports Linux soon!

How about a video of their server farm?

[green pizza]

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.

they have ads

[centuren]

Look closer - there are Google text-ads on nearly every page.

Re:Where is the Interview??/

[bedessen]

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".

Think Big Picture People

[DA-MAN]

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).

Bandwidth costs - 1m/month

[mgabrys_sf]

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.

Brand identity is worth the initial drain.

[Rob T Firefly]

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.

If only they'd let you upload flash...

[ofcourseyouare]

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 of 80s/90s laserdisk game - dragons lair, etc]? Who the hell wants to do that?

No, I mean like Subservientchicken.com, or the interactive video stuff being done by Tate, British Film Institute, National Theatre, etc (links at http://www.activecinema.com/ [activecinema.com] )

Letting people add their own interactivty is a great way to let people raise their game and make pieces that are more playful without being just silly - and it also gives people a way to make something that stands up next to the mega-budget productions pirated off TV.