I recently posted about a great MySpace parody/homage: MySpace: The Movie. Well, I just listened to a podcast of Inside the Net, where Steve Chen the CTO of YouTube was interviewed. He gave the following stats:
- MySpace The Movie had 5 million views within 1 week of being uploaded on YouTube;
- MySpace The Movie producer was then offered a deal with MTV;
- YouTube receives 80,000 registrations every day;
- YouTube has 9 million unique visitors every month;
- Google Video and Yahoo Video have about 6 million unique visitors every month.
I thought Steve Chen’s response to the question on video quality was a little shakey; in a nutshell, it’s “YouTube videos are ugly because we need to support dial-up users”. For that reason, they create only one rendition of the video at a fixed bitrate, rather than creating multiple renditions for different connection speeds and platforms.
Given that they *could* create multiple renditions, but aren’t, I wonder if the decision is in part due to YouTube needing to find a way to monetize their service really, really soon. If pre-rolls and post-rolls are out, what’s left? Advertising? Premium content/quality of service?
I presumed it was the cost for storage of high-quality only or multiple renditions.
Yeah, I don’t see why pre-rolls and post-rolls are bad. Although it does affect the aesthetic experience, I really don’t mind them. Especially since alot seem to put the effort in to be cool and interesting. I think advertising on the site is worse than pre-rolls. Would apremium service be against the logic of what YouTube is all about? I wouldn’t mind viewing a low-quality version and then havign the option to buy it (one only) for a small fee. I wouldn’t want to subsribe to a premium service.
I agree, advertising on the site is absolutely worse than pre-rolls. There are a lot of really cool things they could do; I’d love to be able to create a mix-tape of my favorite clips and have them sent to me on DVD for instance. zefrank-style interactive end-frames might work for those who are offended by the idea of post-rolls.
Speaking of zefrank, “the show” really works well on mobile devices. I am digging it.
Great idea. I’d love that too. Do you know how much business they’d get?! But, the problem is the back-end. Who is going to do the postage etc? Big delivery companies need to start offering their service to internet sites.
Oh wow. Love zefrank! Very funny.