sorted by: recent | see :
popular
Content Tagged with YouTube + &
Google Acquires Omnisio To Spice Up YouTube
Google has acquired Atherton, CA based startup Omnisio, the companies are announcing this afternoon. Omnisio, which is a Y Combinator company, first demo’d to us in early March 2008, and it launched later that month. The price is not being disclosed, but we hear the deal is all cash and is in the $15 million range.
The company was founded by three Australians (Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar and Simon Ratner). The service lets users annotate videos, mash various clips up, and synchronize Slideshare presentations to videos (great for conference presentations). Omnisio users can extract sections of clips they find on the web (currently only those on YouTube, Google Video, or Blip.tv). They can then take those clips and stitch them together to form new, embeddable compilations.
This is yet another liquidity event for Y Combinator, which invests small amounts of capital in very early stage companies, usually at the idea stage. Reddit was acquired in late 2006, TextPayMe was bought by Amazon in 2007, and Auctomatic and Anywhere.FM were snapped up earlier this year.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Does Google Know How To Count? Some YouTube Views Don’t Seem To Register
A large portion of YouTube videos are watched on other sites in embeddable players (like the one below of Erepublik CEO Alexis Bonte giving us an Elevator Pitch). But if someone watches a YouTube video on a site other than YouTube, does it count towards the total views of that video? Apparently not, or at least not always.
One TechCrunch reader had a video of his picked up by a popular site, where it generated 15,000 views, but the YouTube view counter for that video only went up by about 1,000 views. Perplexed, he sent YouTube an email, and received the following response (bold added for emphasis):
“Hi there,
Thanks for your email. I would like you to know, if a user views the video
on the external website itself, it is not added to the view count of the
video on YouTube. However, if a user is directed to the YouTube site on
clicking the embedded video on the external website, it would register as
an additional count to the video views.Additionally, changes to video and account information on our site such as
video view count can take a few hours to update and synchronize. We’re
constantly working to make that happen a lot faster and appreciate your
patience.Regards,
Shweta
The YouTube Team”
This is just from a support rep who may be mistaken about YouTube’s policy on counting views (we have an email in to YouTube asking for clarification), but her response does suggest that at least some views from other sites do not count. One reason for this might be that some external sites put YouTube videos on autoplay whenever the page they are on loads. That can game the whole YouTube popularity system, so YouTube does not count autoplays, as NewTeevee recently found out. And indeed, our reader’s video was on a site that autoplayed his video. (For more on how the various video sites count views, see this TubeMogul report).
Mystery solved, right? Well, not exactly. We use YouTube for all the videos on Elevator Pitches, and we don’t set those to autoplay. Viewers have to click on them to watch.
Yesterday, we hit play repeatedly on a bunch of videos on Elevator Pitches, and then went over to their YouTube to see if any of the views registered. Nada. Then we started watching the videos on YouTube itself. Still nada. Maybe it’s the time delay, though. We really can’t tell. Because the views do change a few hours later, there is just no way of knowing if it was from us or someone else.
So as a final test, I’ve embedded an Elevator Pitch below from the CEO of Erepublik, a massive online social strategy game. At the time of this post the video has been viewed only 490 times. We’ll see if we can move that number up at all from here.
Update: We’ve received word from a YouTube spokesperson who told us:
Viewcounts are important to the community and are a reflection of the interests and intents of video viewers. Autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible “views” numbers displayed on the YouTube site because autoplaybacks are not viewer initiated. The majority of videos are not affected by this.
Update 2: The view count for the video below is up to 1,786 views by Saturday morning. Most of those are presumably from this post, and took a while to register. So maybe Google does know how to count but it can only count very slowly.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The Issue Of Trust Is With Google, Not Viacom
Earlier this month Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, ordered Google to hand over YouTube user log data to Viacom to help Viacom determine damages in their ongoing billion dollar litigation with Google.
We and others cried out in protest, since the data being delivered included username, IP address and identifiers of all videos viewed on YouTube. And the entity it was being delivered to has a penchant for litigating over copyright infringement (some of their many lawsuits are mentioned in the original post). The fear is that if data is turned over to Viacom, any YouTube user who has watched a copyrighted video would be subject to a lawsuit.
Viacom’s first line of defense when the negative press hit was obfuscation. They said “Viacom has not asked for and will not be obtaining any personally identifiable information of any YouTube user. The personally identifiable information that YouTube collects from its users will be stripped from the data before it is transferred to Viacom.”
Sounds good, right? The LA Times mentioned it in their article on the issue and quoted Viacom. A number of other publications then followed, saying that Viacom wasn’t going to collect all the data they were entitled to under the order.
But not really. Everyone involved in the lawsuit (except the users, who weren’t asked) agreed that a YouTube login ID isn’t personally identifiable. The original Stanton order summarized: “Defendants do not refute that the “login ID is an anonymous pseudonym that users create for themselves when they sign up with YouTube” which without more “cannot identify specific individuals”.”
So Viacom didn’t abandon any of their data rights, but they sure went out of their way to suggest they did. And anyone who watched the 2006 AOL search debacle will know that users were absolutely identified based on nothing more than a list of the search terms they entered. Does anyone really believe that a motivated plaintiff couldn’t identify individuals based on a user selected ID (mine is “TechCrunch”), IP address and a list of all watched videos?
Now Viacom is talking again, and saying that they won’t use the information to go after individuals.
Here’s the problem - I don’t know if Viacom will live up to their promise, or not. The fact that Google is unwilling to hand over employee data tells me they’re not so sure, either. And frankly I shouldn’t have to care or have to worry about Viacom’s trustworthiness. As a user I interacted only with Google, and there are implicit and explicit promised by Google to protect my data. If Google hands my data over to Viacom, it doesn’t really matter to me if Viacom uses it or not. All I will remember is that Google gathered and stored information without my consent, and then handed it over at the first sign of trouble.
Google’s self imposed code of conduct is “Don’t be evil.” It doesn’t say “don’t be evil unless there’s important litigation at stake.” Google’s reputation is on the line, and how they respond will show their true character. They’ve shown they’ll go to bat for employees, now it’s time for them to show they’ll go to bat for their users.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Department of Civil Disobedience: Google Should Deliver Its YouTube Data to Viacom in Paper Form
The recent court order directing Google to hand over data to Viacom about every YouTube video ever watched strikes many people as an absurd overreach of the law into the privacy of anyone who has ever used YouTube (i.e., almost everyone on the Internet). Google should definitely keep fighting the ruling if it can.
But if it can’t, perhaps it should comply with it in a creative way. The data in question are data logs containing the records of every video watched on YouTube, by whom, and at what times. The court is also ordering that Google hand over all videos that have ever been taken down for any reason. The logs alone take up 12 terabytes. Google should print them out and deliver them on paper.
It would literally fill up the Library of Congress. That is roughly the equivalent of all the printed books in the Library of Congress (by one estimate, others put it at 20 terabytes—either way, it’s a lot of paper). The court order never states what form, the data must be delivered in.
(Photo via, appropriately enough, the Library of Congress And hat tip to reader Paul Christiansen for the original suggestion).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Judge Protects YouTube’s Source Code, Throws Users To The Wolves
The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle.
Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued the opinion and order, which is here (PDF).
That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”
Meanwhile, the judge denied Viacom’s request that Google turn over YouTube’s source code as it could “cause catastrophic competitive harm to Google by sharing them with others who might create their own programs without making the same investment.”
I can understand why Judge Stanton, who graduated from law school in 1955, may be completely and utterly clueless when it comes to online video services. But perhaps one of his bright young clerks or interns could have told him that (1) handing over user names and a list of videos they’ve watched to a highly litigious copyright holder is extremely likely to result in lawsuits against those users that have watched copyrighted content on YouTube, and (2) YouTube’s source code is about as valuable as the hard drive it would be delivered on, since the core Flash technology is owned by Adobe and there are countless YouTube clones out there, most of which offer higher quality video.
YouTube’s core value is in it’s network effect - the library of content along with its massive user base.
The privacy fallout of this ruling is spectacular. The EFF has already chimed in, noting that the order is highly likely to be in violation of federal law.
Judge Stanton doesn’t seem to care much about that law, for now. And he clearly doesn’t understand that far more data is being transferred than is necessary to comply with Viacom’s core stated concern, which is to understand the popularity of copyright infringing v. non-infringing material. Viacom has asked for far more data than that, and there’s only one use for that data: to sue individual users (or shake them down via the threat of lawsuit, which has been perfected by the RIAA) who have watched a few music videos or television shows on YouTube.
I say this with the utmost respect, but Judge Stanton is a moron. And Google simply cannot hand this data over without facing a class action lawsuit of staggering proportions.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Is YouTube Building Market Dominance At The Expense of Building A Business?
If you look at YouTube’s numbers, one thing is clear: It completely dominates online video. YouTube accounts for 37 percent of all videos watched on the Internet and attracts about half of the audience, according to comScore. (And if you add in Google Video, that brings the total to 38 percent of videos watched). The No. 2 player, Fox Interactive Media (i.e., MySpace), accounts for only 4.2 percent of videos watched. And as the Forbes chart above shows, YouTube is still growing at a faster pace in terms of traffic than Google overall.
Yet when it comes to turning that market dominance into dollars, YouTube is holding back. Forbes estimates that YouTube will make $200 million in revenues this year, and $350 million next year. Although it never explains how it gets to those numbers, and they are higher than some Wall Street estimates, they are not unreasonable. (The home page alone is $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to buy $50,000 in Google ads elsewhere—that’s about $80 million a year right there. Plus each branded YouTube channel goes for $200,000. If someone from Forbes can lay out the math in comments, though, that would be helpful). Google does not break out YouTube’s revenues because, even at $200 million, it would be less than one percent of the company’s total.
A $200 million business going to $350 million is nothing to sneeze at. But if you believe eMarketer’s estimate that online video advertising will reach $1.35 billion this year, that would mean that YouTube’s share of video advertising dollars will only be 15 percent (less than half of its share of videos watched).
This gap could mean one of two things. Either YouTube is unable to make money from a large portion of its user-generated video inventory (advertisers want to stick to the home page and the safety of their own channels). Or YouTube just hasn’t turned on the money-gushing hose yet. It has built an increasingly unassailable market dominance under the shelter of Google’s wing without the need to maximize revenues. That attitude, though, is obviously changing, with YouTube now pushing AdSense for video and spreading that wealth with more content partners.
Which one is it?
YouTube’s Video-Ad Market Share Lags Its Video-Watching Market Share Because . .
( surveys)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
It’s Time To Rethink Copyright Law
There was more posturing today in the big YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown that began around the time that Google acquired YouTube and started talking to big copyright holders about paying them to get their content legally onto the popular video site. It spun out of control from there until it became a billion dollar lawsuit.
Normally I’m on the side of whoever’s against the copyright holders and their agenda of ever-expanding rights on these types of issues. They will stop at nothing to preserve their expired business models.
In this case, though, I’m just as afraid of YouTube, which still aims to get rights to show all, or virtually all, professionally produced television and film content. Their goal is simple - copy the adsense model and get the same stranglehold on advertising around video that they have around search.
That may be more difficult for Google than sewing up search was, since there are so many players determined to stop them before they get a proper foothold. The music guys got hooked on the iTunes fees and still haven’t been able to get off the juice. Their tv and film cousins are fully aware of what happens if a single middleman gets too much power.
What’s Best For The Internet?
The front lines of the copyright war are the ISP and service provider skirmishes. The MPAA and RIAA continue to fight consumers directly, of course, but their only real chance of locking down the Internet and file trading/steaming is to go after the companies that allow it to happen. In 1998 the DMCA made copyright infringement even more illegal than it already was, but also gave service providers a safe harbor to protect them against infringement by their users.
Did/does YouTube properly comply with the DMCA? That’s pretty much irrelevant at this point. What matters is the law going forward. And since this case is likely to go to trial, there’s a good chance that new law will be created. Exactly what is decided, and how Congress reacts, will have a big impact on the Internet going forward.
My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior. And watching a clip of The Office, whether it’s legally on Hulu or illegally on YouTube is natural behavior. The only question is whether or not people are getting sued, or going to jail, for doing it.
It’s time to rethink copyright laws, and it’s time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won’t be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It’ll be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
YouTomb: Where Videos Go to Die
Ever wonder exactly how many videos are taken down from YouTube because of copyright violations or other reasons? So did the folks at the MIT Free Culture student group. They created YouTomb to document all YouTube videos that have been taken down. It is currently tracking 177,000 videos, and counts 4,394 that have been taken down for alleged copyright violations.
For each video taken down, YouTomb records the title, description, who uploaded it, when it was taken down, and some screen shots. You cannot watch the videos on the site. But it does document what happened to them, in case any were taken down wrongfully, in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which requires that Youtube chooses to comply with by removing any videos for which it receives a take down notice). The biggest users of the take down notice ion Youtube include TV TOKYO, Viacom, Warner Bros, and World Wrestling Entertainment.
(via Google Operating System).
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Dan Ackerman Greenberg Theory Turned Into YouTube Comedy, Funded By Warner Bros
New series Viralcom takes Dan Ackerman Greenberg’s theory of viral video one step further into a fully fledged viral video machine.
The series comes from Warner Brother’s Studio 2.0 and takes a look behind the scenes at the web’s hottest “User Generated Content” studio for an exclusive look at the “real” viral video industry: a digital Hollywood where the A-listers are celebs (Chris Crocker and the Chocolate Rain guy make an appearance), and where favorite YouTube classics are professionally produced.
Promo above and the first two episodes below the fold for those interested.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
YouTube Expands Partner Program, $1 Million Distributed So Far
Youtube has announced that their Partner Program is expanding to include Japan, Austrailia, and Ireland. It was previously only available to users in Canada, the UK, and the United States. The program is designed to reward Youtube’s most prolific and popular video providers with portions of the ad revenues gained from their videos.
Since December, when it was first made available to all users, the program has paid out more than $1 million to these partners. YouTube first announced a pilot of the program last May, which was offered only to handpicked members of the YouTube community. Now, all users from the aforementioned countries are welcome to apply, but they must still be approved by Youtube based on their popularity and history following the site’s TOS.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
YouTube Updates Layout, Now With Tabs And Statistics
YouTube has quietly launch a new layout on video pages with a new tab focused layout and video statistics (pic above).
The first change in the consolidation of Share, Favorites, Playlists and Flag into a dedicated tab driven box. The share tab expands out to give a more extensive range of sharing options which includes social bookmarking and voting sites (notably including Mixx), the ability to post a video to a blog, and send to the friend via email.
Commentary (comments and video responses) is now offered in a tab next to “Statistics and Info.” Statistics provided are video honors (YouTube awards) and video referrals. It would appear that users can hide site referral statistics but they are turned on by default, at least for existing videos hosted on YouTube.
(thanks to Rahul Kumar for the tip)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Flickr Video Launches - A Unique Experience
Flickr users can now add video clips alongside their photos, a much requested and much anticipated feature that has been promised for over a year.
The puppet version of Shel Israel graciously kicked things off for us by announcing the new feature in the Flickr Video below.
The product is not a YouTube clone by any means. The Flickr team, led by Director of Product Management Kakul Srivastava, spent considerable time debating the feature set and user experience internally before launch.
The goal is not to have people upload long videos or clips of copyrighted material. To reinforce that, videos can be only 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size (however these limitations may be changed later, Srivastava says).
In a phone prebriefing, I was very critical of the length limitation. But the team then brought me in for a demo and I was sold. The short clips are a perfect compliment to event photos, in my opinion.
Videos are treated the same way as photos and are placed alongside those photos in albums and the main stream. Videos can also be tagged (and geotagged) in the same way as photos.
The video player itself is extremely clean, so videos look like photos on pages that include them. Videos can also be embedded, of course, as we’ve done above.
Another great feature is the ability to play the videos from the thumbnail screens as well as the permanent page for the video.
Flickr video also differentiates itself from YouTube by only allowing pro users upload videos (it costs $25/yr to be a pro user), although both free and pro users can view videos. As with photos, videos can be made public or private. They can also be shared/embedded individually or as part of sets. But like YouTube, Flickr is providing an API for programmers to create services that access videos hosted on Flickr.
Other standard Flickr features are also available for video, such as search by tags and descriptions, uploads directly from camera phones, and various licensing options.
With this launch, video sharing sites that have focused on privately shared videos should be worried. These include Motionbox, Viddyou, and Vimeo, among others.
Update: The Flickr blog blatantly rips off our puppet schtick:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
YouTube Rape Victim Arrested
The victim of an alleged rape that made worldwide headlines after footage was posted to YouTube, has been arrested on suspicion of underage sex and perverting the course of justice after it was discovered that the rape was fake.
According to The Register, the 24-year-old mother was arrested on March 28 and released on bail. The alleged rapists, aged 14 and 16, are now unlikely to face charges.
The video led to calls for YouTube to manually check all videos being uploaded to the site, with British MPs targeting YouTube over the incident. Adam Price MP said following the initial outrage that the video “surely shows [YouTube’s] system is completely inadequate.” The fake rape video had 600 views before being pulled by Google.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Magnify Gives Birth to VidyUp: First Release Based on YouTube’s New APIs
A few weeks ago YouTube released a more powerful set of APIs that allow web developers to create services that upload, watch, search, and comment on videos remotely.
Magnify, the video channel service recently focused on social networking, has been hustling to be the first to implement these APIs. What they’ve come up with is a widget called VidyUp (like gitty up, get it?).
Site owners can place the VidyUp widget on their pages to solicit videos from visitors. For example, we could use it here on TechCrunch if we wanted to hold a video contest. Instead of telling everyone to upload their videos directly to YouTube then send us the links via email, we could just embed a VidyUp widget and all videos uploaded through it would be handled in the appropriate manner (emailed to us, added to a particular page, etc).
All in all, it’s actually a decent little widget, although I’m sure just being the first to build something with the APIs was Magnify’s primary goal. The company says it won’t try to monetize the widget, but if site owners get a lot of use out of it, they will be able to turn their visitors’ uploaded videos into a full-fledged Magnify channel.
Update: we had the widget included in the post but removed it because it wasn’t playing nice with Wordpress.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
YouTube RickRolls Users
If you aren’t familiar with RickRolling - it’s when someone puts a link on website to something, but it actually takes you to a music video of Rick Astley’s “hit” song Never Gonna Give You Up.
YouTube is RickRolling its own users on April 1. All of the featured videos for YouTube UK and YouTube Australia actually link to the Rick Astley video. We’ll see if YouTube.com does the same at midnight EST tonight, too.
This is ok, but not nearly as funny as it would be if the YouTube team broke into the Google search servers and simply redirected Google.com to the video. Now that would be funny.
More coverage of this here.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
TechCrunch DeadPooled My Company And All I Got Was This Lousy iPod Shuffle
Who says nothing good comes from getting deadpooled?
Blake Machado was the winner of a YouTube announcement contest we held a couple weeks back. He was the first to guess correctly that YouTube would come out with some new APIs to spread its influence over the web. The prize was an iPod shuffle.
Turns out YouTube’s announcement was particularly poignant for Blake given his connection to the previous deadpooled Stage6. As he revealed to us after winning:
Ironically guessing/winning this is bitter-sweet. I was the PM of
Stage6 and this is an area where we had planned to beat YouTube to the
punch and gain some, hopefully, extremely positive results. We would
have as it was scheduled for Feb. release — oh well.
So how’d we comfort him in his time of need? Etched a reminder of that deadpooling into his “consolation” prize, of course. You’re welcome, Blake.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
YouTube Now Offering Video Statistics
Google has announced that YouTube users will now have access to in depth statistics for their videos.
Stats include how often videos are viewed in different geographic regions and how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. The lifecycle of videos is tracked, including how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.
To quote Tracy Chan from YouTube:
“Insight gives the creators an inside look into the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and helps them to increase views and become more popular. Partners can evaluate metrics to better serve and understand their audiences, as well as increase ad revenue. And advertisers can study their metrics and successes to tailor their marketing — both on and off the site — and reach the right viewers. As a result, Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups.”
To access the statistics, users click on the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.
More analysis to follow; at the time of writing all I get from YouTube when clicking on my account button is the twin messages of “This functionality is not available right now. Please try again later,” and “We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we’ll be back 100% in a bit.”
Update: it’s now up. The main chart feature is nearly identical to Google Finance. The break down via country and state is handy. This will suit most YouTube users and its a definite step forward.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The Censors Take Down YouTube and Google News in China. How Will Google Respond?
Amid the recent protests and violent crackdown in Tibet, the Chinese government is closing off all media access to the region and censoring reports about Tibet inside China. That includes not just CNN, but YouTube and Google News. Both Google sites have been blocked from the Internet in China. News reports about the protests and images that appear to come from inside Tibet are available on YouTube (see the slide show embedded below—warning it shows graphic images of bodies in the streets—and a CNN report). To prevent its citizens from seeing these videos or reading about them, the Chinese government has taken down all of YouTube and Google News inside China.
This isn’t the first time YouTube has been censored. Last month, Pakistan ended up taking down YouTube worldwide for a couple hours because of some supposedly “blasphemous” videos on the site. And in September, Myanmar blocked the entire Internet during a period of political unrest.
The question is: What will Google do to restore access to YouTube and Google News inside China? China is a big market that Google needs to be a player in. Will it voluntarily strip out all videos or news items about Tibet? Or will the Chinese government just figure out how to strip them out itself? There is a precedent here: in China you cannot find a lot of information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on the Web, including the famous image of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks. Most young Chinese have never seen that image.
I am speculating here—there is no indication that Google has been asked to remove information about Tibet or that it would do so. But if it were to do so, then it would become complicit in China’s censorship. That might have to be the price it has to pay to give the Chinese access to all the other information on YouTube and Google News. The alternative might be a permanent ban.
Which option is the lesser evil for a company that has pledged itself to do none whatsoever?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Video Coming To Flickr Soon. Really.
In mid 2005 I profiled YouTube for the first time. As Steve Rubel noted, the best way to describe it was “like Flickr, but for videos.” At the time few people saw the massive upside for YouTube, which was built completely on freely available Flash technology from Adobe. Flickr seemed like the far more interesting product.
Just a few months earlier Flickr had been acquired by Yahoo. And given how slow things were moving in 2005, few people thought YouTube would have the kind of success that Flickr had seen. But just a year later YouTube was suddenly worth $1.65 billion, and users were frustrated that they could upload their vacation photos to Flickr, but not the videos.
Yahoo has long promised to bring video to Flickr. In May 2007 co-founder Stewart Butterfield told us that users would be able to upload videos “soon.” This was reconfirmed in August 2007. But now, nearly three years after Yahoo bought them, and on their fourth birthday as a company, users are not able to upload videos to their Flickr accounts.
But rumors are flying that Yahoo intends to integrate video into Flickr very soon, perhaps in the next three weeks. Part of the delay may have been a long internal debate about how to make Flickr Video special and distinct from what YouTube already offers. They apparently have come to some product decisions, and will be making an announcement soon.
Yahoo PR and other employees are still dead quiet on the subject (I asked every one of them at the party tonight), but the buzz is growing and the leaks haven’t been totally contained. Get ready for Flickr Video. It’s coming. Really.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Anticlimax: YouTube Announces More Open API’s
Erick got all excited, but in the end it was a bit of an anticlimax. YouTube’s big announcement today is more open API’s that will allow developers to upload videos and video responses from any where.
From the YouTube Blog:
We try really hard to make YouTube as open as possible…Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.
For users, the exciting news is that they will be able to actively participate in the YouTube community from just about anywhere, including the online destinations and web communities they already love and visit regularly. For partners and developers, YouTube has grown into much more than a website. It has become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device. We now provide a complete set of (CRUD) capabilities for uploading, managing, searching, and playing back user videos and metadata from the YouTube “cloud,” managed by us. We do all of the hard work of transcoding and hosting and streaming and thumbnailing your videos, and we provide open access to our sizable global audience, enabling you to generate traffic for your site, visibility for your brand, or support for your cause….
The number of possible new applications is endless. Electronic Arts has enabled gamers to capture videos of fantastical user-generated creatures from their upcoming game, Spore, and publish these directly into YouTube. The University of California, Berkeley is bringing free educational content to the world, enhancing their open source lecture capture and delivery system to publish videos automatically into YouTube. Animoto enables its users to create personalized, professional-quality music videos from their own photos and upload them directly to YouTube. Tivo is providing its users a rich and highly participative YouTube viewing experience on the television.
If anyone won the iPod, Erick will let you know in the morning.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
What Does YouTube Have Up Its Sleeve? Guess Right, And Win An iPod Shuffle.
YouTube is making a big announcement tomorrow morning. Could it be live-streaming? (We’re told not). High-definition video? A partnership with Hulu? (That would be so hot). A new Website design? Dialing up the advertising? Another way to get on mobile phones or big-screen TVs? Or as was leaked in February, better video-editing tools, personal video recommendations, better advertiser analytics, or new “tentpole” content (The YouTube Games, Living Legends, The YouTube Global Gathering)?
We’re not sure. If it is none of the above, and you are the first person to guess correctly in comments, we will send you 2 GB iPod Shuffle (you must include your real e-mail address in the comment form for us to be able to reach you). If it is one of the above options, then we’ll give the iPod Shuffle away randomly (or to the best overall comment as determined by me).
Given the public launch of Hulu tomorrow, that would be my guess. (And, no, I am not eligible for the iPod prize). A partnership between the two video sites would make sense. YouTube is already sharing advertising dollars with other media companies and producers of popular videos. Why would Hulu be any different? Speculate away.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Confirmed: Live Video On YouTube This Year
First rumored in January, YouTube is definitely doing live video, and it’s happening this year.
Sarah Meyers got the scoop (video above), transcript as follows care of NewTeeVee:
Meyers: “When are you guys gonna do live video on YouTube?”
Chen: “2008. We’ll do it this year.
“Live video is just something that we’ve always wanted to do, we’ve never had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.”
Now for the guessing game: which live video startup will fold first once YouTube dominates the market? YouTube will be last to market, but the same momentum that has seen YouTube dominate video will now be applied to live video. Like video, content creators want to be on the service that gives them the most exposure, no matter how good the alternatives area (after all, YouTube doesn’t offer the best quality video). YouTube already has the user base; live video streamers will flock to YouTube like a moth to a flame.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Amazon Offering User Generated Video Hosting and Monetization
Amazon has quietly entered the video hosting and monetization game with Your Video Widget.
Your Video Widget allows any registered Amazon Affiliate to upload a video and then select products that can be displayed as the video progresses (demo above). Video content can be anything from a product review through to a holiday video, but there are some restrictions; users can not include a URL in the video, or feature availability, price, or alternative ordering/shipping information for any product in the video itself, on top of the usual porn and piracy restrictions. Users can pick any products they would like to be displayed, with Amazon suggesting only that they work better if they have some context to the video, and that no two products can appear within 10 seconds of each other.
Like all Amazon Affiliate related advertising, the ads served are paid as a percentage of generated sales, and are not offered on a CPC or CPM basis.
Maximum file size is 100mb, length 10 minutes, and accepted formats are avi, flv, mov, mpg, wmv.
Amazon Video Widgets do not come with a central portal where you are able to view videos YouTube style, so this product wont compete in that space. For those looking at new ways of monetizing their videos, be it either because they are unable to sign up to YouTube’s program, or are not getting good results from YouTube, Amazon Video Widgets provide another path to video monetization.
(via Dave Zatz)
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0