| Entertainment
Review of YouTube, Internet Television and Video
Distribution Site
By Solomon Rothman
Youtube is the most popular internet television
or video distribution site on the Internet and currently ranks number 16
on Alexa for most visited websites. YouTube offers anyone with an internet
connection the ability to upload video clips and share them with friends,
family, and the world, all for free. Users are invited to leave comments,
pick favorites, send message to each other and watch videos sorted into subjects
or channels. Videos are served with Adobe Flash are viewable on almost any
modern computer.
For Content Producers
Pros
Fast video approval time, they basically approve
anything, even copyrighted material (copyrighted material may eventually
get pulled or deleted if they catch you). YouTube receives lots of visitors
so your videos have the potential to get viewed a TON of times, especially
if your video makes it on one of the top viewed, or most discussed video
lists for the week, month, or for all time. Each content producer gets their
own profile page and unique channel where users can subscribe to your content
and be alerted whenever you upload a new video.
Cons
Limited file size of 100 Megs and a limited video
length of 10 minutes. For longer lengths you have to apply for a director's
account and wait for approval. You video is served in Adobe Flash, so the
resolution is downgraded. Tons of garbage content so your video may get "lost"
in a sea of people lip singing and boot shake videos. Content creators receive
no compensation and users can't download your video to their computer. |
| For Content Consumers
Pros
There are lots of videos to watch. Being the
16th most popular site on the internet, you get the largest total amount
of videos and video creators. This site is even more popular then Google
video. Users can embed videos in their regular blogs, Myspace, or on their
personal websites. You can subscribe to your favorite content producers and
receive notifications whenever they post anything new. They have the most
substantial set of video lists I've seen on any video distribution site.
You can view videos sorted by most recent, most viewed, top rated, most
discussed, top favorites, most linked, recently featured, worst rated, by
category, by groups and by channel (every user has their own channel). Each
one of those lists can further be divided by date range, giving you lots
of different ways to sort through the vast amount of clips there.
Cons
You can't download the movie clips to your personal
computer. You can "save" them to your favorite and create play lists etc,
but there is no easy way to say burn them on a DVD and watch the videos on
your regular TV. Almost all of the videos are short amateur clips, meaning
that most of the content is relatively low quality. So you'll have to sort
through tons and tons of junk to find anything good, not to mention lots
of it is just copies of things broadcasted on regular television, so you'll
spend a bunch of time watching tiny net videos which are "old" traditional
broadcasting content.
Community
Lots of comments and discussion, but the site
doesn't feature any long articles or any substantial reviews, so most comments
consist of one sentence or two sentences. Their site offers, favorites, Groups,
message, inbox, playlists, and user profiles, the standard set of customized
community features that are on almost all social networking sites, via it
be myspace or any one of it's many clones.
Comparison with other online video distribution
sites: Youtube has the most content, but if you want to save a copy to your
personal computer try Google Video or Veoh. Veoh actually lets you download
the video in its original resolution (very nice) and doesn't contain any
length or size limits. As of now, it still consists mostly of the same type
of videos as all of the other similar sites though.
Overall Value
Youtube is a fun site and everyone should visit
it at least once. Don't expect it to replace your normal viewing patterns
anytime soon and be prepared for juvenile comments, and lots of bad karaoke
videos, but there are some interesting clips there and viewing amateur content
is surprising addicting. Don't think YouTube is the end all of Internet tevision
though, I would highly recommend you also check out their major competitors
(Google Video, Veoh, Yahoo Video, and Addicting Clips just to name a few)
All the community features could potentially
be very cool and useful, but currently I don't think most users will want
to take advantage of them, considering the quality of most of the video content.
How many people's vblogs of them singing and dancing do you actually want
to subscribe to? This will almost certainly change as the internet television
revolution continues.
If you are promoting your own videos make sure
to setup an account, but don't put all your eggs in this basket either, make
sure you post your video other places too. YouTube is the most popular, but
there are lot of major players in the Internet Television and Video Distribution
Market.
Future of YouTube
The future of YouTube seems to be uncertain,
they are currently being sued and have yet to come up with a successful business
model, they are for now going to try and sell advertising. Most of the content
they carry consists of stuff ripped off from conventional television or amateur
user created videos like people's v blogs, or webcam singing and dancing.
The copyright violations have led to a few lawsuits, including one that is
currently pending right now. The website repeatedly gets asked to remove
content and without viable a revenue model is hard to manage. With bandwidth
needs rising rapidly, YouTube's future is uncertain in its current state.
With so much demand and traffic YouTube is definitely not going to go away,
but may work substantially different in the very near future.
~~
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~~
Solomon Rothman is a web designer, filmmaker,
and writer. See blog for
latest news and watch
the free movie Boy Who Never Slept written & directed by Solomon |
