YouTube
| File:Logo sm.gif | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet services |
| Founded | February 2005 |
| Founder | Chad Hurley Jawed Karim Steve Chen  |
| Headquarters | San Mateo, California |
Key people | Chad Hurley, Founder & CEO Steve Chen, Founder & CTO Jawed Karim, Founder & Advisor |
Number of employees | 25 (2006) |
| Website | www.youtube.com |
Youtube.com has not been hacked, a quick peek at the source code reveals the message: "You have reached YouTube, the premier digital video repository on the Internet. We are currently working on the site. We'll be back soon...
YouTube is a website that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. It was founded in February 2005 by three former and early employees of PayPal.
YouTube uses Macromedia Flash to serve its content, which includes movie and TV show clips, music videos, and homemade videos. Video feeds of YouTube videos can also be easily embedded on blogs and other websites. YouTube prohibits the posting of copyrighted video, but such material is in abundance.
History
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley (CEO), Steve Chen (CTO), and Jawed Karim (advisor) who were all early employees of PayPal.[1] Prior to PayPal, Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Chen and Karim studied computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[2] The domain name YouTube.com was activated on February 15, 2005,[3] with the website launching shortly thereafter. In November 2005, venture capital firm Sequoia invested $3.5 million in YouTube.[4] Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha, former CFO of PayPal, joined the board of directors at YouTube. By December, YouTube had caught up with iFilm, another popular video website which had been bought by Viacom for $49 million. In April 2006, Sequoia Capital invested a further $8 million in YouTube.
The site's popularity skyrocketed in December 2005 when it hosted the popular Lazy Sunday clip from a Saturday Night Live broadcast. In February 2006, NBC Universal asked YouTube to remove several copyrighted NBC video clips, including Lazy Sunday and 2006 Olympics clips, from their site.[4][5] However, Sky One allowed the release of the Real Life Simpsons Intro, which garnered considerable popular attention. In April 2006, YouTube set a 10-minute limit on videos, except those uploaded through its Director Program. In March, all Family Guy videos were taken down from the site after complaints by the show's owners.[6]
Usage and operations
In April 2006, 35,000 new videos were uploaded to YouTube daily. The total viewership has been estimated to be in the millions, with 30 million clips watched daily. YouTube has 25 employees, with four interns from Stanford University hired as censors to evaluate videos which viewers have marked as "objectionable." The YouTube office is in San Mateo, California.[4]
Criticism
Video quality
Like Google Video and other video sites, there are complaints about the quality of playback. Sometimes videos' audio and picture feeds do not match up; other times they end prematurely.
Illegal files
YouTube does not allow content to be uploaded by anyone other than the copyright holder, and frequently removes illegally uploaded videos. Generally YouTube only discovers these videos when they are reported by the YouTube community, or when the copyright holder reports them. The primary way in which YouTube identifies the content of a video, as they themselves are unwilling or unable to screen every clip uploaded, is through the search terms that uploaders associate with clips. In this way, likely illegal clips can be located.
Some users have taken to creating code words as search terms to be entered when uploading specific type of files. For instance the Internet Wrestling Community uses the term "cheese souffle" as a search term to indicate an upload of a WWE video. By doing this they hope to circumvent YouTube locating illegal files and removing them. While YouTube has cut down on the WWE-trademarked clips, more continue to be uploaded each day. Most of the clips show the trailer for the upcoming Pay-Per View WWE Vengeance, which headlines the reunion of the famous WWE stable D-Generation X.
The file format used by YouTube is Flash Video, or *.flv, and can be viewed on its own by using one of many FLV viewing programs available. The FLV video file can be downloaded in a number of ways. Some pull the .DAT file from their TEMP folder and convert it to a different format of video using video converting programs. Others use client-based solutions like bookmarklets[7] and Greasemonkey scripts[8] to download the video files or resort to server-based services such as Javimoya or Keepvid. Once the file is downloaded, it can easily be converted into an MPEG or AVI using a conversion program, such as Riva FLV encoder.[9]
Revenue model
Some industry commentators have speculated that YouTube's running costs—specifically the bandwidth required—may be as high as $1 Million per month[10] thereby fuelling criticisms that the company does not have a viable business model. Advertisements were launched on the site only in March of 2006, indicating that the company did not have a source of revenue since its founding in February of 2005—indeed indications suggest that the company's primary source of income at this stage is injections from venture capitalists.
In April 2006, YouTube started running Google Adsense.
Inaccurate Listings
When users upload videos, they are responsible for providing a textual description of the video along with a list of keywords ("tags" on YouTube). While most videos have correct tags that are relevant to the content of the video itself, quite a few videos are intentially mislabeled by their posters in an attempt to artificially gain popularity. For example, a video of a sporting event could be intentially mislabeled with the tag "Family Guy" in an effort to attract viewings for those searching for "Family Guy" videos which has nothing to do with sporting events.
Violence
On their 6:30pm bulletin on the 1st June 2006, ITV News reported that YouTube and sites like it were encouraging violence and bullying amongst teenagers, who were filming fights on their mobile phones (see happy slapping), and then uploading them to YouTube. While YouTube provides a facility for reporting excessively violent videos, the news report stated that communication with the website was difficult[11].
Spin-off sites
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. |
The embeddable nature of YouTube has bred several "best of" sites. These sites range from small, non-commercial, independently programed endeavours, to larger, ambitious, hierarchically displayed, viewer rated sites. Although some industry watchers feel that the community features of YouTube may mitigate this trend, others believe we may be seeing the stirrings of next generation stations or networks and are throwing around terms like "micro-network," "boutique station," "curated site," and "clip programming."
See also
Notes and references
- ^ Graham, Jefferson (November 21, 2005). "Video websites pop up, invite postings" USAToday
- ^ University of Illinois Department of Computer Science (2006). "YouTube: Sharing Digital Camera Videos"
- ^ youtube.com overview by Alexa
- ^ a b c Woolley, Scott (March 13, 2006). "Raw and Random," p. 27. Forbes.
- ^ NBC Pressures Websites on Video Clips by Andrew Wallenstein, 22 February 2006, Backstage.com
- ^ Your 15 Minutes of Fame..ummm...Make that 10 Minutes or Less, YouTube blog, March 26, 2006
- ^ 1024k.de (Video Bookmarklet for YouTube)
- ^ userscripts.org (Greasemonkey Script for YouTube)
- ^ http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/t259578.html
- ^ Forbes article by Dan Frommer discussing costs
- ^ ITV News, 6:30pm bulletin on ITV1, 1st June 2006