14 DAY TRIAL // When surfing the Internet, I often come across various video clips embedded in web pages. You could say that this is something ordinary, not at all unusual, and has been going on for quite some time, and you'd be perfectly right.
However, as of late, most such clips are placed there by using a system developed by YouTube, a company whose popularity literally skyrocketed within the past year. So, let's see who's behind all this and why it is such a huge hit.
YouTube is a website that offers web services for uploading, viewing and sharing video files. The technology used for viewing the clips is a very popular one, namely Macromedia Flash, while the format used is the *.flv, which can be very easily viewed with the help of one of the numerous compatible software players currently available. Moreover, as I've mentioned before, the video clips using this format can be very easily embedded in other websites, thus increasing YouTube's own customer base. However, practically, YouTube is a service which lets the users upload just about any type of video material, representing some sort of crossbreed between the file sharing networks, blogs and social networking websites. Oh, and it's also free and very user friendly.
YouTube, based in San Mateo, California, has been founded in February 2005 by three ex-members of the initial team which worked on the online payment service PayPal. They are Chad Hurley (Chief Executive Officer), Steve Chen (Chief Technology Officer) and Jawed Karim (adviser), later on joined by Roelof Botha, ex-Chief Finance Officer of PayPal and a partner of the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, which played a very important part in the development of YouTube. Thus, the venture capital firm invested 3.5 million dollars in November 2005, and another 8 million in April 2006. And it seems that this is an investment which will pay off big time, since just in April 2006, over 35,000 have been uploaded daily on YouTube, the number of clips viewed each day reaching the astounding number of 30 million.
But when did YouTube's services become so popular? From a historic point of view, it seems that its extraordinary ascension happened thanks to the "broadcasting" (actually, hosting) in December 2005 of the very popular "Lazy Sunday" clip from NBC's Saturday Night Live show, and continued with other clips from the Olympics or other major TV shows. However, this brought along some trouble for the company, as various producers charged it with copyright infringement. As a result, YouTube, which ever since its first day online, has promoted the upholding of copyrights and has taken some steps towards reducing the number of illegal files uploaded on its servers. The first decision has been to reduce the length of the clips to just 10 minutes, followed by promptly removing any pirated content discovered either by the original rights' owners or by its own filtering service.
Quite obviously, this is the company's official stand on the matter. However, as always, users have quite a different idea. Thus, despite the fact that YouTube has imposed all of these terms or use and regulations (in order to avoid any kind of legal problems) there still are relatively numerous loopholes for loading all the content they see fit. The most important of these is the filtering system itself. It is based on the analysis of the search terms associated to each file, and the removal of those videos with dubious names. Also, a team of 4 interns, students from Stanford University, has the job of viewing all those files reported to them by the YouTube community or by other sources.
Obviously, the users have realized quite rapidly that these vulnerabilities can be exploited, and they've begun using coded key-words for loading the files, key-words that are known only by a select few.
Another big problem faced by YouTube and by any other past, present or future service of this type is that of pornography. Considering the fact that, after all, any type of video file can be uploaded on the site, including (and especially) those shot with personal camcorders (and, as of a few days ago, also those shot with mobile phones or any other type of handheld device), uploading pornographic content has become very popular among the users. The problem is that, besides the public files, which can be seen by any user, personal files can also be uploaded on YouTube, files which are available by invitation only and are widely used for loading pornographic content.
I was talking earlier about the huge number of people that visits the site on daily basis. Despite its success, YouTube has begun posting ads on the site only since March 2006, which means that up until now (and the situation hasn't probably changed very much), the site has survived solely on the injections of capital received from some major venture capitalists. That is why many analysts have expressed their distrust in the business model promoted by the company, especially since the estimate monthly costs just for bandwidth are around 1 million dollars.
However, considering its level of popularity, YouTube seems to have a very bright future ahead, even more so than the similar services from well-established Internet companies, as for example Google Video. And, after all, why shouldn't it, as it has all the necessary ingredients in the recipe for success: it's free, allows "almost" free video file sharing, and it's user friendly. I do believe that no one could ask for more from such a service.
