ON YOUTUBE'S 100 MILLION MILESTONE

NATURE ABHORS ONE

Reuters has a story today on YouTube crossing the milestone of serving over a 100 million videos a day.  Here's a key excerpt:

"YouTube, the leader in Internet video search, said on Sunday viewers have are now watching more than 100 million videos per day on its site, marking the surge in demand for its "snack-sized" video fare.

Since springing from out of nowhere late last year, YouTube has come to hold the leading position in online video with 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market, according to the latest weekly data from Web measurement site Hitwise.

YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched   online, the company said."

This is a notable milestone by any measure.  TechCrunch has a good post on some of the drivers for this milestone.

However, at the risk of re-stating the obvious, I'd like to suggest another driver.

it's important to highlight that this growth of user-generated, and/or user-uploaded video has occurred in a vacuum.

What vacuum, you ask?

Well, the vacuum created by the relative lack of a wide, deep, affordable, and fast-growing inventory of video content from the traditional media companies. 

It's a vacuum created by the defensive mind-set adopted by the mainstream media industry. 

Also a contributor to the vacuum is the arguably greater than needed copyright and trademark protection afforded video content by Congress over the years.  This has occurred in response to vigorous, on-going, and generous lobbying efforts by industry groups over time (the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998, is a case in point).

We have a paradoxical environment highlighted by the following example: 

An author can publish and make a fortune off a book that excerpts, quotes and attributes other authors' content in a bibliography. 

However, a videographer doing the same excerpting and quoting of other video/audio content would not be able to publish and profit commercially from his or her work in the same fashion. 

They'd have to tediously secure permission from every contributor to that video and/or audio, and negotiate separate commercial agreements with ALL the contributors to be able to publish those attributed quotes and excerpts.

Thanks to this vacuum, we have mainstream audiences discovering the joys of watching a puppy fart on YouTube.

On second thought, given human nature, we'd probably have people watching that video anyway, but there'd likely be far fewer viewers of that kind of spontaneous, user-generated fare.

That is of course, assuming that America's Funniest Home Videos, chooses not to show it on TV.

Comments

[David G]

Great post Michael.

I think there's another vaccum too - a vaccum in devices that simplify storage, playback and portability this 'new' media. Outside of the browser, what hardware do we have to enjoy this new media with? I'm starting to think we'll see 2nd coming of the iPod this Q4 - what do you think?

I must admit that I was skeptical about small-format TV - not any more.

[Noah]

However, at the risk of re-stating the obvious, I'd like to suggest another driver.

i agree!

[Alyssa]

On second thought, given human nature, we'd probably have people watching that video anyway, but there'd likely be far fewer viewers of that kind of spontaneous, user-generated fare.
I think so!

[Elizabeth]

Good post!!

[Chloe]

Thanks for your post!!
It's so great!