Youtube spits on the competition
Samuel Van Eerden
August 16, 2006
. . . In the virtual sense, of course. But when you take into account the fact that this site has only been around for 18 months, it’s pretty darn amazing that this website has not only become one of the most popular spots on the internet, but a revolutionary staple-mark of contemporary society.
Though the first video “Me at the Zoo” was uploaded to www.youtube.com on April 23, 2005 (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw), Youtube’s fame began when it hosted the SNL clip “Lazy Sunday” last December. In a matter of days, the video—featuring the ‘Narnia Rap’—propelled youtube’s web traffic from 50 to 250 million daily page views. By May 2006, the internet traffic site Alexa.com reported that youtube had reached daily page views in excess of 2 billion. That number rose by another billion within the next two months, and by the middle of August, it had reached the 7 billion-mark on more than one occasion.
Compare those numbers with other viral video services on the internet, and you’ll be amazed. Youtube, despite being much younger than these websites, is trouncing them in terms of web traffic.
Google Video: 15 million page views per day (site ranking up 61,000 spots in 3 months)
Atomfilms: 400 million page views per day
Ifilms.com: 100,000 page views per day (website ranking has dropped 889,862 spots in 3 months)
Those are some pretty significant numbers. Anytime a website is outdoing its competitors by THAT many page views, you know you’ve got a good thing going! Google’s popularity over other sites like yahoo and msn doesn’t even equal the dominance that youtube is having in its web category.
Two of the biggest rising stars in the internet today are Myspace and Youtube. Myspace contains user-profiles in excess of 100,500,000, and gets 18 billion page views daily (according to the current month’s statistics). Youtube, despite serving a vastly different purpose, and—one would think—a less popular one, still holds its own, with an average of 6.5 billion per day. August has been a record month for both these websites, which rank #1 and #10 in the USA, respectively.
Even so, Youtube’s growth has outpaced that of Myspace, and with 100 million video clips watched every day (and an additional 65,000 uploaded daily), that popularity can only continue to balloon.
Being such a phenomenon, one can only speculate what the video-hosting site is worth; but last month, the New York Post suggested that youtube was worth somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion dollars.
Youtube is based on the concept of user-generated content. Like other rising young websites: wikipedia, myspace, and bittorrent, youtube works off of user-submitted videos. This makes for limitless categories of videos, varying from cool and amazing to dumb and ridiculous. With 65,000 new clips added every day, you can bet that they aren’t all primetime worthy. Still, youtube has thrived where it has served the masses.
A few examples:
Last month, a news story is released that President Bush squeezed German Chancellor Merkel’s shoulders as he walked into a meeting, and all of a sudden, low-quality videos of the act surface on youtube, to the delight of millions of users who have since watched the clips hundreds of thousands of times. (A follow up mock video of a cartoon-style Bush denying the deed a la Bill Clinton has since popped up on youtube.)
Tom Cruise’s wild antics on Oprah were captured by dozens of Tivo-recorders and uploaded to youtube where they have since become some of the hottest videos on the website. One of my personal favorite youtube clips was a spin off of the incident which showed Cruise “killing” Oprah . . . Star Wars style (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIWw5LbArgM).
Senator Ted Steven’s infamous “the internet is a series of tubes” speech has been laughed at and mocked since the moment the words escaped the man’s mouth, and spoofed too many times to count. Although the government has cracked down on video releases of the speech, youtube has become a home for parodies, songs, and even Jon Stewart monologues related to the “tubes” debacle.
Other popular videos on youtube include music videos (which youtube has come under fire for, since they don’t always have license to allow the clips), TV clips, movie trailers, live concerts, movie clips, and many full television episodes. Like Tom and Jerry? The Simpsons? Old Merry Melodies shorts? Japanese anime? Or maybe you’re a sucker for British comedy like Mr. Bean or Monty Python. Youtube’s got them all, in vast quantities. Until recently, the site also contained most of the ultra-popular (and overly violent) cartoon episodes “Happy Tree Friends,” until the producers cracked down and forced youtube to remove the shorts.
Now, however, youtube has released their plans to make every music video ever filmed available on their site by summer of 2008. And what’s more, they’ll be free of charge to view . . . like everything else on youtube. Even Google charges 2 bucks a pop to download a music video from their service.
With such a strong foothold already in place, new developments like adding more music videos will only increase the already insane amounts of web traffic. The precedent has already been set, and will continue to be pounded home: user generated content is where it’s at. Youtube found the hole, and filled it; taking Tivo to the next level, and now we get to sit back and see how they continue to raise the bar.
Though the first video “Me at the Zoo” was uploaded to www.youtube.com on April 23, 2005 (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw), Youtube’s fame began when it hosted the SNL clip “Lazy Sunday” last December. In a matter of days, the video—featuring the ‘Narnia Rap’—propelled youtube’s web traffic from 50 to 250 million daily page views. By May 2006, the internet traffic site Alexa.com reported that youtube had reached daily page views in excess of 2 billion. That number rose by another billion within the next two months, and by the middle of August, it had reached the 7 billion-mark on more than one occasion.
Compare those numbers with other viral video services on the internet, and you’ll be amazed. Youtube, despite being much younger than these websites, is trouncing them in terms of web traffic.
Google Video: 15 million page views per day (site ranking up 61,000 spots in 3 months)
Atomfilms: 400 million page views per day
Ifilms.com: 100,000 page views per day (website ranking has dropped 889,862 spots in 3 months)
Those are some pretty significant numbers. Anytime a website is outdoing its competitors by THAT many page views, you know you’ve got a good thing going! Google’s popularity over other sites like yahoo and msn doesn’t even equal the dominance that youtube is having in its web category.
Two of the biggest rising stars in the internet today are Myspace and Youtube. Myspace contains user-profiles in excess of 100,500,000, and gets 18 billion page views daily (according to the current month’s statistics). Youtube, despite serving a vastly different purpose, and—one would think—a less popular one, still holds its own, with an average of 6.5 billion per day. August has been a record month for both these websites, which rank #1 and #10 in the USA, respectively.
Even so, Youtube’s growth has outpaced that of Myspace, and with 100 million video clips watched every day (and an additional 65,000 uploaded daily), that popularity can only continue to balloon.
Being such a phenomenon, one can only speculate what the video-hosting site is worth; but last month, the New York Post suggested that youtube was worth somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion dollars.
Youtube is based on the concept of user-generated content. Like other rising young websites: wikipedia, myspace, and bittorrent, youtube works off of user-submitted videos. This makes for limitless categories of videos, varying from cool and amazing to dumb and ridiculous. With 65,000 new clips added every day, you can bet that they aren’t all primetime worthy. Still, youtube has thrived where it has served the masses.
A few examples:
Last month, a news story is released that President Bush squeezed German Chancellor Merkel’s shoulders as he walked into a meeting, and all of a sudden, low-quality videos of the act surface on youtube, to the delight of millions of users who have since watched the clips hundreds of thousands of times. (A follow up mock video of a cartoon-style Bush denying the deed a la Bill Clinton has since popped up on youtube.)
Tom Cruise’s wild antics on Oprah were captured by dozens of Tivo-recorders and uploaded to youtube where they have since become some of the hottest videos on the website. One of my personal favorite youtube clips was a spin off of the incident which showed Cruise “killing” Oprah . . . Star Wars style (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIWw5LbArgM).
Senator Ted Steven’s infamous “the internet is a series of tubes” speech has been laughed at and mocked since the moment the words escaped the man’s mouth, and spoofed too many times to count. Although the government has cracked down on video releases of the speech, youtube has become a home for parodies, songs, and even Jon Stewart monologues related to the “tubes” debacle.
Other popular videos on youtube include music videos (which youtube has come under fire for, since they don’t always have license to allow the clips), TV clips, movie trailers, live concerts, movie clips, and many full television episodes. Like Tom and Jerry? The Simpsons? Old Merry Melodies shorts? Japanese anime? Or maybe you’re a sucker for British comedy like Mr. Bean or Monty Python. Youtube’s got them all, in vast quantities. Until recently, the site also contained most of the ultra-popular (and overly violent) cartoon episodes “Happy Tree Friends,” until the producers cracked down and forced youtube to remove the shorts.
Now, however, youtube has released their plans to make every music video ever filmed available on their site by summer of 2008. And what’s more, they’ll be free of charge to view . . . like everything else on youtube. Even Google charges 2 bucks a pop to download a music video from their service.
With such a strong foothold already in place, new developments like adding more music videos will only increase the already insane amounts of web traffic. The precedent has already been set, and will continue to be pounded home: user generated content is where it’s at. Youtube found the hole, and filled it; taking Tivo to the next level, and now we get to sit back and see how they continue to raise the bar.
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