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YouTube
Company typePrivate
IndustryInternet services
FoundedFebruary 2005
FounderChad Hurley
Jawed Karim
Steve Chen Edit this on Wikidata
HeadquartersSan Mateo, California
Key people
Chad Hurley, Founder & CEO
Steve Chen, Founder & CTO
Jawed Karim, Founder & Advisor
Number of employees
50 (2006)
Websitewww.youtube.com
File:Youtube-screen.png
YouTube Screenshot

YouTube is a website that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. It was founded in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal. YouTube has fifty employees and is located in San Mateo, California. YouTube uses Adobe 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 by anyone but the copyright holder; however, restriction of copyrighted material has proven very difficult.

History

YouTube was founded in February, 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, 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. In April, 2006, Sequoia Capital invested a further $8 million in YouTube. [5]

The site's popularity surged in December 2005 when it hosted the popular Lazy Sunday clip from a Saturday Night Live broadcast.[6]

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][7]

In March 14 2006, YouTube set a 10-minute limit on videos, except for those uploaded through its Director Program. This disabled the users' ability to upload whole episodes of television shows, reducing them to cutting them into two or three parts.

By June 2006, NBC had reconsidered its approach and announced a strategic partnership with YouTube. Under the terms of the partnership, NBC will among other things create an official NBC Channel on YouTube to showcase its preview clips for The Office. YouTube will also promote NBC's videos throughout its site. [1]

Also on June 2006, Turner Media told the site to remove a large number of videos, including Robot Chicken clips, because of copyright infringment. Humorously, one of the clips included a parody of Ted Turner as a crazy Captain Planet, as well as all IGPX-related videos in June 2006. The site had also removed some episodes of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, even some AMVs that had copyright infringement. Sunrise has also intervened by telling the site about the majority of videos from their rights, such as Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, various Gundam shows, and more, even though most of them were AMVs and fan projects. In July 2006, World Wrestling Entertainment also asked YouTube to remove material. The use of music in audio/visual clips is another area where copyright issues are of concern. In the same month, TMS Entertainment reported various episodes of animes such as Sonic X as well as many AMVs to be removed for the same reason.

CBS, which had previously also asked YouTube to remove several of its clips, similarly reassessed its relationship with YouTube in July 2006. In a statement indicative of how the traditional media industry's perception of YouTube has changed, Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports noted:

Our inclination now is, the more exposure we get from clips like that, the better it is for CBS News and the CBS television network, so in retrospect we probably should have embraced the exposure, and embraced the attention it was bringing CBS, instead of being parochial and saying ‘let’s pull it down.’ [2]

Also in July 2006 Robert Tur, a television journalist, filed a lawsuit against YouTube, alleging copyright infringement. The case has yet to be resolved. [3]

Growth

YouTube is currently one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web [8], and is ranked as the 17th most popular website on Alexa, far outpacing even MySpace's growth. [4]

On July 16 2006, YouTube announced that 100 million clips are watched on YouTube every day. 65,000 new videos are uploaded every day. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. [9]

Capitalization

Although YouTube's potential market value in an acquisition is pure speculation, an article in the New York Post suggested on July 23, 2006 that YouTube may be worth anywhere from $600 million to $1 billion. [10]

Criticisms

YouTube policy does not allow content to be uploaded by anyone other than the copyright holder, and the company frequently removes uploaded videos that infringe on copyrights, but a large amount of copyrighted material is uploaded nonetheless. 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 is through the search terms that uploaders associate with clips.

Some users have taken to creating alternative words as search terms to be entered when uploading specific type of files. For instance some members of the Internet Wrestling Community uses the term "cheese souffle" as a search term to indicate an upload of a WWE video, apparently to attempt to circumvent YouTube locating illegal files and removing them.

Quicktime files

In most cases, Quicktime files do not work well with YouTube. Most of these files, including those ripped from enhanced CDs, end up with poor audio/video synchronization. This is a result from the file having to change formats when it is uploaded to the site.

Video Format

The file format used by YouTube is Flash Video, or *.flv. The media center software TVedia can also stream YouTube videos directly from the YouTube server for full screen viewing with remote control.

Revenue model

Some industry commentators have speculated that YouTube's running costs — specifically the bandwidth required — may be as high as $1 million USD per month, [11] thereby fuelling criticisms that the company does not have a viable business model. Advertisements were launched on the site beginning in March 2006.

In April 2006, YouTube started using Google AdSense.

Violence

On their 6:30 PM bulletin on June 1, 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. [12]

Spin-off sites

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". However, most analysts feel that is mostly just artificial hype created by media sensationalism over the latest fad, as none of these sites have provided a viable business plan.[citation needed] Examples of such spin-off sites would include TinyPic and MySpace Videos.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Graham, Jefferson (November 21, 2005). "Video further websites pop up, invite postings" USAToday
  2. ^ University of Illinois Department of Computer Science (2006). "YouTube: Sharing Digital Camera Videos"
  3. ^ youtube.com overview by Alexa
  4. ^ a b Woolley, Scott (March 13, 2006). "Raw and Random", p. 27. Forbes.
  5. ^ Sequoia invests 11.5 million total in YouTube, accessed July 7, 2006
  6. ^ YouTube hosts Lazy Sunday, accessed July 7, 2006
  7. ^ NBC Pressures Websites on Video Clips by Andrew Wallenstein, 22 February 2006, Backstage.com
  8. ^ "YouTube Fastest Growing Website" Advertising Age
  9. ^ [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-16-youtube-views_x.htm? "YouTube serves up 100 million videos a day online"] USAToday
  10. ^ "SUN VALLEY BUZZ BOOSTS YOUTUBE TOWARD $1B" New York Post
  11. ^ Frommer, Dan. "Your Tube, Whose Dime?". Forbes'. April 27, 2006.
  12. ^ ITV News, 6:30 PM bulletin on ITV1, 1 June 2006
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