TECHNOLOGY
You Boob!
By Scott Jacobs
The most popular video on YouTube this Christmas was a short film of an Oregon high school student jumping off a balcony into his school’s Christmas tree. To capture this feat, he positioned five friends with home video cameras around the lobby then edited the footage on his home computer into a 2:42 minute video that, at last count, has been viewed 1,324,686 times.
On the same day Xander Weibel and his friend Tzar Wrinkly posted up their "Christmas Tree Jump", 65,000 other would-be filmmakers also decided to share their work on the internet video site. Their postings join roughly six million videos online at YouTube that attract 25 million visitors a month to the site. So it’s little wonder that Time Magazine named YouTube contributors their “Man of The Year -- YOU!" -- or that Google bought the year-old website last October for $1.65 billion.
But for all the hoopla surrounding the YouTube phenomena, it’s not clear what exactly the founders of YouTube invented, or how Google is going to make money off of its investment.
When Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim first came up with the idea in 2004, they were looking for a way to share party videos with their friends as easily as they could share photos. They hacked together a website and, from offices above a pizza parlor in San Mateo, California, put up their first video – a day at the zoo – in a Beta version in May 2005. After six more months of tinkering, they officially launched with $3.5 million of venture capital the next December.
It did not take long for YouTube to have its first hit. On December 17, two Saturday Night Live actors posted up a digital short called “Lazy Sunday” that played originally to tepid reviews on the TV show. Although NBC offered up the same clip free on iTunes, YouTube’s viewership left iTunes in the dust. Before NBC demanded it be taken down, five million internet viewers had seen the YouTube version.
YouTube’s next big hit was Stephen Colbert’s controversial speech to the Washington Press Club dinner in February. A handful of political sites violated copyright laws (and press club protocol) to make it available. YouTube made it a feature attraction and, because YouTube allows users to link videos as personal favorites and email a link to similarly-minded friends, it became THE place to see it.
YouTube came on the scene just as video on the net was becoming possible and it benefited from the convergence of what was, in technology, a perfect storm: 1) the ubiquitous growth of home video camcorders and easy to use editing software on home computers; 2) vast leaps in digital video compression algorithms like Apple’s h.264 and other Mpeg-4 video codecs; 3) widespread use of DSL and cable modems -- 60% of Americans now have a broadband connection -- that make delivery of video over the internet bearable; and 4) a public, now enabled with the video tools to express themselves, looking for a way to become famous.
YouTube was not alone in recognizing the oncoming video revolution. At the same time it launched, Google and Yahoo also began offering video feeds. The large media conglomerates were constrained by their legal departments who, cognizant of copyright protections and the sad fate of Napster, the once hot music file-sharing site sued into non-existence by the major record labels, dumbed down their offerings into irrelevant categories that walked the tighrope between legal and illegal postings.
The three YouTube founders, all in their twenties, were not afraid to ride the third rail of the internet – attitude. MySpace and Facebook, only a year earlier, had proven there was a place on the internet for users to self-define themselves by posting the most intimate parts of their lives – their diaries, their friends, their party photos, their favorite music, even their nightly social calendar.
The mainstream media called these “social networking” sites. But that designation did not fully explain their appeal. A teenager sitting alone in his bedroom at his computer soon discovered he could create his own persona on the internet by posting up a reflection of himself by what he liked – rock bands, websites and, thanks to YouTube, the stuff he saw on TV, the links his friends sent him or the output of his own $79 camcorder sitting on top of his computer.
The conceit that underlies Time’s fascination with YouTube is that the website finally gets around the “gatekeepers” who decide what gets into our mainstream media. When everyone can broadcast anything, the only determinant of who watches is the internet search function.
Some idealists call this “unfiltered” TV. That may have been the goal of the three YouTube founders. But success changes things. YouTube’s content today is hardly unfiltered. Of the 65,000 videos posted every day, some 50,000 will never be seen by more than a handful of viewers.
Your chances of having your video seen by a million people are
probably 1000 times greater on “America’s Funniest Videos”
any week of the year – and earning prize money to boot --than on YouTube.
The real arbiters of whether your video will be seen are YouTube’s own
experts who select a handful of video uploads every day to be featured on
the YouTube homepage.
YouTube now gives prominent play on its homepage to both the featured videos it selects and “Director’s Cuts” – professionally-produced music videos, TV excerpts and short films it actively solicits from established media companies who want to promote their brand in the viral internet environment.
In the mysterious way YouTube decides which videos to feature, it functions much as pop radio did in the 1950’s, introducing audiences to records and films they may soon want to purchase.
Since space on the homepage for “Director’s Cuts” is limited, how long can this go on before the producer’s reps start purchasing this space through either cash or payola? And how long can YouTube continue to pretend that this is all user-selected content from its community of user?
Being named a YouTube featured video has a snowball effect on viewership. With push-button ease, viewers can email a link to the video to their friends, replicate it into their own personal channel or upload their own video “comment” that then becomes a branch off the original video post. In a short amount of time, viewership shoots up geometrically.
Lee Gomes, of the Wall Street Journal, noted in August that you can increase the chances your video will be seen by including in the title the words dance, love, music, girl and – might I add – George Bush.
Your video will also be more popular if you have an adolescent sense of humor since, according to Gomes, over 70% of YouTube viewers are under the age of 20, and most are believed to be between 12 and 17 years old.
If your goal as a You Boob is to see and be seen, the easiest path to popularity is to pick a popular video and upload a comment. (This feature was recently expanded to allow direct uploads from your webcam or video camcorder.) Consider the case of btothekaliday.
After “Christmas Tree Jump” appeared, it sparked
a lively debate among viewers about whether it was a dangerous stunt or an
amusing prank.
Btothekaliday joined the discussion, shirtless and guzzling a beer in his
bedroom, with the critical comment “That shit was fucking hilarious.”
VIEW HERE.
Two days later, after 15,579 others had viewed his comment video, he felt compelled to come on again, this time with cigarette smoke curling in his off-kilter frame, to defend his opinion. “Man, you people are making my day,” he laughed. “You’ve made me #18 on YouTube today.” VIEW HERE.
The most baffling aspect of YouTube is not the content – if you sample around, there are lots of funny and poignant pieces, a testament to the creativity the video revolution has set loose – but who benefits financially from all this?
Sure, with 25 million eyeballs a month scanning the site, there’s some revenue to be had by placing ads next to every video. But none of that goes to the video producer, and it certainly is not enough to justify Google’s decision to spend $1.65 billion to purchase YouTube.
Don Dodge, the head of Microsoft’s emerging business team, wrote on his blog that to justify Google’s investment, it will have to earn a $150 million profit from $500 million a year in advertising sales on YouTube – forever.
Dodge points out that other companies have suffered from investing too early in internet fads. Remember Xanga, Friendster, and, my favorite, Netscape? The winners in the internet economy are more often the second generation coming to market than the first. Think MySpace and Facebook versus the pioneering Friendster. So it’s worth looking beyond the current YouTube offerings to what is coming next.
The deal that brought YouTube under Google’s roof was good for both sides. Leaving aside the fact the founders made a fortune, they were operating under an economic model that was not sustainable. One part of Google’s deal involved paying YouTube $15 million just to pay its bills during the acquistion. Another aspect revealed later was a $200 million escrow fund established to fend off lawsuits over copyright infringements.
The YouTube library of videos now requires over 45 terrabytes of storage (free to users) accessible through multi-port server farms capable of handling the volume of requests. Google, which is now building the world’s largest data serving farm on the banks of the Columbia River power dam in Oregon, is uniquely positioned to handle that capacity.
But from Google’s perspective, YouTube also delivers a user base (as opposed to eyeballs) that will, in the future, lock them into a Google account that encourages them to use other Google offerings.
For many years now (since its inception), I have maintained an account on Blogger for my blog postings. Last week, Blogger (purchased two years ago by Google) informed me that I must establish a Google account to continue posting. When I hit the button to “transition” my account to Google, I find instantly available to me other Google accounts – Gmail, Blogger, Flickr, Adsense and Adwords – all of which I signed for under other accounts.
In purchasing YouTube, Google reportedly will control about 60% of the video feeds in the coming year. Assuming future development, it is likely to find a way to massively scale videos up for TV display and down for mobile phones. At the same time, it can tap into its growing advertiser base to offer targeted commercials before, after and alongside each video program – without my having anything to say about the presentation.
The more I get used to signing in to my Google account for my “free” upload to its video storage, the easier it will be for me to tie in these services -- and the less I’ll think about upgrading my computer operating system – or, for that matter, purchasing Microsoft Office 2007.
It matters less to me these days whether my computer-based software is upgradable; and more whether my net-based applications are integrated into the way I use the internet every day. Microsoft should be afraid. Very, very afraid. If Google succeeds in offering a free word processing program and free spreadsheet along with its email, blog services, photo-sharing and video hosting, who needs them?
My own prediction is that YouTube will probably go away soon. It will disappear the same way Netscape disappeared after it was purchased by AOL. Its key functions will be adapted and absorbed into larger Google video plans; its name brand will be maintained only long enough to assuage current users until they recognize the hot video development is going on in other parts of the corporation.
The biggest unknown in Google’s gamble on YouTube is how long people will continue to post up their videos for millions to see without demanding some share of the advertising revenue. Major media companies are acutely aware of the problem, as is Google. Before the YouTube sale was consummated, NBC, CBS, Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music all inked partnership deals to let them participate in YouTube revenues.
Citizen videographers this coming year will have an opportunity to share ad revenues by posting their videos with The Venice Project or Brightcove, alternative and well-funded start-ups, or simply on their own vlogs with their own ads, trusting that Google can’t limit its video search functions to its proprietary video feeds.
The iconic “Christmas Tree Jump” actually took place in December, 2005. Besides enlisting five friends to record the feat, Weibel and Wrinkly spent over a year cutting the footage together. For their efforts, they got arrested and expelled from school for a semester.
If they had received even a penny for every viewer who downloaded their video, they would have earned $13,247. If they spent the same amount of time stocking the pharmacy shelves at their local CVS, they would have earned more.
What are the chances they’ll choose YouTube for their
next oeuvre?
Pretty good, it turns out. Three days before New Year Day 2007, Wrinkly posted
up his sequel: "Sledding
Into A Ditch." But the numbers aren't so hot: 1,084 viewers so far.
Which only goes to show: fame is fleeting. Welcome back to the reality of YouTube. Get a job.
NOTE: The Week Behind this year joins the online fray with its own “Video Theater” feature. Funny videos are always welcome, but the editors also hope contributors will use this vlog to showcase short films made in Chicago and/or promotional clips for works in progress. If you would like to contribute, email Scott@theweekbehind.com.
