The most valuable usage of YouTube
In today's Provo Labs Academy class, there was an intense discussion about the pros and cons of YouTube.com.
Examples of some of the absolute garbage that is on YouTube were given. Paul Allen talked about Mark Cuban's blog post that discusses the videos with the top 20 viewership. Cuban has been critical of the Google purchase of YouTube, and is not shy in identifying the problems.
There were examples of postitive and productive uses of YouTube from finding videos of actual quality to using YouTube for marketing purposes. The "Will it Blend" marketing by BlendTec (WillItBlend.com) got a lot of free marketing.
I proposed that the best and most valuable usage of YouTube is that you get to use their storage and bandwidth for free.
In the past I have worked with IT departments to set up video servers, primarily for training. When video on demand was in its infancy, and before services like YouTube.com, Revver.com, and OurMedia.org each company had to buy the expensive and frequently proprietary hardware, storage space (expensive hard drives), the fastest and most expensive servers available for video rendering and scaling, and the most expensive burstable bandwidth. This was easily over $100,000 for any company that wanted to play that game.
Yes, prices on hardware and bandwidth have dropped significantly. However, that $100,000 video on demand systems has been completely replaced by YouTube.com and its competitors.
All you have to do now is upload whatever video you have at whatever size you have to YouTube. Then put the simple html code on your pages to display the video inline on your pages. YouTube pays for the hard drive space and the bandwidth.
Do you know any other technologies where the price has dropped from $100k to $0 in a few years? I would like to see the automobile industry repeat that price reduction. ;)
Examples of some of the absolute garbage that is on YouTube were given. Paul Allen talked about Mark Cuban's blog post that discusses the videos with the top 20 viewership. Cuban has been critical of the Google purchase of YouTube, and is not shy in identifying the problems.
There were examples of postitive and productive uses of YouTube from finding videos of actual quality to using YouTube for marketing purposes. The "Will it Blend" marketing by BlendTec (WillItBlend.com) got a lot of free marketing.
I proposed that the best and most valuable usage of YouTube is that you get to use their storage and bandwidth for free.
In the past I have worked with IT departments to set up video servers, primarily for training. When video on demand was in its infancy, and before services like YouTube.com, Revver.com, and OurMedia.org each company had to buy the expensive and frequently proprietary hardware, storage space (expensive hard drives), the fastest and most expensive servers available for video rendering and scaling, and the most expensive burstable bandwidth. This was easily over $100,000 for any company that wanted to play that game.
Yes, prices on hardware and bandwidth have dropped significantly. However, that $100,000 video on demand systems has been completely replaced by YouTube.com and its competitors.
All you have to do now is upload whatever video you have at whatever size you have to YouTube. Then put the simple html code on your pages to display the video inline on your pages. YouTube pays for the hard drive space and the bandwidth.
Do you know any other technologies where the price has dropped from $100k to $0 in a few years? I would like to see the automobile industry repeat that price reduction. ;)
posted by David at 3:18 PM
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