YouTube posts

Boom! 178 million US Internet users watched online videos in December. That's 87% of the total potential audience -- very nearly total penetration. I wonder what percentage of Internet users write email -- less than 87%? Anyway, of those 33 billion videos, 40% (13 billion) of them were watched at YouTube. But guess who's next? Hulu -- 3%! You TV-horny Americans watched 1 billion videos on Hulu in just one month!

There's more though -- here's some breakdown: those 13 billion YouTube videos were watched by 136 million viewers, or 97 videos per user. By comparison, Hulu viewers only watched 23 videos each in December. It goes steeply downhill from there -- next are Yahoo and Fox, pulling only 9 video views per user.

If you were as surprised as I am about Hulu, get this: Hulu only has 44 million unique users, but still broadcasts twice as many videos as the next site.

I think Europe's ready for a similar TV-on-demand service... y'hear me, American media outlets?

YouTube began testing the waters with a movie rental service late last month. Starting small, they offered a collection of five films from the Sundance Film Festival. The movies were offered for ten days to see how users would respond to a paid movie rental service.

Charging only $3.99, the films picked up 2,684 views and pulled in only $10,709 total. While the "big guys" in the movie rental business such as NetFlix, Apple and Amazon are certainly not intimidated by such a paltry sum, YouTube says it's happy with the outcome of the test. According to Google, the results "exceeded our expectations given all the barriers" and it looks like we can expect a larger movie rental presence from YouTube in the future.

While nothing is finalized, YouTube says it will be pulling in new video partners and start offering rentals on various sections of their website on a short-term basis. It'll be interesting to see how they fares up against larger companies if their rental service grows.

[via NYTimes.com]

Deleting your account from a social networking site can be as hard as canceling a gym membership or convincing a telemarketer that you're not interested in their product. Social networking sites and other online services don't want you to delete your account. There's value for them in being able to quote huge and growing user numbers, regardless of whether those users are happy to be there (though of course they hope that they are).

If you're trying to cancel your Facebook, Digg, or LinkedIn account and you're having a tough time figuring out just how to do it, head on over to Delete Your Account. Delete Your Account is an online resource that helps you delete accounts from an ever-growing number of online services. It currently lists Amazon, AIM, Digg, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, FriendFeed, Google, Hotmail, iTunes, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Meebo, Monster, MySpace, PayPal, reddit, The PirateBay, Twitter, Wikipedia, WordPress, Yahoo, and YouTube, with others on the way.

When possible Delete Your Account gives you a quick link to the page that allows you to delete your account, and instructions on how to verify that it is gone. If there are any details that you need to know like whether a site actually holds onto deleted data, that's listed as well.

Happy account deleting!

The chicken and the egg -- you can't have one without the other -- but which one comes first? The same dilemma plagues every industry, but none as much as the tech sector.

Build it and they will come -- but what if they don't come?! You've just wasted millions of dollars -- or billions, in the case of IPv6 infrastructure. But such is life! Someone has to break the ice. Someone has to be the penguin that jumps in first to be eaten by the killer whales -- and in this case, it looks like it's Google with its YouTube service.

YouTube is the third most popular website on the Internet -- and no doubt the largest bandwidth hog in the world -- so it's refreshing and more than a little shocking to see IPv6 enabled with nary a whisper from Google.

The only report we have so far is from a director at Hurricane Electric, an ISP that runs one of the largest IPv6 backbones in the world. Speaking to PC World he said that 30 times more IPv6 traffic is originating from YouTube than before.

But why the big furore? Why is this even news? Well, IPv4 is due to run out of available addresses between now and 2012. With China and India joining the world wide web and connectivity continuing to rise in the EU and US, there simply aren't enough IP addresses to go around. IPv6 will solve that -- and provide enough addresses for any galactic-wide networks we ultimately create -- but it involves a significant investment to get it off the ground.

Go Google!

YouTube has been a favorite place for music fans to watch and listen to music videos for a long time now. Along with official music videos, there are all sorts of treasures to be found, particularly when it comes to obscure live performances.

It looks like YouTube is embracing the fact that it is increasingly being used as a music service, and has launched a new project called the Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool. The URL is dead easy to remember: youtube.com/disco.

The tool allows you to enter an artist or band name, and press a big "Disco!" button. The resulting page features a description of the artist or band you chose, with a sample playlist of related tracks pre-populated. You also get a list of the artist's songs that are available on YouTube that you can add to the playlist, and a list of links to "related" artists.

The related artists list seems somewhat arbitrary; when I searched for Poison (hey, don't judge me), it came up with a list that included Bell Biv DeVoe, Beyoncé, The Prodigy, and at least 7 bands featuring the word "Poison" somewhere in their name. Looking a little deeper, the random-seeming artists all have a song with the word "Poison" in them. So clearly YouTube is using simple word matching instead of any sort of sophisticated algorithm to choose related artists.

Your playlist remains persistent as you search for other artists or click on the related ones, so you can build a playlist over time. Though the sound quality of YouTube videos varies greatly, I can imagine this tool being used for creating party playlists; with an archive of almost any song you can think of, it's a great resource with built-in song visualizations. Unfortunately, you can't leave it in full-screen mode; each song transition kicks you back to the playlist with the video in a small window.

Hate Flash? Love Vimeo? Today's your lucky day, because Vimeo has introduced a new HTML5 video player, making almost all of its videos available in H.264. For those not familiar with H.264, a quick recap: this is one of the formats vying to become the new standard for HTML's video tag. If you watch videos on an iPhone, you've already seen it in action.

Okay: HTML5 video, so what? Well, for one thing, you won't have to wait for an entire video to load before you can jump to a specific part of it. That was one area where Vimeo was actually less user-friendly than YouTube. Not anymore! The player itself also loads right away, without showing you Vimeo's familiar spinner. Playback should also be smoother in H.264 mode.

Because of the ongoing debate over HTML5 video formats, you'll need a webkit browser (like Chrome or Safari) to take advantage of this new Vimeo feature. With H.264 in its repertoire, Vimeo just played some serious catch-up with YouTube in terms of features.

It's been almost 4 years since Jordan Running first told us about KeepVid, a site that allows you to download YouTube videos for offline viewing. Since then, KeepVid has continued to evolve, now offering the ability to download from many other popular streaming video sites like Dailymotion, Metacafe, iFilm, and others.

KeepVid works by using a bookmarklet on the page that is hosting the video you would like to download. If you're not sure whether KeepVid supports downloading from your favorite site, just give it a shot; you might be surprised!

The home page for KeepVid is surprisingly sparse, and doesn't really give any clues about KeepVid's true power. It's unusual (and kind of refreshing) for a service like this to be so understated. I guess they figure the service speaks for itself.

It's been a big week so far for YouTube.

First they announced their first video rental initiative in cooperation with the Sundance Film Festival. Five films will be offered and you'll need a Google Checkout account (shock of shocks) if you want to get in on the action. Google has also announced that they will "a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate" in the program.

According to the official blog post, the rental program is all about providing an ad-free way to monetize video on YouTube.

Beyond that, they've also rolled out a new TestTube project which you're really going to love if you hate Adobe Flash Player. You guessed it: HTML5-powered YouTube!

One of the most fun things about YouTube is watching videos with your online friends, but it's tough to keep 2 or more friends in sync. Pre-YouTube, we used to call each other on the phone and try to start a tape in our VCRs at the same time.

Fortunately, things have changed since then and now there's a tool to automatically sync up YouTube videos for multiple viewers: Synchtube.

Synchtube is kind of a combination YouTube and Ustream. You enter a YouTube URL to start a video room, and then friends can join in and watch simultaneously as if you were livestreaming. There's even the familiar text chat box on the side, so you can keep a running commentary with your friends - great for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 fans! Whoever starts the room can skip everyone to a specific point in the video by using the timeline just like you would in the standard YouTube viewer.

Now, if we could just get something like Synchtube set up for Hulu and Netflix ...

[via CNET]

Quickly! Before it gets shut down! Muziic, a web app developed by a sixteen-year-old teenager, now offers YouTube and Vevo videos without ads.

We originally covered it back in March and until Christmas Day, Muziic was simply a desktop-based downloadable program. Now, however, it's a full-featured web app -- and it's really rather good! It has a smooth, quick interface and a neat playback bar that sits at the bottom of the window. Playback isn't interrupted as you surf either; cool.

The problem is, not only does it draw on-demand content from YouTube (which is fine), but it also takes content from Vevo... without the pre-roll ads! The thing is, this isn't actually Muziic's fault, it's YouTube's. The YouTube application interface (API) also links into Vevo, and it doesn't seem to include the ads. We can only assume this will be fixed soon -- or Muziic will be forced to somehow include the ads.

Muziic offers a service comparable to, or better than, the wide range of streaming music web apps already on the Internet. I'm tempted to use it simply because a kid coded it -- he was just 15 when Muziic first launched. Did I mention there's an iPhone app for it coming soon too?

[via CNET]

TunesBag has just opened its doors for a public beta. The idea is simple, but the execution is delightfully loophole-icious. Upload your music to the cloud -- as in, music that you legally own -- and then play it from anywhere in the world, as long as you're connected to the 'Net. You can also play everyone else's music. . . cool!

It seems music-in-the-cloud is all the rage at the moment. I don't know why, considering almost everyone has at least a gigabyte of storage on their cellular phone nowadays. But it's not the cloud-surfing thing that has people excited about tunesBag, though. It's the social-networky-hacky-YouTube layer on top that's got everyone dribbling.

Once you upload your music, you can send links to friends. If they are allowed to stream that song (i.e. tunesBag has the licensing), they can listen to it -- the original file. If they don't have permission, tunesBag scrapes the soundtrack from YouTube, but doesn't show you the video or the ads. Sneaky sneaky!

You can't really see the service, as it is now, surviving very long -- especially now that the public beta is here. But you might as well make the most of it while you can.

[via TechCrunch]

There isn't really a lot more to this one, other than a brief explanation of how they work:

• Take the 'key' from the end of a YouTube video URL -- The key, in the URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 would be 'oHg5SJYRHA0'
• Stick it on the end of YouTu.be -- and... voila! http://youtu.be/oHg5SJYRHA0

The thing is, it's not really all that short. The only real advantage, over something like Bit.ly, is that you now know it's a video and not some stupid meme or phishing attempt. Also, as the YouTube Blog suggests, web developers can use the video key to bring up thumbnails, or embed videos directly. It's also great with YouTube's fairly-new AutoShare option: publish your youtu.be links straight to Twitter! Woo!

I know what you're all thinking: Belgium has finally brought more than than just waffles or fries to this world; hallelujah!

When Google opened the doors to its Chrome Extensions Gallery the other day, there were some interesting questions to be answered: Would ad blockers be allowed? What about YouTube downloaders? They're some of the most popular Firefox add-ons, but it looked as though Google wasn't about to let them in to its own Gallery.

In their program policies for the Extensions Gallery, Google states "We don't allow products or services that violate third party terms of service, or products or services that enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media."

One has to wonder what they were thinking when they approved the YouTube Downloader extension. In addition to breaching the developer terms of service, it's also in violation of the YouTube TOS:

Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be downloaded, copied, modified, produced, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, translated, published, performed or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior written consent of the respective owners.

Further along, it states:

Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited.

Now, unless YouTube Downloader has some massive archive of written letters from the clip uploaders themselves, I think it's pretty clear that this extension does things Google claims it isn't going to tolerate.

It will be interesting to see what the next step is -- I wouldn't be at all surprised if the extension gets pulled in the very near future. If they want to keep major content providers happy, they don't have a choice: they must pull it now. Google can't afford to appear permissive when it comes to violating content-protection provisions. It would seem like a crazy move while hardly a day goes by without news of Google courting yet another big deal with a large-scale media publisher.

update: the extension's page now displays an error. It would appear as though the banhammer has fallen.

Upon hearing that YouTube has decided to shut down its video downloads service for the time being, your first reaction might very well be "Wait, YouTube had a video download service?"

Indeed, it launched in February, and allowed content creators to post both free and paid downloads to YouTube. Apparently, YouTube hasn't quite figured out how to make this scheme profitable. Users who had uploaded to the service received an email saying that current downloads would still be available, but no new downloads can be posted.

Although the beta test of this feature seems to have ended in failure, the language of YouTube's email doesn't rule out some new incarnation of the download service in the future: "We have decided not to fully productize this, for now" (emphasis added). Meanwhile, YouTube is planning to charge for premium streaming content, which was apparently a more lucrative avenue than paid downloads.

[via NewTeeVee]