Comments on: Is YouTube a flash in the pan?

Video-sharing site may be riding popularity wave, but where's the money? IDC report says it won't likely appear.

[gubbord]

The entire premise of this article is wrong from the bottom up

The same article could be written about Google and Craigslist frankly and were many times.

Youtube is selling vlogging social networking. Its users are not about to switch because there are ads on the pages they browse through.

Beyond the ads, which will be forthcoming with a sweet audience of teens and 20 somethings for advertisers to feast on, youtube can sell content just like google video can. Mixing in episodes of tv shows will be a nice cash bonus, though the pay content is hardly going to take over the site. It's easy enough to set up a running tab of popular content for youtube to market.

[Bellinger]

Fear of the New

YouTube has essentially the same architecture as MySpace, and
the last time I checked the latter was doing just fine with their
ads, despite the continued free membership.

According to CNET News (sorry if
that comes out like a bunch of code): ?Click fraud is perpetrated
in both automated and human ways. The most common method
is the use of online robots, or "bots," programmed to click on
advertisers' links that are displayed on Web sites or listed in
search queries. A growing alternative employs low-cost workers
who are hired in China, India and other countries to click on text
links and other ads. A third form of fraud takes place when
employees of companies click on rivals' ads to deplete their
marketing budgets and skew search results.?

Advertisers gaining money from Google Adwords from a
Metallica search on YouTube isn?t click-fraud. If that were click-
fraud, then every instance, every mention of somebody?s
trademarked and copyrighted name would have to be
considered for some compensation.

The fact that the "channel" being watched is pirated does not
mean that the ad revenue potentially earned from that same
search is illegitimate.

Besides, YouTube is fun. They'll have to be stealthy with their
ads though. Maybe cleverly placed videos that are actually ads.

[thedreaming]

Video piracy in google

There's a human need to communicate with each other and we use every medium available to us, from talking to the phone, chatting using an im program, listening to the same music, or even watching the same video clips. In the end, young people don't know that it's wrong and old people simply don't care.

The price of a pirate free youtube is eternal maintenance. They would have to constantly be searching and removing any content that's copyrighted, leaving only the amateur videos. It's not an impossible task, just very time consuming and in the end, expensive. After all, they'll have to hire someone to sit there 9-5 and flag videos for deletion.

Another solution would be a screening process that must be finished by human eyes. Someone would have to watch the video and ok the contents. It would slow the addition of videos to the website, but they would be able to screen out pirated content as it comes into the system.

[emehrkay]

36 million dollars

...is the amount that youtube has reportedly raised in funding. how did they do this without a business model?

[tsm26]

Amazing

That was one of the funniest paranoid conspiratorial rants I have read in awhile. Thanks for the laugh. Oh and by the way, the amateur videos are the most popular clips by far on the video sharing sites, not the pirated ones you go went ape about. The most paranoid and judgemental people are usually the ones who have never seen or know about the people/places/things that they are complaining about.

[tsm26]

Whoops

Meant to put my comment under the "thousands of google ads" comment. I really wish they would allow the writers to edit or at least move their comments.....oh well.

[Montevale]

Comparing it to Napster's demise is plain RETARDED

There is no such thing as bad publicity. They own 40% of the market, the name is sinonimous (did I spell that right?) with video-on-the-web.
Napster was not abandoned because it was trying to go legit. It was KILLED first then it was attempted to be resurrected from the ashes, however by the time they got their sh*t togeter there were already too many sharing services and the iTunes took the crown.