historical roots of the Academy Awards

Written by on April 10, 2011 to industry structure

The average quality of YouTube videos is as good as the quality of pioneering films. Charlie bit my finger tops boxing cats.


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YouTube is like Kodak a century ago

Written by on March 27, 2011 to industry structure

YouTube is to video today what Kodak was to photography a century ago: providing a technological platform for user content creation.


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understanding YouTube comments

Written by on January 9, 2011 to citizen journalism

This YouTube video of mine prompted the following comment (quoted in its entirety): “this is real gay.” Does that mean that the video is fabulous?


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captions: helping users, helping yourself

Written by on November 23, 2008 to industry structure

YouTube now supports video captions.  Captions are uploaded as a separate text file.  YouTube also provides automatic translation of these captions into many languages.  Web tools for creating caption files are free and easy to use.  I recently used overstream to create captions for a docudrama some friends and I made.  Making captions takes time [...]


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YouTube's new business model

Written by on August 31, 2008 to industry structure

YouTube’s Video ID technology points to an important new business model.   Video ID finds copyrighted content that has been uploaded to YouTube.  It then gives the copyright holder the choice to block, promote, or monetize that content.  Copyright holders benefit from being able to exploit free, decentralized distribution and promotion of their work.  Google/YouTube benefits [...]


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stories largely missing in online video

Written by on June 1, 2008 to industry structure

While stories are staples of television programming, the most popular YouTube videos are predominately music videos from major record labels. Among the all-time most viewed YouTube channels, the leader is the Universal Music Group channel. That channel has about as many views as the total of the nine next highest viewed channels, all but one [...]


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video searching and ad targeting

Written by on March 16, 2008 to industry structure

Searching video is notoriously difficult. That implies a scaling problem for a large video repository like YouTube. Given relatively fixed amounts of video tagging and category information, more videos imply relatively less information for searching among videos and targeting ads to videos. YouTube’s announcement of new APIs for external use of the YouTube video platform [...]


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taking rights seriously

Written by on April 1, 2007 to organizational behavior

False or excessively broad claims to rights, if taken seriously, could have devastating effects on content businesses. For example, U.S. National Football League (NFL) broadcasts include the following statement: This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or [...]


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YouTube's success

Written by on October 22, 2006 to industry structure

How has YouTube succeeded? YouTube makes uploading and sharing videos free and easy. It has hosted some popular high-quality clips and stimulated calls for a copyright-brawl-of-the-millennium. These are well-recognized aspects of YouTube. But consider the outpouring of sympathy for Martin. YouTube has also succeeded as an innovative communications service. Social networks and communications services are [...]


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YouTube and indecency

Written by on March 9, 2006 to organizational behavior

No nudity, no violence, no profanity — can you f@$%^&* believe this $#^+! YouTube has declared that the Galbi Brother’s Epic 800-Meter Challenge video “may contain content that is inappropriate for some users.” So they want all the sports fans to register before they watch the video (also available without registration here and here). Indecency [...]


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