The Utube Blog

Very cool.

News: This has been coming for some time, but its arrival is no less jarring. YouTube has announced today that its launching a new destination to air TV shows, and beefing up its site for movies.

The move is one of many that YT has made in recent months to generate more advertising revenue on content that corporations are more likely to feel comfortable in using, compared to the edgier user-generated content. In a different deal, YouTube has partnered with Universal Music to create a music video site called Vevo. (more)

Analysis: YouTube is copying the business strategy of the popular Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and FOX. Hulu has TV shows and movies, but no user-generated content. I think Hulu is fantastic, and thought so when it first came out. But now it appears to becoming the “YouTube killer” that it was first touted to be.

It will be very interesting to see if YouTube focuses even less on user-generated content in the future. And whether YouTubers revolt. It may be that the fascination with amateur videos has died down (along with the number of brilliant UGC videos or new talent). If so, YouTube does not to be sustaining its business somehow, in order to subsidize all the millions of amateur videos stored on YT servers.

News: Sometimes YouTube does things that are so stupid. All of sudden, every video embedded from YouTube has a cheap, tacky looking title that appears at the top of the still image for the video. Ugly.

Analysis: If YouTube changes things in such a major way, it shouldn’t apply those changes retroactively, giving users no choice of the matter, especially when the changes look terrible.

News: YouTube is now No.2 in search, surpassing even Yahoo! Google, of course, is 1st. NYT has a fascinating article about the growing use of YouTube as a reference tool, especially among kids. Alex Iskold blogged about this topic under the arresting title, “Is YouTube the next Google?”

Here are the HD videos. Click on a video and then press the “watch in HD” button.

Here’s what YT said on its blog:

“Starting today, if you click the “watch in HD” option below any HD-enabled video, the video will automatically play in widescreen – so you can find out where the hell Matt is in glorious HD, if you so wish. As part of this launch, we have created an HD Videos area where you can browse videos uploaded in the HD format. In anticipation of your questions – including how to encode your videos to take advantage of this new feature and how to avoid the dreaded “windowboxing” – we have prepared an FAQ in the Help Center. Hopefully you’ll find any technical information you need there, but feel free to post follow-up questions to the YouTube Community Help Forums.”

Analysis: Wow. The video quality is fantastic. An YouTube has the LARGEST video player I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, my broadband connection can’t really handle the file size, so it starts and stops. But this does make my HD camera more useful!!

News: YouTube recently switched to a widescreen video player on its site. On YTs own blog, it appears that the embeddable videos will also preserve the widescreen format. The function doesn’t work yet for users, but take a look at how YT has embedded this video on its blog in widescreen.

News: YouTube has lagged behind other video sites in terms of the quality of their videos. For 3 years, YT has preferred to have grainy video quality, which can download more quickly and thus be viewed very quickly. As others have reported, YT has now started selectively allowing some videos on HD. For example, you can select “Watch in HD” for President Obama’s video here.

Analysis: YouTube clearly is embarking on a different strategy aimed at professional and premium content from Hollywood and elsewhere. The change in video player to wide format was the first step. HD is the second step. One problem with HD, though, is that it takes a longer time to download, so it may not play smoothly on the typical Internet connection. Instead, the video stops and starts, while downloading.

News: YouTube has just announced that it has struck a deal with Rumblefish to provide thousands of music files for free synching into YouTube videos. This builds on YT’s existing AudioSwap program, which was very thin in offerings.

News: Michael Arrington details here the design changes to YouTube’s homepage and the “search bar” that now pops up in the embedded YouTube video player. Arrington doesn’t like the changes, saying the search bar “uglifies” the video player and that he doesn’t love the home page changes.

You can see the search bar pop up in this video by watching it:

Analysis: I don’t like the design changes to the home page, either; looks clunkier and boxier at the top with the header. I don’t like the look of the new search bar, either, but it’s obvious what YouTube is trying to do. It’s basically making YouTube videos a portable Google search for YouTube videos. Every embedded YT video now can be used to search the entire database of YouTube. Not sure this is a moneymaker that Google covets, and I’m sure some, if not many, in the YouTube community will not like this blot on the YouTube player’s look.

So one of the big developments since YouTube Live is that YouTube has changed its video player to widescreen.  Wow!  Amazing.  The standard 4:3 videos on YouTube still play, but they don’t fill up the screen anymore.  Embedding a YT video on a different site still appears to be  in 4:3 format.

If you want to see a sample of the new widescreen, click here.

Click here for the live streaming

Akon, will.i.am, Esmee Denters, LisaNova, Chad Vader, and others!

News:  In the past month, YouTube has announced several major initiatives in order to generate more revenues from the business-maligned video sharing site.   YouTube has already announced several deals with Hollywood studios and content producers to feature “premium” content on YouTube, much like the FOX-NBC Universal site hulu.  YT will also deploy live event webcasting.   Today, YouTube has announced a “sponsored video” program that allows advertisers to pick videos on YouTube for their ads, with keyword searchability.  A YT user can enter search terms on YT and then “sponsored videos” will be given notice along with other entries, just as in a Google search.  (More)  YouTube even set up an Advertising channel for itself.

Analysis:  Brilliant move.  Instead of having to have your video “go viral” on YouTube, you can now just pay money and get a better chance of getting noticed.  This “sponsored video” program sounds like a moneymaker.

News:  YouTube is striking more content deals with Hollywood — MGM, Lionsgate, CBS, + European Fremantle — to show full length shows and movies on YouTube.   Rumors are that YouTube is seeking similar deals with Sony and Time Warner. (More)

Analysis:  It will be very interesting to see if YouTube settles its lawsuit with Viacom (and the class action).  As the economy tightens, YouTube may become more focused on business development and generating revenues.  On the other hand, getting a judgment on the DMCA safe harbor, if successful, would be worth a lot to YT.