All of a Sudden, YouTube is Interesting Again
June 9th, 2008 by Alec McNayrPosted in Advertising, Business, Community, Online | 1 Comment »
Is it just me, or has YouTube woken up and gotten innovative?
Just a year and a half ago, the YouTube “most viewed” page was the go-to place to find the hottest viral videos, trends, and water-cooler “did you see that one with the ______” moments.
Of late, YouTube seems to be a smoldering cauldron of snarky sex advice, sexy etymology,
steroidweight-lifting videos, Ze Frank wannabes, and the NBA. Hardly a compelling collection of content.Sure it’s hard to keep relevant when hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded to your site every month, but YouTube has unveiled some nice tools in the past few months, and it’s worth mentioning. Combined with the largest slice of the online video audience, these new services could keep YouTube relevant as TV (as we know it) continues its slow march to death.
- Distribution: New Panasonic TVs include YouTube videos
- Layering Content: Annotations allows a creator to add his or her own layered text and comments right on top of the video
- Analytics: YouTube Insight provides data on viewer demographics, referrals, and location
- Advertising: YouTube recently announced that they are allowing creators to sell their own ads
- Higher Quality: Viewers can view higher quality versions of videos
- Downloading: Unofficial hacks allow anyone to download YouTube vids
These may not solve the content cesspool that is YouTube, but it certainly could draw creators back to the site for something other than “audience generation.”
PS — SMPFilms did one of the most creative YouTube applications I’ve seen in a while: a choose your own adventure style video series. The content (he’s looking for his cat) is lame, but the use of the YouTube interface is great.
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