What if YouTube died tomorrow?
Friday, March 07, 2008
More than 77 million users watched roughly 3.2 billion videos on YouTube last December, according to a recent comScore report. There are no clear estimates of the number of embedded YouTube videos floating around the web, but it is safe to say that if the de facto file sharing service crashed tomorrow, a lot of blogs and news sites, including 10,000 words, would suffer greatly.
So, similar to preparation for a natural disaster, here are some alternatives that let users upload and embed video. Veoh, Moonk, Dailymotion, blip.tv and many other sites (more from WebWare and Mashable) do the same thing for free.
Its worth noting that YouTube is just now starting to roll out higher resolution video, but most of the clips on the site are still of poor quality, especially next to its competitors.
If embedded YouTube videos of copyrighted work find their way onto your site and the page is still receiving traffic, it is wise to go back and check periodically to see that the video has been taken down by site administrators.
In honor of YouTube, here is one of my new favorites: I Met the Walrus, an inspiring, Academy Award-nominated film by director Josh Raskin. Watch it before it gets taken down.
So, similar to preparation for a natural disaster, here are some alternatives that let users upload and embed video. Veoh, Moonk, Dailymotion, blip.tv and many other sites (more from WebWare and Mashable) do the same thing for free.
Its worth noting that YouTube is just now starting to roll out higher resolution video, but most of the clips on the site are still of poor quality, especially next to its competitors.
If embedded YouTube videos of copyrighted work find their way onto your site and the page is still receiving traffic, it is wise to go back and check periodically to see that the video has been taken down by site administrators.
In honor of YouTube, here is one of my new favorites: I Met the Walrus, an inspiring, Academy Award-nominated film by director Josh Raskin. Watch it before it gets taken down.
Labels: video
