In recent weeks, Joost has gotten a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It’s the latest creation by the founders of Kazaa and Skype. As indicated in this comment:
With Joost not planning to include any user generated content on it’s service, just movies and tv shows, it may well become the legitimate place to watch tv online.
That pretty much sums up the plans for online TV domination that Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, from Joost, have.
Where do you think online TV is heading?
When I read the headline, I clicked. Since the purchase of YouTube by Google, everyone began to expect the law suits to pour in… and they’ve started, but not the way most of us thought they would.
The producer of “The World According to Bush” has taken legal action against Google for distributing the film for free.
What’s “special” about this event is that it’s not YouTube that was hosting the infringing movie, it was Google Video! And if you think that is an isolated case, consider this other case against Google in Italy, that made headlines last week. Again, not against YouTube and coming from Europe.
Makes you think, considering the significantly smaller “inventory” Google Video had, what’s in store in the coming months for Google, in terms of law suits for content on YouTube. Anyone want to put a price tag on that? I don’t know, but my bet is that we’ll be seeing this headline quite often in the near future.
Well, seems like Mark Cuban got this one wrong. A matter of days after the rumors about a potential Google purchase of YouTube hit the blogosphere, the Search Engine giant announced today the all-stock deal, whereby Google will be snapping YouTube for $1.65 billion, making it its most expensive purchase yet.
Still, Cuban posted on his blog today, claiming he still thinks Google is crazy. He’s (still) got some very valid points but, like he does when he goes nuts in a game, he’s not shutting up when he should. He’s probably getting some nice (unintended) publicity from making this much fuzz about the takeover. Not that he needs it… or does he?
Now, more important: what will come out of this?
-Google will be able to take #1 spot in the online video market, one of the most exciting areas on the web nowadays. Considering how much community building they were missing with Google Video and how much of a community YouTube had going, they are going to be winning here.
-YouTube, besides the financial muscle Google can bring, will probably benefit too from the higher quality streaming capabilities that Google can offer. I have posted numerous videos to both platforms consistently getting much nicer results (in terms of streaming and video quality) with Google Video than with YouTube.
I am sure I am missing other benefits, as well as some other difficulties, like the one pointed out here. Any other comments? Is anybody else excited about this besides me? 
P.S. Thanks to my friend Mechie for the heads up instants after the news was announced.
I guess that’s the echo that resonates from Mark Cuban’s comment earlier in the week, when he said “Only a ‘moron’ would buy YouTube”, after learning about Google apparently showing interest in buying the main stop for video on the web for roughly $1.6 billion.
Seems like YouTube may not suffer the fate of Napster after all, huh? 
Mark Cuban is a very savvy entrepreneur. I admire him quite a bit. So, when he posted in his blog last week, talking about his take on the future of YouTube I couldn’t help but listen.
It’s not like everything he’s predicted has turned out to be true, but he makes some excellent points in his post, including the comparison he draws between the online streamed video giant and Napster. I must say, back in the day (2000), I wrote an article on the future of Napster when it was a hot cake (I need to dig it up, it was written for the portal I used to work for back then). I predicted that it would go away… and it did, to later come back under new “ownership”, to not do too well, and now be “FOR SALE” again (rumors about Google taking it over are flying).
But today, I am not entirely sure that YouTube is in for the same fate as Napster. You gotta give it to Mark that indeed the copyright violations in YouTube abound and that beginning to enforce massive claims from labels and studios to remove content from the site could get quite expensive for them. However, I thought it was interesting to note that Mark’s copyright infringement examples were more about the illegal use of copyrighted music than the posting of portions of TV Show Episodes, etc. Indeed, I feel if YouTube needed to fear any “entity”, the RIAA would have to be it, more than any studios. Hollywood seems to be getting it far more than RIAA ever got it, like this comment on Mark’s blog points out:
Who is going to sue YouTube? NBC? Showtime? Paris Hilton?
They already have their own channels in the site:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=showtime
So, I have a couple of questions to stir up discussion about this:
-Wouldn’t it be equally prohibitive for RIAA members to enforce the copyrights they hold by going through all videos posted on YouTube, to tell infringing videos from perfectly legal user-generated material? (this is something I am going to try to get an IP expert to comment on)
-The essence of copyright has to do with making sure you don’t take value away from the original material, like you would by sharing MP3s from an album, resulting in one less purchase of the album (or the tracks, for the matter). If this is the case, I wonder how much value would a video of my son singing “Crazy” take away from the copyright holders, due to the low quality of the sound in the video. I mean, it’s not like someone is going to save the crappy version of “Crazy” in my video to save themselves the 99 cents it’s going to cost them to get a crisp-sounding track from iTunes.
So, what do you think? I know I am not quite answering the question about YouTube’s future. I just DO NOT think it will suffer the same fate as Napster. Plus too: at the time Napster went down, Google Ads (which now populate YouTube) were nowhere to be found as revenue sources for high-volumne sites like YouTube. Still, I wonder if the money they get back from Google is enough to help them pay their hosting and streaming bills.
A while back I was reading about her. Just like with Rocketboom (though not focused on “news” really), and with barely 31 videos posted in YouTube, LonelyGirl turned into a true cult phenomenon. This homeschooled girl (who goes by the name of Bree) incarnates a misunderstood teenager, victim of strictly religious parents. In her rebellion she put together a video blog that picked up fire as thousands began to follow it.
In recent weeks, diverse reports surfaced that hinted at the possibility that the video blog was a fake. Yesterday, the myth was debunked as the creators of this new breed of Blair Witch Project came out, and today, Jessica Lee Rose, the 19-year old actress that plays the part of 16-year old Bree also spoke about her newfound fame (something that -though not prepared for- she was working for very hard).
What I find interesting about this whole deal is how outraged some people feel now about “discovering” that the whole thing was not something spontaneous from the beginning. Frank Krasicki, from Blogcritics, presents an interesting view on this topic. He says:
“The videolets whose theme was lonelygirl15 are today being called a fraud. But I disagree. Our social interactions in day-to-day life are no more manipulative than anything these videos performed.”
I agree with him. I go a little further: this is actually better than the pseudo-truths and half journalistic reports we’re permanently spoon fed in the form of news by the news networks, which lots of people would be willing to live and die for as being the reality “out there”, while news anchors and editors only answer to financial and political interests in the background. At least these people (the ones that were behind the video blog) came out into the light…
Anyway: ‘nuf drama for a night. Since lonelygirl15 is not so lonely any more, below is one of her last videos before getting “busted”, so you can get a feel for what this whole thing was about if you hadn’t seen it by now:
Haven’t used it (don’t own a video iPod, unfortunately), but I thought I’d share it with my iPod Video friends: a YouTube video converter for the iPod.
This is an article I contributed to. It will be posted tomorrow in Full Sail’s Student Portal (sorry, it’s password-protected). The reference to the purchase of the iPod Video is not mine: it was the other contributor who bought it!
The image it is going along with was designed by Mat Giordan0.
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I couldn’t help myself anymore. I bought an iPod Video over Spring Break. After I was done copying all of my music, I decided to search for some video podcasts to watch on it as well. Without realizing it, I had joined a growing community that is further threatening the business model that the major TV networks are based on. First it was Digital Video Recorders. Now Video Blogs (or Vlogs, as they are known on the Web) are dragging people’s short attention span and giving everyone with a low tolerance for commercials a new reason to stare away from the big screen.
The first person to actually create a Vlog was Adrian Miles, in late 2000. At the time, the idea wasn’t something that the general public was interested in, or had been educated about, nor were there enough high-speed connections around to create a large enough market for this bandwidth-hungry content form. By 2004, technology had finally reached a level where Vlogs were easy to produce and distribute, with the iPod Video as the piece of hardware most responsible for creating the Vlogging craze.
From tech news to comedy, Vlogs like Amanda Congdon’s Rocketboom, Kevin Rose’s Diggnation and AskANinja.com rank at the top of the Video Blog crop, available in multiple formats for on-screen viewing or to take along in your iPod or phone. Some of the sites serve their own video content while others resort to existing aggregators such as Current TV, YouTube, and Google Video. These sites allow users to upload almost any type of videos (minus porn of course) and share them with the rest of the Net.
How Do Vlogs Work?
The concept is similar to that of a blog, but using video instead of text- (and image-based) posts alone. The Vlogger needs a few extra pieces of hardware: a camera and (preferably) a dedicated microphone separate from the one most cameras have. Extra lights help: forget about the dim-lit webcam shot where you can barely see the person’s face if you are going to get serious about this.
Once you’ve shot your video, you need to compress it and make it available for viewing. Pre-loaded software in Macs (iMovie) and PC machines (Windows Movie Maker) does the trick of getting movie size down to a reasonable point (except, of course, if you want to go pro, which may cost you more to get the better video encoders). For serving the movies, if you use your own hosting, you will need a VERY decent amount of server space over time, if you are to post a 30-40 MB video every other day. So, the inexpensive route is to go with YouTube or other video aggregators, like many of the most successful blogs do today, and embed the video in your blog using the HTML code they provide you with.
At the end of the day, when all technology questions have been answered, there is no substitute for a good story to be told… so your writing skills from your blogging days and your creativity will still remain essential. (Or, at the very least, you must be entertaining.) Proof of this is the success achieved by the Two Chinese Boys whose lip-sync performance of “I Want It That Way” and other songs have earned them world recognition and the über-famous “MySpace – The Movie” by David Lehre.
In the meantime, until you start your own video blog, if you have a favorite site or video podcast you want to share, post about it here.