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1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Mountain View, CA 94043 CA Tel. 650-253-0000 Fax 650-253-0001 |
Type: Subsidiary
On the web:
http://www.youtube.com
YouTube is definitely not your father's method of sharing video footage. The company has amassed a collection of user generated content, thousands of short films and television episodes, and hundreds of full-length movies. Serving more than two billion videos a day, it has become the clear leader in online video sharing. YouTube primarily earns revenue by selling ads on its homepage and search results pages, as well as within its videos. It also charges users to watch certain videos through its YouTube Rentals service. The company was founded in 2005 by Steve Chen (former CTO) and Chad Hurley (former CEO). Today it is a subsidiary of Internet search giant Google.
Officers:
CEO: Salar Kamangar
Director Marketing: Chris Di Cesare
Director Sales: Suzie Reider
Competitors:
Apple Inc.
Hulu
Netflix
A very popular video sharing Web site that lets anyone upload short videos for private or public viewing. Founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, it was acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube is another amazing Internet phenomenon with meteoric growth like Amazon.com, Yahoo, Google and Facebook. Within a couple years, more than 25 quadrillion bytes (petabytes) of videos were being streamed from the site each month.
YouTube provides a venue for sharing videos among friends and family as well as a showcase for new and experienced videographers. Featuring videos it considers entertaining, YouTube has become a destination for ambitious videographers, as well as amateurs who fancy making a statement of some kind. In addition, YouTube emerged as a major venue for excerpts from political speeches. In the 2008 presidential campaign, videos of Barack Obama and John McCain were viewed more than two billion times according to media firm TubeMogul.
Videos are streamed to users from the YouTube site (
Videos Are Converted to Flash
Launched in 2005, YouTube supports AVI, MOV and MPEG video formats from most digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones and recommends DivX or XviD (MPEG-4) at 320x240 resolution for best results. YouTube converts all uploaded videos to Flash video, and users must have the Flash player in their computers to play them. See Divx and XviD.
Download Computer Desktop Encyclopedia to your PC, iPhone or Android.
Incorporated: 2005
NAIC: 517910 Other Telecommunications
SIC: 4899 Communications Services Nec
San Bruno, California-based YouTube, Inc., is the Internet's premier video-sharing service and since 2006 a subsidiary of Google Inc. The YouTube site was created to allow people to easily upload videos in order to share them privately with friends or family, or with the world at large. It has since developed into a vast repository of videos of all sorts, both amateur and professional, including music videos, rare concert footage, old television shows, promotional spots, political commercials, and other newsworthy videos.
As a result of its free-ranging content supplied by users, YouTube has often faced problems with copyright infringement. Because it relies on flash technology that does not permit downloads, YouTube has been able to skirt any major legal problems by simply removing videos at the request of the copyright holder. The company has also reached partnership deals with numerous content providers, including many record labels, CBS, BBC, The Sundance Channel, and the National Basketball Association. After devoting most of its attention to building a community, which in turn built the brand, YouTube is searching for a way to turn a profit, to "monetize" the service by pursuing an advertising-based business model that could include traditional banner advertising as well as sponsorships, contextual-based advertising, and participatory video ads (PVAs). With Google's backing, YouTube is also expanding the brand internationally, setting up locally oriented video-sharing sites in individual countries.
2005 Origins
The genesis of YouTube dates to late 2005, although the circumstances are not altogether clear. What is certain is that the company was founded by three former PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.
The oldest of the three, Hurley grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a financial consultant and a schoolteacher. His interests included business, technology, and art. Hurley enrolled at Indiana University of Pennsylvania where he first majored in computer science, but soon switched to graphic design and printmaking. Along the way he toyed with web design and animation. As he began looking for a job around the time of graduation he read in Wired magazine about PayPal, a new company that was working on a way to allow people to transfer money using wireless devices like cell phones. He e-mailed his resume, was flown in for an interview, and proved his abilities by designing a company logo which remains in use by PayPal. In 1999 he became one of the first 20 people to be hired by the start-up.
Also among that small group of new hires at PayPal was Steve Chen. Born in Taipei in 1978, he came to the United States with his family when he was eight years old. They moved to the Chicago area, where he attended high school as well as a state-funded boarding school, the Illinois Mathematics & Science Academy. To study computer science, he enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which is considered the birthplace of the World Wide Web because it is where Mosaic, the first popular web browser using a graphic interface, was developed. Here he met Max Levchin, a PayPal cofounder, who convinced Chen to leave school early, less than two semesters shy of graduation, to work for PayPal as an engineer.
The third YouTube cofounder, Jawed Karim, was born in East Germany in 1979. His family relocated to West Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1992, settling in St. Paul, Minnesota. His father worked as a chemist at 3M while his mother took a position at the University of Minnesota, becoming a research assistant professor of biochemistry. Karim also enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study computer science, and like Chen in his junior year dropped out to join PayPal in 2000 as an engineer.
Hurley, Chen, and Karim helped in the development of PayPal, and when the company was bought by eBay in October 2002 for $1.5 billion, they became millionaires. Still in their 20s, they were not interested in retirement, however. Hurley left PayPal in 2003 and dabbled with some projects as a design consultant, including designing messenger bags and working on the film Thank You for Smoking, which was partially funded by Levchin. Chen, in the meantime, remained at PayPal in order to help the company launch a site in China, and Karim finished up his undergraduate degree through online classes and credits earned at Santa Clara University.
PayPal employees were a close-knit group. Hurley, Chen, and Karim remained friends and in 2005 began to get together at their homes or at Max's Opera Café near Stanford to brainstorm about new companies they could launch. Where the idea for YouTube came from is somewhat murky. In the most often repeated and polished version of the story, Chen hosted a dinner party in January 2005 at his San Francisco home, one that Karim did not attend. Hurley and Chen took still pictures as well as videos at the gathering. The next day they tried to e-mail the material to their friends, but the large size of the files proved cumbersome. Believing that there must be a better way to share videos over the Internet, they decided to create a better way that could perhaps become a new business. They then brought in Karim to help develop the idea. Karim, on the other hand, claims credit for the idea, maintaining that the seed was planted in 2004 when he had difficulty finding online video of Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show in February of that year as well as amateur videos taken of the Asian tsunami late in 2004.
Regardless of deserved credit for the idea of an online video-sharing site, there is general agreement among the cofounders that all three played important roles in fleshing out the raw idea, initially working out of Hurley's garage in Menlo Park, California. In its earliest incarnation, YouTube was intended to be a dating service, heavily influenced by the web site HOTorNOT.com, a site that allowed users to rate the attractiveness of potential dates. What was cutting edge about HOTorNOT was that users provided the content through uploads. The three partners envisioned a dating site called Tune In Hook Up, which allowed users to upload videos of themselves. After a few weeks the idea was deemed too limiting and was dropped. Another concept that failed to pan out was the hosting of videos for people to use on online auctions, akin to the way PayPal piggybacked on the success of eBay. However, it was also considered too narrow a format and was replaced by the more open-ended concept that became YouTube, allowing users with minimal computer skills to post videos of whatever struck their fancy.
While Hurley designed the site's interface, Chen and Karim handled the engineering responsibilities. As the company's organization took shape, Hurley assumed the chief executive officer role, Chen became technology officer (and continued to work for PayPal for a time), and for a short time, Karim served as president. Early on, however, Karim indicated that he planned to continue his education. Soon after YouTube became operational he left to enroll in a graduate program at Stanford University, in turn accepting a smaller ownership stake in YouTube.
November 2005: Sequoia Capital Invests
YouTube graduated from Hurley's garage and set up shop above a San Mateo pizzeria, funded by Chen's credit cards. In May 2005 YouTube released a beta version with about 30 videos, a large number featuring Chen's cat, P.J. Because of its simplicity, YouTube quickly caught on with users and outpaced similar sites launched by established companies, including Google and Yahoo!. An important catalyst to the site growth was the popularity of MySpace, which had many young users who relied on YouTube as a place to keep their linked videos. It was at this stage that another PayPal veteran, former chief financial officer Roelof Botha became involved in the company. After leaving PayPal he had become a partner at Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm that gained acclaim for its early investments in Apple Computer, Cisco, Google, and Yahoo!. In the summer of 2005 Chen ran into an ex-PayPal executive, Keith Rabois, at a barbecue and showed him the YouTube site. Rabois then told Botha about it, and Botha placed some of his honeymoon videos on the site. He was impressed with the idea for the company, and in August brought in Hurley and Chen to his offices at Sequoia. They began working with Sequoia in refining the company. By September the site was showing more than a million videos a day. The following month, YouTube was plotting strategy at Sequoia's Menlo Park incubator, and in November Sequoia invested $3.5 million in the start-up, to essentially cover the cost of rent, salaries, bandwidth, and servers to host YouTube's activity.
YouTube reached a significant turning point in December 2005 when it eclipsed iFilm, a rival video site, and soon expanded its lead exponentially. Late in the month, a skit called "Lazy Sunday" from NBC's Saturday Night Live was posted to YouTube. The gangsta rap spoof, spread by word of mouth, was viewed about 1.2 million times before the end of the month. During this period Nike also uploaded a promotional video introducing a new pair of shoes featuring Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho. It too exploded across the Internet in a viral manner. To Hurley the popularity of the Nike spot was even more important than "Lazy Sunday." "That was the transition point," he told Brandweek, "when we saw that both professional and user-generated content could be popular with the community as long as it is entertaining." Another factor spurring growth was a blizzard in the Northeast that kept many people home from work and school for almost a week, providing them with plenty of free time to spend on the Internet. Many of them visited YouTube.
Because of increased traffic, YouTube became the obvious place for people to post videos, which drove further usage. A virtuous circle developed, creating ever increasing traffic, but it resulted in something of a "winner's curse" as well. With more videos to store and deliver, it became more expensive to operate YouTube, which at this stage was focused on building a community rather finding a way to make money out of the venture. In January 2006, YouTube displayed some banner advertising as a way to supplement the cost of new equipment and telecom lines, but still refrained from resorting to more aggressive, and potentially lucrative, forms of advertising, in particular the use of "pre-rolls"--short spots that appeared before the running of a requested video.
Another downside to YouTube's sudden popularity was conflict with content providers and Internet rivals. MySpace, for example, blocked YouTube videos on their pages, but quickly backed down when MySpace users vehemently protested. In what was likely a face-saving gesture, MySpace maintained that it blocked YouTube because of concerns about videos containing pornography and that it reactivated YouTube once it received assurances that adequate pornography filters were in place. In truth, YouTube had always banned inappropriate material and quickly removed any that was posted. In addition, many content providers began requesting that copyrighted material be pulled from the site. In February 2006, for example, NBC asked that clips from the Winter Olympics and Jay Leno monologues be removed, along with the popular "Lazy Sunday" video, after it had been viewed on the site about six million times.
To help continue YouTube's growth, Sequoia made a second infusion of cash in April 2006, investing another $8 million. Traffic continued to grow and YouTube took steps to reach agreements with content providers, who began to recognize that YouTube could serve as a showcase for their products. Because the site was tailored for short formats, videos less than 10 minutes in duration, YouTube could help, in theory at least, to promote the sale of DVDs, CDs, and other full-length works. Deals were struck with the likes of MTV Networks, E! Networks, and Dimension Films. Even NBC came around, agreeing to make available video clips promoting their shows.
Google Acquires YouTube: 2006
One of YouTube's chief rivals was Google, which offered its own video-sharing service. According to the Economist, Hurley and Chen in private "had unflattering things to say about Google and its rival, clip-sharing site, Google Video." They were also making public pronouncements that they had no plans to sell YouTube, intent on maintaining the company's independence. For its part, Google had focused on internal growth, indulging only on small acquisitions. Thus, it came as a surprise to many when it was announced in October 2006 that Google was going to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. To some observers it seemed like an incredibly high price for the business, but because Google was flush with cash, possessed an enviable balance sheet, and was using only its highly valuated stock to make the deal, the acquisition made sense in a different way. Because $1.65 billion represented 3 percent of Google's market value, the real question was whether instant market dominance in online video was worth 3 percent of Google.
Clearly, Google executives believed the answer was yes. The benefits to YouTube, which was allowed to operate as an independent unit, were manifold. According to the Economist, "Google's vast and growing computer farms can store information more cheaply than any other firm's. Its main business of search-related advertising is so profitable that it can afford to carry YouTube until meaningful revenues appear. Google has the largest online network of advertisers, whom it can refer to YouTube. It has armies of lawyers that can be deployed to handle copyright suits." Moreover, the sale to Google made its founders multimillionaires and provided windfall profits to Sequoia and its investors.
Google quickly set aside $200 million to cover potential losses or damages stemming from any copyright problems. YouTube also had the funding needed to move out of the space above the pizzeria and into an office building. Moreover, YouTube began taking steps to make more money from the business. In November 2006, it forged its first agreement with a mobile telephone company, Verizon Wireless, to provide YouTube videos to V Cast Music service subscribers, the first in what was expected to be many deals with wireless carriers. In June 2007, YouTube, which was already visited by users from around the world, also made use of Google's deep pockets to begin an international push, setting up YouTube sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Already the company had in place licensing agreements with more than 150 European content providers. "This is just the beginning," Chen told Business Week Online. He continued, "If we had the resources, we would be launching in 140 countries." Given that Google was its corporate parent, there was every reason to believe that if YouTube were successful in establishing its brand in these nine countries the necessary resources would become available for a wider push.
Principal Competitors
IFILM Corporation; Movielink LLC; Yahoo! Video.
Further Reading
Cloud, John, "The YouTube Gurus," Time, December 25, 2006/January 1, 2007, p. 66.
Delaney, Kevin J., "Garage Brand," Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2006, p. A1.
Green, Heather, "Way Beyond Home Videos," Business Week, April 10, 2006, p. 64.
------, "YouTube: Waiting for the Payoff," Business Week, September 18, 2006, p. 56.
Grossman, Lev, "The People's Network," Time, November 13, 2006, p. 62.
Helft, Miguel, "With YouTube, Student Hits Jackpot Again," New York Times, October 12, 2006.
Hopkins, Jim, "Surprise! There's a Third YouTube Co-Founder," USA Today, October 11, 2006.
Lashinsky, Adam, "Turning Viral Videos into a Net Brand," Fortune, May 15, 2006, p. 40.
Lowry, Tom, et al., "Smart Move or Silly Money 2.0?" Business Week, October 23, 2006, p. 34.
Schenker, Jennifer L., "Google Takes YouTube Global," Business Week Online, June 20, 2007.
"Two Kings Get Together; Google and YouTube," Economist, October 14, 2006, p. 82.
Woolley, Scott, "Raw and Random," Forbes, March 13, 2006, p. 46.
— Ed Dinger
| Type | Subsidiary of Google, limited liability company | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | February 14, 2005 | ||
| Founder(s) | Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim | ||
| Headquarters | 901 Cherry Ave, San Bruno, California, United States |
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| Area served | Worldwide | ||
| Key people | Salar Kamangar (CEO) Chad Hurley (Advisor) |
||
| Industry | Internet | ||
| Parent | Independent (2005–2006) Google (2006–present) |
||
| Slogan | Broadcast Yourself | ||
| Website | YouTube.com (see list of localized domain names) |
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| Alexa rank | |||
| Type of site | Video hosting service | ||
| Advertising | Google AdSense | ||
| Registration | Optional (Only required for certain tasks such as viewing flagged videos, viewing flagged comments and uploading videos) | ||
| Available in | 54 language versions available through user interface[2] | ||
| Launched | February 14, 2005 | ||
| Current status | Active | ||
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YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos.[3] The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video and HTML5[4] technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos.
Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, VEVO, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.[5] Unregistered users can watch videos, while registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain offensive content are available only to registered users at least 18 years old. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.
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Contents
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YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.[6] Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[7]
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, while Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible".[8]
YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006.[9] YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.[10] The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.[11]
The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.[12] The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.[13]
YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day.[14] According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of around 43 percent and more than 14 billion videos viewed in May 2010.[15] YouTube says that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the U.S.[16][17][18] The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.[19] It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.[20] Alexa ranks YouTube as the third most visited website on the Internet, behind Google and Facebook.[21]
The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, www.utube.com. The owner of the site, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being overloaded on a regular basis by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www.utubeonline.com.[22][23] In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.[24] Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing.[25] In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at $200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.[26] Visitors to YouTube spend an average of fifteen minutes a day on the site, in contrast to the four or five hours a day spent by a typical U.S. citizen watching television.[19]
In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment, and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney.[27][28] In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners.[29] In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service,[30] which is currently available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK.[31][32] The service offers over 6,000 films.[33]
In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.[34]
On March 31, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented: "We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter."[35] In May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, which it described as "nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined".[36] In May 2011, YouTube reported in its company blog that the site was receiving more than three billion views per day.[17] In January 2012, YouTube stated that the figure had increased to four billion videos streamed per day.[16]
In October 2010, Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role, and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the company.[37]
In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed that 30 percent of videos accounted for 99 percent of views on the site.[38]
In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface.[39] In December 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of social networking sites.[40] At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was introduced with a darker shade of red, the first change in design since October 2006.[41]
Viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer requires the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser. The Adobe Flash Player plug-in is one of the most common pieces of software installed on personal computers and accounts for almost 75% of online video material.[42]
In January 2010, YouTube launched an experimental version of the site that uses the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers supporting the HTML5 standard. This allows videos to be viewed without requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be installed.[43][44] The YouTube site has a page that allows supported browsers to opt in to the HTML5 trial. Only browsers that support HTML5 Video using the H.264 or WebM formats can play the videos, and not all videos on the site are available.[45][46]
All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload videos up-to 12 hours length, which requires verifying the account, normally through a mobile phone.[47] When YouTube was launched in 2005, it was possible to upload long videos, but a ten-minute limit was introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority of videos exceeding this length were unauthorized uploads of television shows and films.[48][49] The 10-minute limit was increased to 15 minutes in July 2010.[50] File size is limited to 2 GB for uploads from YouTube web page, and to 20 GB if up to date browser versions are used.[51]
YouTube accepts videos uploaded in most container formats, including .AVI, .MKV, .MOV, .MP4, DivX, .FLV, and .ogg and .ogv. These include video formats such as MPEG-4, MPEG, VOB, and .WMV. It also supports 3GP, allowing videos to be uploaded from mobile phones.[52] Videos with progressive scanning or interlaced scanning can be uploaded, but for the best video quality, YouTube prefers interlaced videos to be deinterlaced prior to uploading. All the video formats on YouTube use progressive scanning.[53]
YouTube originally offered videos at only one quality level, displayed at a resolution of 320x240 pixels using the Sorenson Spark codec (a variant of H.263),[54][55] with mono MP3 audio.[56] In June 2007, YouTube added an option to watch videos in 3GP format on mobile phones.[57] In March 2008, a high quality mode was added, which increased the resolution to 480x360 pixels[58] In November 2008, 720p HD support was added. At the time of the 720p launch, the YouTube player was changed from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a widescreen 16:9.[59] With this new feature, YouTube began a switchover to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC as its default video compression format. In November 2009, 1080p HD support was added. In July 2010, YouTube announced that it had launched a range of videos in 4K format, which allows a resolution of up to 4096x3072 pixels.[60][61]
YouTube videos are available in a range of quality levels. The former names of standard quality (SQ), high quality (HQ) and high definition (HD) have been replaced by numerical values representing the vertical resolution of the video. The default video stream is encoded in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format, with stereo AAC audio.[62]
| fmt value[1] | 5 | 6 | 34 | 35 | 18 | 22 | 37 | 38 | 83 | 82 | 85 | 84 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 100 | 101 | 46 | 102 | 13 | 17 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Default container | FLV | MP4 | WebM[63] | 3GP | |||||||||||||||||||
| Video | Encoding | Sorenson H.263 | MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) | VP8 | MPEG-4 Visual | ||||||||||||||||||
| Profile | – | Main | Baseline | High | 3D | – | 3D | – | |||||||||||||||
| Resolution progressive | 224p | 270p | 360p | 480p | 360p | 720p | 1080p | 2304p | 240p | 360p | 520p | 720p | 360p | 480p | 720p | 1080p | 360p | 480p | 540p | 720p | – | ||
| Resolution VGA | WQVGA | HVGA | nHD | FWVGA | nHD | WXGA | WUXGA | HXGA | – | nHD | FWVGA | WXGA | WUXGA | – | – | ||||||||
| Max width (pixels) | 400 | 480 | 640 | 854 | 640 | 1280 | 1920 | 4096 | 854 | 640 | 1920 | 1280 | 640 | 854 | 1280 | 1920 | 640 | 854 | 1920 | 1280 | 176 | ||
| Max height (pixels) | 240 | 270 | 360 | 480 | 360 | 720 | 1080 | 3072 | 240 | 360 | 520 | 720 | 360 | 480 | 720 | 1080 | 360 | 480 | 540 | 720 | 144 | ||
| Bitrate[2] (Mbit/s) | 0.25 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 0.8–1 | 0.5 | 2–2.9 | 3–4.3 | 3.5–5 | 0.5 | 2-2.9 | 0.5 | 1 | 2 | – | – | 0.5 | 2 | ||||||
| Audio | Encoding | MP3 | AAC | Vorbis | AAC | ||||||||||||||||||
| Channels | 1–2 | 2 (stereo) | 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Sampling rate (Hz) | 22050 | 44100 | 22050 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Bitrate[2] (kbit/s) | 64 | 128 | 96 | 152 | 96 | 152 | 128 | 192 | 128 | 192 | – | ||||||||||||
^ 1 fmt was an undocumented URL parameter that allowed selecting YouTube quality mode without using player user interface. Since December 2010, this parameter is no longer supported.
^ 2 Approximate values based on statistical data; actual bitrate can be higher or lower due to variable encoding rate.[64][65][66][67]
In a video posted on July 21, 2009,[68] YouTube software engineer Peter Bradshaw announced that YouTube users can now upload 3D videos. The videos can be viewed in several different ways, including the common anaglyph (cyan/red lens) method which utilizes glasses worn by the viewer to achieve the 3D effect.[69][70][71] The YouTube Flash player can display stereoscopic content interleaved in rows, columns or a checkerboard pattern, side-by-side or anaglyph using a red/cyan, green/magenta or blue/yellow combination. In May 2011, an HTML5 version of the YouTube player began supporting side-by-side 3D footage that is compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision.[72]
YouTube offers users the ability to view its videos on web pages outside the site. Each YouTube video is accompanied by a piece of HTML, which can be used to embed it on a page outside the YouTube website. This functionality is often used to embed YouTube videos in social networking pages and blogs.[73] Embedding, as well as ranking and commenting, can be disabled by the video owner.
YouTube does not usually offer a download link for its videos, and intends for them to be viewed through its website interface.[74] A small number of videos, such as the weekly addresses by President Barack Obama, can be downloaded as MP4 files.[75] Numerous third-party web sites, applications and browser plug-ins allow users to download YouTube videos.[76] In February 2009, YouTube announced a test service, allowing some partners to offer video downloads for free or for a fee paid through Google Checkout.[77]
Some smartphones are capable of accessing YouTube videos, dependent on the provider and the data plan. YouTube Mobile was launched in June 2007, using RTSP streaming for the video.[78] Not all of YouTube's videos are available on the mobile version of the site.[79]
Since June 2007, YouTube's videos have been available for viewing on a range of Apple products. This required YouTube's content to be transcoded into Apple's preferred video standard, H.264, a process that took several months. YouTube videos can be viewed on devices including Apple TV, iPod Touch and the iPhone.[80] In July 2010, the mobile version of the site was relaunched based on HTML5, avoiding the need to use Adobe Flash Player and optimized for use with touch screen controls.[81] The mobile version is also available as an app for the Android platform.[82][83]
A TiVo service update in July 2008 allowed the system to search and play YouTube videos.[84] In January 2009, YouTube launched "YouTube for TV", a version of the website tailored for set-top boxes and other TV-based media devices with web browsers, initially allowing its videos to be viewed on the PlayStation 3 and Wii video game consoles.[85][86] In June 2009, YouTube XL was introduced, which has a simplified interface designed for viewing on a standard television screen.[87] YouTube is also available for the Xbox Live.[88]
On June 19, 2007, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in Paris to launch the new localization system.[89] The interface of the website is available with localized versions in 42 countries, one territory (Hong Kong) and a worldwide version.[90][91]
| Country | Language | Launch date |
|---|---|---|
| English (American) | February 15, 2005[89] | |
| Portuguese (Brazil) | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| French | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| English (Ireland) | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Italian | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Japanese | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Dutch | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Polish | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Spanish and Catalan | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| English (United Kingdom) | June 19, 2007[89] | |
| Spanish (Mexico) | October 11, 2007[92] | |
| English and Chinese (Traditional) | October 17, 2007[93] | |
| Chinese (Traditional) | October 18, 2007[94] | |
| English (Australia) | October 22, 2007[95] | |
| English (New Zealand) | October 22, 2007[95] | |
| English (Canada) and French (Canada) | November 6, 2007[96] | |
| German | November 8, 2007[97] | |
| Russian | November 13, 2007[98] | |
| Korean | January 23, 2008[99] | |
| Hebrew | September 16, 2008 | |
| English (India) and Hindi | May 7, 2008[100] | |
| Czech | October 9, 2008[101] | |
| Swedish | October 22, 2008 | |
| English (South African) | May 17, 2010[89] | |
| Spanish (Argentina) | September 8, 2010[90] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| Arabic | March 9, 2011[102] | |
| English (Kenya) and Swahili | October 5, 2011[103] | |
| English (official) and Filipino | October 13, 2011[104] | |
| English (Singapore) | October 20, 2011[105] | |
| French (Belgian), and Dutch (Belgian) | November 16, 2011 | |
| Spanish (Colombia) | November 30, 2011[106] | |
| English (Ugandan) | December 2, 2011[107] | |
| English (Nigerian) | December 7, 2011[108] | |
| Spanish (Chile) | January 20, 2012[109] | |
| Hungarian | February 29, 2012[110] | |
| English (Malaysian) and Malay | March 22, 2012[111] | |
| Spanish (Peru) | March 25, 2012[112] | |
| Arabic and English (UAE) | March 29, 2012[102] |
The YouTube interface suggests which local version should be chosen on the basis of the IP address of the user. In some cases, the message "This video is not available in your country" may appear because of copyright restrictions or inappropriate content.[113]
The interface of the YouTube website is available in 51 different language versions, including Catalan, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian and Slovene, which do not have local channel versions.[2]
Plans for YouTube to create a local version in Turkey have run into problems, since the Turkish authorities asked YouTube to set up an office in Turkey, which would be subject to Turkish law. YouTube says that it has no intention of doing this, and that its videos are not subject to Turkish law. Turkish authorities have expressed concerns that YouTube has been used to post videos insulting to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and some material offensive to Muslims.[114][115]
In March 2009, a dispute between YouTube and the British royalty collection agency PRS for Music led to premium music videos being blocked for YouTube users in the United Kingdom. The removal of videos posted by the major record companies occurred after failure to reach agreement on a licensing deal. The dispute was resolved in September 2009.[116] In April 2009, a similar dispute led to the removal of premium music videos for users in Germany.[117]
YouTube has featured an April Fools prank on the site on April 1 of every year since 2008:
Several countries have blocked access to YouTube, including:
Education authorities in some regions have blocked student access to YouTube, with some state education departments in Australia citing the inability to determine what sort of video material might be accessed.[140]
YouTube was awarded a 2008 Peabody Award and cited for being "a 'Speakers' Corner' that both embodies and promotes democracy".[141][142]
While other video hosting websites had been launched before YouTube in 2005 (including Metacafe in 2003 and Vimeo in 2004), YouTube was conceived to be, in the words of Jawed Karim, a video version of the rating site Hot or Not. Karim commented that Hot or Not was a site "where anyone could upload content that everyone else could view. That was a new concept because up until that point, it was always the people who owned the website who would provide the content." In December 2006, Time magazine wrote: "YouTube is to video browsing what a Wal-Mart Supercenter is to shopping: everything is there, and all you have to do is walk in the door."[8]
An early example of the social impact of YouTube was the success of The Bus Uncle video in 2006. It shows a heated conversation between a youth and an older man on a bus in Hong Kong, and was discussed widely in the mainstream media.[143] Another YouTube video to receive extensive coverage is guitar,[144] which features a performance of Pachelbel's Canon on an electric guitar. The name of the performer is not given in the video. After it received millions of views The New York Times revealed the identity of the guitarist as Lim Jeong-hyun, a 23-year-old from South Korea who had recorded the track in his bedroom.[145] This video has since been removed from YouTube.[146]
Charlie Bit My Finger, which was uploaded on May 22, 2007, is a viral video that has received the most views of any user-generated YouTube video, with over 300 million views.[147][148][149] The clip features two English brothers, with one-year-old Charlie biting the finger of his brother Harry, aged three.[150] In Time's list of YouTube's 50 greatest viral videos of all time, "Charlie Bit My Finger" was ranked at number one.[151]
Entertainment Weekly placed YouTube on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, describing it as: "Providing a safe home for piano-playing cats, celeb goof-ups, and overzealous lip-synchers since 2005."[152]
YouTube has a set of community guidelines aimed to reduce abuse of the site's features. Generally prohibited material includes sexually explicit content, videos of animal abuse, shock videos, content uploaded without the copyright holder's consent, hate speech, spam, and predatory behaviour.[153] Despite the guidelines, YouTube has faced criticism from news sources for content in violation of these guidelines.
At the time of uploading a video, YouTube users are shown a screen with the message "Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or advertisements without permission, unless they consist entirely of content that you created yourself".[154] Despite this advice, there are still many unauthorized clips of copyrighted material on YouTube. YouTube does not view videos before they are posted online, and it is left to copyright holders to issue a takedown notice pursuant to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Three successful complaints for copyright infringement against a user account will result in the account and all of its uploaded videos being deleted.[155][156]
Organizations including Viacom, Mediaset, and the English Premier League have filed lawsuits against YouTube, claiming that it has done too little to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material.[157][158][159] Viacom, demanding $1 billion in damages, said that it had found more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of its material on YouTube that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times". YouTube responded by stating that it "goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works".[160] During the same court battle, Viacom won a court ruling requiring YouTube to hand over 12 terabytes of data detailing the viewing habits of every user who has watched videos on the site. The decision was criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which called the court ruling "a setback to privacy rights".[161][162] In June 2010, Viacom's lawsuit against Google was rejected in a summary judgment, with U.S. federal Judge Louis L. Stanton stating that Google was protected by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Viacom announced its intention to appeal the ruling.[163]
On April 5, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated the case, allowing Viacom's lawsuit against Google to be heard in court again.[164]
In August 2008, a US court ruled in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. that copyright holders cannot order the removal of an online file without first determining whether the posting reflected fair use of the material. The case involved Stephanie Lenz from Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, who had made a home video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy", and posted the 29-second video on YouTube.[165]
In the case of Smith v. Summit Entertainment LLC, Matt Smith sued Summit Entertainment for the wrongful use of copyright takedown notice on YouTube. He asserted seven causes of action, and four were ruled in Smith's favor.[166]
In April 2012, a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held responsible for copyrighted material posted by its users. The performance rights organization GEMA argued that YouTube had not done enough to prevent the uploading of German copyrighted music. YouTube responded by stating: "We remain committed to finding a solution to the music licensing issue in Germany that will benefit artists, composers, authors, publishers and record labels, as well as the wider YouTube community".[167]
In June 2007, YouTube began trials of a system for automatic detection of uploaded videos that infringe copyright. The system was regarded by Google CEO Eric Schmidt as necessary for resolving lawsuits such as the one from Viacom, which alleged that YouTube profited from pirated content.[168] The system, which became known as Content ID, creates a ID File for copyrighted audio and video material, and stores it in a database. When a video is uploaded, it is checked against the database, and flags the video as a copyright violation if a match is found. When this occurs, the content owner has the choice of blocking the video to make it unviewable, tracking the viewing statistics of the video, or adding advertisements to the video. YouTube describes Content ID as "very accurate in finding uploads that look similar to reference files that are of sufficient length and quality to generate an effective ID File".[169] Content ID accounts for over a third of the monetized views on YouTube.[170]
An independent test in 2009 uploaded multiple versions of the same song to YouTube, and concluded that while the system was "surprisingly resilient" in finding copyright violations in the audio tracks of videos, it was not infallible.[171] The use of Content ID to remove material automatically has led to controversy in some cases, as the videos have not been checked by a human for fair use.[172] If a YouTube user disagrees with a decision by Content ID, it is possible to fill in a form disputing the decision.[173] YouTube has cited the effectiveness of Content ID as one of the reasons why the site's rules were modified in December 2010 to allow some users to upload videos of unlimited length.[174]
YouTube has also faced criticism over the offensive content in some of its videos. The uploading of videos containing defamation, pornography, and material encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited by YouTube's terms of service.[153] Controversial areas have included Holocaust denial and the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 football fans from Liverpool were crushed to death in 1989.[175][176]
YouTube relies on its users to flag the content of videos as inappropriate, and a YouTube employee will view a flagged video to determine whether it violates the site's terms of service.[153] In July 2008, the Culture and Media Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom stated that it was "unimpressed" with YouTube's system for policing its videos, and argued that "proactive review of content should be standard practice for sites hosting user-generated content". YouTube responded by stating:
We have strict rules on what's allowed, and a system that enables anyone who sees inappropriate content to report it to our 24/7 review team and have it dealt with promptly. We educate our community on the rules and include a direct link from every YouTube page to make this process as easy as possible for our users. Given the volume of content uploaded on our site, we think this is by far the most effective way to make sure that the tiny minority of videos that break the rules come down quickly.[177]
In October 2010, U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner urged YouTube to take down from its website videos of imam Anwar al-Awlaki, saying that by hosting al-Awlaki's messages, "We are facilitating the recruitment of homegrown terror".[178] British security minister Pauline Neville-Jones commented: "These Web sites would categorically not be allowed in the U.K. They incite cold-blooded murder, and as such are surely contrary to the public good." In November 2010, YouTube removed from its site some of the hundreds of videos featuring al-Awlaki's calls to jihad. It stated that it had removed videos that violated the site's guidelines prohibiting "dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts", or came from accounts "registered by a member of a designated foreign terrorist organization".[179] In December 2010, YouTube added "promotes terrorism" to the list of reasons that users can give when flagging a video as inappropriate.[180]
Most videos enable users to leave comments, and these have attracted attention for the negative aspects of both their form and content. When Time in 2006 praised Web 2.0 for enabling "community and collaboration on a scale never seen before", it added that YouTube "harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred".[181] The Guardian in 2009 described users' comments on YouTube as follows:
Juvenile, aggressive, misspelled, sexist, homophobic, swinging from raging at the contents of a video to providing a pointlessly detailed description followed by a LOL, YouTube comments are a hotbed of infantile debate and unashamed ignorance – with the occasional burst of wit shining through.[182]
In September 2008, The Daily Telegraph commented that YouTube was "notorious" for "some of the most confrontational and ill-formed comment exchanges on the internet", and reported on YouTube Comment Snob, "a new piece of software that blocks rude and illiterate posts".[183]
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