I recently noticed that many of the “channels” I subscribe to on Youtube have made no updates for 9 months, a year or more. I just went through and deleted 30% of my subscribed channels because they are no longer posting videos to Youtube.
Wow. That’s quite a few. And it is worse than it looks because I kept subscriptions to several channels as bookmarks to some of their past videos – but many have not posted anything new in a year or more.
Youtube is definitely changing and it seems to be in the very early phase of turning into a new fangled Cable TV-like content distribution system. Youtube is resembling a Pareto distribution where a relatively few content providers account for the majority of views.
Category Archives: Online
Youtube's 3D Video Player is Now Working Again
Since September 30th, the ability to select 3D viewing options has been turned off on Youtube as Youtube appeared to have forced all to use the HTML5 video player, which does not support 3D.
Today, every browser I have tested- except Chrome – is back to using the Flash-based video player, which supports 3D, by default.
Some said this was due to something in Firefox version 33, which was just released but there is nothing in their release notes suggesting this new release had anything to do with the restoration of 3D. Further, the Flash-based 3D player is now appearing in Internet Explorer, Opera for Windows and Mac OS X, Firefox for Windows and Mac OS X, and Safari for Mac OS X. The only browser that does not support 3D is Google’s own Chrome browers that continues to rely on the HTML5 video player.
There has been no official word from anyone as to what they are doing with this back and forth changing of the video player, the dropping of the 3D feature and now the restoration of the 3D video player. We hope the 3D feature remains available but will Google decide in 2 weeks to make another random change and break it?
Fascinating article about Youtube stars' business models
Is YouTube Risking A Creative Exodus? ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community.
It’s getting hard for many of them to make the money needed to fund their production efforts based on Youtube ad revenue, alone.
Musicians make their money primarily by selling their music outside of Youtube (e.g. iTunes) – and use Youtube for the promotion of the music.
For others, the “stars” are branching out with sponsorships and paid product placements (a lot of videos now have hidden ad placement – some like the endless fashion/hair/makeup videos targeted at tweens through age 20 or so feature products the star was paid to show), merchandising and the latest is books, movies and even TV deals. Others, like Devin Graham, do sponsored videos that get shared with his millions of subscribers, featuring people having fun with products and services. He just announced he’s off to Istanbul courtesy of Turkish Airlines (and then probably other destinations as well).
Youtube is rapidly turning into something other than what it has been. Whether it ends up in a good place only time will tell. Obviously, Youtube and its content creators cannot sit still.
Yahoo might use Tumbler as a way to compete with Youtube. Hmmm.
Related articles
How to get more photo views on Flickr
Researchers used a computer-based system to analyze millions of photos for various characteristics and how they may correlate with total views on Flickr.
Where your photo appears within a page of photos (e.g. upper left or middle) can impact its viewership. Of course, so too does the content of the photo.
The presence or absence of certain objects is effective “for predicting popularity”.
“Some of the most common objects present in images are: seashore, lakeside, sandbar, valley, volcano”.
They note their classification of image objects may be incorrect at times, but arrive at the following “impacts” of various objects in photos:
- Strong positive impact: miniskirt, maillot [swimsuit], bikini, cup, brassiere, perfume, revolver
- Medium positive impact: cheetah, giant panda, basketball, llama, plow, ladybug
- Low positive impact: wild boar, solar dish, horsecart, guacamole, catamaran
- Negative impact: spatula, plunger, laptop, golfcart, space heater
via www2014_khosla.pdf.
Other recommendations, from other sources, are to post 1 to 5 photos each day (photo streams show 1 or 5 photos only), and make the last photo uploaded in a group as your best, most eye catching photo (due to how photos are arranged in the photo stream). Tag all photos with search terms and add descriptive text. Cross post photos to groups. And of course, add descriptive texts.
Lisa Bettany made a blog post saying that #1 is to have an out focus background, #2 is to have lens flare, #3 is to have “hot chicks”, #4 is cute animals, #5 is close ups of flowers, and #6 is interesting photos with “interesting and tragically bohemian titles”.
After DailyMotion’s meltdown, they deleted my old videos
As noted in this blog post – Bad week for online video support – Youtube, DailyMotion | 3d.coldstreams.com. – DailyMotion suffered a system failure that resulted in videos uploaded between September 2013 and April 2014 being unable to play.
I logged in to DailyMotion this morning and found that DailyMotion has deleted my videos from that period.
About 10 days ago, Youtube ended support for their 3D video player.
Should I continue shooting and posting videos? We can no longer trust the cloud for anything.