Alex Reid

YouTube has been making some changes

Since Google bought the video website (and have stated that it will remain indepedent), the site has been fixing up its search engine function to work more like Google. The search function is probably the most frustrating aspect of the site. Currently, only the ‘tags’ are being considered relevant in searches done via the website. The title, description and comments currently have no weight in the search results. Unless the person who uploaded the video specifically made the tag you happen to be looking for, you won’t find said video.

YouTube also announced they are looking into “audio fingerprinting” videos to look for copyrighted music within videos.

And finally, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley announced to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that YouTube will share ad revenues with those who upload videos.

From MSNBC:
“We are getting an audience large enough where we have an opportunity to support creativity, to foster creativity through sharing revenue with our users,” Hurley said. “So in the coming months we are going to be opening that up.”

…..

Hurley said that when YouTube started, he and the site’s other co-founders — Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — felt revenue-sharing would build a community of users motivated by making money, rather than their love of videos.

But that as the site has grown, the three, who continue to run the company, have come to see financial remuneration as a way of improving content.

That makes sense. If you’ve ever visited YouTube, you’ll find that most of the people who comment on videos are incredibly immature spectators who upload nothing. To survive in the user-generated content age, you have to actually have user-generated content. And dangling a piece of ad revenue, ala Google Adsense, is a good way to encourage more content.

Revver currently operates under this model, except that they roll ads before the hosted video is shown. YouTube said it will likely not go that way, which is great, because these “pre-roll ads” are annoying in my opinion.

YouTube currently has a viewership of 30 Million, and 70 Million videos are watched daily.