YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest video sharing network; any videos that are upload to YouTube have maximum exposure to the largest audience.
There are a number of communities established on YouTube, these range from various teen communities to people with interests in niche topics.
More recently bigger companies have started adding their content to YouTube as a way of advertising who they are and what they do. Channel4 have come to realise that its target audience are very web savvy, and spending more time online than watching TV, therefore by migrating some of their content online there is a greater chance that they can attract their audience’s attention.
Also it is interesting to see that both the UK Monarch (http://www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel) and the UK Prime Minister (http://www.youtube.com/10downingstreet) both have channels on YouTube, allowing them to engage with younger audiences, who perhaps they would not normally appeal to when using traditional/formal types of media.
YouTube users are able to rate and comment on videos, rating and commenting allows videos to climb the YouTube charts and help them gain more exposure to a larger audience.
YouTube allows creators of video content, who are creating engaging video and who have a large persistent audience to apply to be part of the “Partner Program” The partner program allows user to share the revenue YouTube makes from adding adverts to their videos
YouTube also allows users to post videos directly from their mobile phone to their channel via e-mail. If you already have a YouTube Channel and are signed in to your account you can visit http://www.youtube.com/mobile to find your unique e-mail address.
YouTube also has a version of their website especially for use on mobile devices this can be viewed at http://www.m.youtube.com
The demographics for YouTube can be seen here http://www.quantcast.com/youtube.com#demographics
Practical Uses of YouTube
For small businesses YouTube is a cost effective way to host online video. This not only saves on server space storage, but also on bandwidth, as bandwidth to deliver the video comes directly from YouTube. This is particularly useful if a video you own becomes popular as you don’t have to worry about crashing your server and having your whole website becoming unavailable.
By correctly tagging videos and having them on YouTube there is a far greater chance of people discovering your videos and thus discovering your business. If you also consider that videos on YouTube are grouped with similar videos, people watching videos on YouTube are more likely to be pointed to your videos.
Access to broadcast television either to have an advertisement or entertainment show is very expensive, however, by having your videos on YouTube you can build up an audience very quickly who you can “broadcast” your content to.
Individuals, who are not businesses, such as families may share videos as a way to communicate with each other if they are based in different locations. The barrier to entry is a lot lower on YouTube in comparison with setting up your own video web server.
How to Create a YouTube Account
How to Upload a Video to YouTube
Viddler
A community of video bloggers and people who produce series of videos as ‘web shows’ primarily use Viddler
A unique feature of Viddler is that the user can leave a video reply directly in the timeline, which can be played back as the main video is played. This allows for any comments made to have more meaning as they can be viewed at the point that is appropriate to the main video, unlike text comments that are usually read after the video has played. This makes text comments much more difficult to reference to a certain time within the main video
Viddler allows for groups, when uploading a video if a user selects for it to be part of a specific group it is added to a pool of videos for that group.
Viddler has a unique tagging system, there are three different types of tags that can be used to help users find content on Viddler:
The first is “user tags.” User Tags describe a user and their profile.
The second type of tag is a “global tag.” A global tag describes actions or events in the video as a whole. You may use tags that relate to where the video is filmed or who appeared in the video.
The third type of tag is the “timed tag.” A timed tag relates to a specific moment in the video
Viddler has a 500MB (per video) upload limit, with no length limit and no limit to how many videos a user can upload
Users can currently not upload video from their phones to Viddler.
The demographics of Viddler users can be seen here http://www.quantcast.com/viddler.com#demographics
Revver
A unique feature of Revver is that it shares advertising revenue with its users; this allows the user to yield revenue from any videos uploaded. A user much reach $10 in revenue before they can claim what they have earned
A limiting feature of Revver is that they restrict users to an upload a maximum of 100MB per video
Revver has a much smaller number of users compared to many of the bigger, more popular websites
One problem that many users have expressed when uploading is the amount of time it can take to encode and process a video. This is due to the fact that every video is reviewed by a person to check that the video does not contain any copyrighted or illegal content. This can lead to a two-day delay between video being uploaded and actually appearing online for viewing.
The demographics of Revver users can be seen here http://www.quantcast.com/revver.com#demographics
Vimeo
Vimeo is making a name for itself as the video-sharing tool of the professional world. There seems to be two professional groups using Vimeo. The first is commercial companies wishing to showcase their product or service. The other group of people is video professionals and semi professionals wishing to showcase their work, or show casing their video C.Vs. You can see that Vimeo takes a much more professional approach to video on the web by looking at their community guidelines http://vimeo.com/guidelines#uploading_guidelines
In many instances Vimeo is different to other web video players. Vimeo hides the video controls when playing back a video, which at first can feel confusing, but once you get used to this way of doing things, it gives any embedded video a more cleaner, less distracted feel.
Vimeo was one of the first video sharing web sites to allow High Definition video to be uploaded, and while many other video sharing websites have caught up, Vimeo still seems to encode the video to a better standard, giving a clear crisper output.
Vimeo (unlike most other video sharing websites) does have restrictions on how much you are able to upload. As it currently stands a user is only able to upload 500MB and 1 HD Video per week. There is the option for users to upgrade to Vimeo Plus+. Some of the features of Vimeo Plus+ include 5GB upload, unlimited HD uploading, video undergoes two-pass encoding for higher quality output, customisable player banner adds are removed from the website. Vimeo Plus+ comes at a cost of $59.95 a year (which breaks down to a cost of 16 cents a day)
The demographics of Vimeo users can be seen here http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/vimeo.com
