The extremely popular video sharing site YouTube doesn’t make a point of revealing its size, user activity, or demographics. But Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal pieced together much of that information by “scraping” YouTube for data. Here are the main stats uncovered:
-YouTube hosts over six million videos, growing at about 20 percent every month.
-The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage — about 5,000 home computers’ worth.
-The total time spent watching YouTube videos since it started last year is 9,305 years!
-The content requires several million dollars’ worth of bandwidth a month to transmit.
-The most popular items get an especially large percentage of the traffic.
-The words “dance,” “love,” “music” and “girl” are all exceedingly popular in video titles.
The size and cost of running this free service makes many wonder what the future holds for YouTube. Some predict it will collapse under the expense of the sheer volume of transmitted data. Still others think Microsoft, Yahoo, or some other big boy will come and play (read: buy out). But even with a buy out, the concept needs to make money eventually… How?
That’s the million dollar question not so easily answered with the typical social networking trend of “advertising revenue.”
Youtube will pre-pend ads to all the videos and make a fortune.
According to AT&T’s head honcho, sites like youtube are getting a free ride so this claim about them paying millions of dollars each month for bandwidth is not valid.
Fred you are joking right?
YouTube will sell soon enough, probably to Google, they like to own everything 🙂
Pre-pending ads would make a fortune initially, but would it be sustainable? Would users put up with it or switch to alternatives like Google Video?
I agree that YouTube will probably sell, but buy-happy Google has Google Video. Yahoo anyone?
And YouTube free riding?! I hadn’t heard that. Source?
Wow, I actually thought it would be a lot more than that. I almost have 1 Terabyte at my home (not completely filled), but I thought the storage would be a lot more than that.
The issue is not with the “The videos take up 45 terabytes of storage” but more the transfer of data around the globe in and out of the various isp’s to get to the final destination, and not have the data recycled within the ISP?
“And YouTube free riding?! I hadn’t heard that. Source?”
Don’t you remember, the internet is a series of tubes, not a dump truck. YouTube is clogging all the tubes with videos of girls dancing to their favorite music, mostly love songs.
Oh, how did I forget…
But seriously, does anyone really know how bandwidth works? Every time I have the conversation with someone, it seems the assumptions are always different…
I keep waiting for youtube to go down in a ball of flaming copyright infringement lawsuits.
Yes, I’m seeing those lawsuits coming for them too, but they really ignited the video serving market.
The will just put an ad at the end of every video, that way they still get the ads shown and that way users can decide whether they watch it or not. The idea is much like banner ads, the user can decide to ignore it or watch it. The main point in doing this will be to make the intro of the ad seamless, so that it catches the users interest and blends well with the video being shown (maybe a fade to black after every video, and a fade in to ad).
Wow I’ve always wondered about the more detailed YouTube stats ever since hearing that they hit 100 million video views per day!
Yeah, I have a lil’ over a terabyte in storage, as well. 45 terabytes isn’t that much, anymore.
Youtube is awesome! Bets on how long before Yahoo or Google buys them out? Or will it be MS?
I’ve heard that NBC owns part of Youtube, in which case, they probably won’t be bought out, unless it’s completely bought out by the network… Dunno how true that is though…
Whoa, Blah, that would be pretty interesting (the whole NBC-owning-part-of-YouTube thing)… Did you hear that from a friend or could you give us an online source?
total viewing time in years is OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAND!!!