The Dream Reborn

Okay, this may be old news by now for many of you but I have a little something to add to the conversation. What conversation you ask? Well it's more bickering than conversing actually. From the moment YouTube increased the quality of their website by implementing a widescreen player and doing away with the old school 4:3 player, YouTube users who can't get with the times have been blogging their hearts out with disgust. Me, I just don't get why anyone would be disgusted with YouTube for actually increasing the quality of their website. They didn't remove any features from the site. It seems that most of these die hard users who can't get with the times are most disgusted with the 2 black rectangles bordering their 4:3 videos. Why is that a problem? Once again, this does nothing to your original video. Just ignore it.

From a business perspective, this was a much needed enhancement for YouTube. What some people don't realise is that YouTube has yet to start making profits for Google who bought it for US$1.65 billion. With the upgrade to High Definition video, they can now do serious business with movie studios and television studios to try and get some profitable content on their site. You don't really think that a transsexual crying into a camera for his/her pop idol hero was paying the bill for the massive bandwidth and server costs over at YouTube right?

Also, with websites like Hulu already distributing TV Shows and movies online in High Definition, YouTube was starting to lose viewers who are only interested in watching TV Shows that they may have missed the night before. People fail to realise that a huge percentage of video views on YouTube go to illegally uploaded content(TV shows, Anime and movies) which are usually taken down within minutes of being uploaded.

Final Thought

The YouTube Partner Programme was YouTube's first real attempt at monetising the site. If you are a "Partner" or you are familiar with how it works, you also know it's not really that profitable from the user's standpoint or Google's standpoint.

For YouTube to start turning a profit for Google, they need to sign some more deals with the Hollywood studios and maybe even get some exclusive content from the studios. Viral videos will never be able to pay the bills or even be able to be a good business model. They are too unpredictable and their spotlight dims quickly in many cases. YouTube in High Definition is definitely a step in the right direction for both YouTube and its users.