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May 31, 2006

Yahoo Battles YouTube, But Forgets to Bring Flickr

Michael Arrington

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The new Yahoo Video product is launching tonight (Wednesday) at 9 pm PST. The big change? Yahoo Video is targeting YouTube by allowing user-generated videos on the site. The biggest disappointment? The product is not being integrated (yet) into Flickr.

Yahoo Video will continue to allow major video publishers direct API access to the site, as well as crawling the web for relevant videos as well. But now, regular Internet users will have an easy way to upload videos and create their own video blog channel on Yahoo Video.

The only limit on uploads is file size - each file cannot be larger than 100 MB - but there are no time, bandwidth or total storage limitations. Videos can be set to public or private, and viewers can search and sort videos by popularity, category (pre-defined by Yahoo) or tags (user created). Like YouTube, videos can be rated by viewers, commented on, embedded into other websites, etc.

The biggest benefit to using Yahoo over other competitors may be the potential for exposure. Popular user generated videos will be periodically featured in a number of places on the new Yahoo home page when it launches.

And unlike YouTube and other video sites, Yahoo is not going entirely with Flash. They’ve built the uploader tool from scratch, and the default player is Windows Media format. For Mac users and others unable to use this format, a Flash player will be used instead and automatically.

The product is slick and will certainly be popular - partially because this is Yahoo, and partially because they’ve created an incredibly robust and complete video search tool with home grown videos and stuff crawled from the web. But what I really want is to see video upload functionality included directly into Flickr, a totally different user base. People will upload videos on Yahoo Video to get distribution and fame. People will upload videos to Flickr for sharing mostly with friends and family, and to have a safe long term place to store them. I’m much more interested in the latter.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Daniel Nicolas

    May 31st, 2006 at 8:40 pm

    I certainly hope flickr does not have video. i pray to the flickr gods that there is none of that crap. Flickr is golden.

  2. John

    May 31st, 2006 at 8:46 pm

    What a complete and total misinterpretation of what flickr is about. Leave flickr out of it, the last thing flickr needs is video. If they want to screw up a site like that let them do it to Yahoo! Images (or whatever) first.

  3. Klim

    May 31st, 2006 at 8:47 pm

    It’s promising to see that they aim to give exposure to independent filmmakers and such (although they have some work to do before they can compete with Youtube’s “Director”).

    First thing I noticed is that there is no way to view Yahoo’s videos, only external site videos (which unfortunately you have to leave Yahoo for). If you upload a video, it is not searchable yet (I have not noticed any private vs. public options). Guess they are still working on that.
    Hopefully the player controls will be improved (Youtube has the best IMHO).

    Also, only several categories are offered when uploading through Firefox, but more when using IE. And my uploaded video will play in Firefox, but not in IE.

    Don’t know why they don’t want to stick 100% with Flash. I prefer it.

    Overall, it’s OK… nothing special, yet.

  4. Don Wilson

    May 31st, 2006 at 9:10 pm

    Kudos to Yahoo for making a great competitor to YouTube. Let’s get some more content on it now, eh?

  5. Michael

    May 31st, 2006 at 9:15 pm

    Michael writes: “People will upload videos to Flickr for sharing mostly with friends and family, and to have a safe long term place to store them. I’m much more interested in the latter.”

    Already exists. DigitalSilo.com has done that for almost two years from physical media and MPEGnation.com does that for uploads.

  6. Ray

    May 31st, 2006 at 10:21 pm

    Please god, let there never be videos on flickr. A site dedicated to videos set up similar to flickr, aimed at building the same type of community is fine, but it needs to be distinct from flickr

  7. Razvan

    May 31st, 2006 at 10:46 pm

    Hmmmm…the limit of 100M places Yahoo behind Google. I use Video Google for seeing full length independent movies or documentaries. By placing that limit Yahoo will just become another inspiration source for morons with a lot of free time that send “funny” videos through email and IM. Yuck

  8. Suli

    May 31st, 2006 at 11:39 pm

    There must be a good reason for them using Windows Media format by default. Anyone know what it is?

  9. Mark

    June 1st, 2006 at 12:21 am

    “There must be a good reason for them using Windows Media format by default. Anyone know what it is?”

    a) Billy G gave em a nice little chunk of change to do so.
    b) They don’t want to encourage Quicktime downloads because it comes bundled with iTunes (which competes with Yahoo music)
    c) Windows Media supports whatever rediculous DRM scheme they plan to use later on.
    d) Flash video, while quick loading has pretty poor quality (they also need to differentiate themselves from everyone else).
    e) Real video is (pfft.. not even going to bother with this one…)
    f) all of the above

    I’d say (f) personally, but to me it’s a moot point as I’m on a Mac :-)

  10. caw

    June 1st, 2006 at 12:56 am

    Surely it would be the death of flickr to add video, that’s always raised the community to arms whenever it’s mentioned. Flickr’s about photography and photographs, not cheesy bits of mobile phone video or clips snatched from broadcast tv.

  11. Tom Page

    June 1st, 2006 at 3:36 am

    The last thing Flickr needs is video. Flickr is for photos - it’s better to excel at one thing than try and cover all medias. Leave Flickr for photos - let it refine itself at that.

  12. Marcus

    June 1st, 2006 at 3:58 am

    It seems like they would have actually loaded a few videos on to videos.yahoo.com before launching. Every one I clicked took me to a different site - iFilm (which I left since there was an ad before the video), Yahoo Music (which informed me it didn’t work on my mac) and a couple other sites that all came up in popup windows.

    I imagine that once they get more original content that wil change, but for now it felt like a mismash that left me with both a bad impression and the same dilemma of figuring out which site was going to use which plugin and which popup window I just opened.

  13. Felis

    June 1st, 2006 at 4:08 am

    “Videos can be set to public or private”: This is not true. All the videos will be set as public.

    Felis

  14. jodmo

    June 1st, 2006 at 4:19 am

    From my personal experience if you are looking for a flickr like service with communties that provides video, vimeo.com is a great alternative. They have many features similar to flickr and do a great job.

  15. Eric

    June 1st, 2006 at 4:57 am

    I feel sorry for YouTube, now there’s really no one left to buy them…

    Either way, I’ve always maintained that the key to any video site is going to be if they can attain the rights for copyrighted content, the clips and viral videos that people seem to want to use these services to share. YouTube, being a small shop, never seems able to do this. Maybe Yahoo will have more luck, and get the TV networks and Hollywood to agree to host video clips on the service?

  16. Robert Dewey

    June 1st, 2006 at 5:06 am

    Like we didn’t see this coming… I feel sorry for the VC’s who actually put money into YouTube.

  17. Jonathan Mendez

    June 1st, 2006 at 5:52 am

    I wouldn’t worry about YouTube. They are ranked 18th today in Alexa. They have created a vibrant online community around UG vids that continues to grow at an astounding rate. There are plenty of suitors I can think of.

    As far as DRM, YouTube has Hollywood knocking down their door to get their clips up but I don’t think this is where YouTubes model is going (as oposed to Yahoo Vid who I’m sure with Semel’s connections will be a bastion of Hwood trailers soon). I think YT’s audience is one that prefers short clips of UGC. They are clearly the leader in this and it’s hard to see anyone overtaking them soon as they continue to add 2.0 funtionality and improve the UX of the site.

  18. fifteen

    June 1st, 2006 at 6:50 am

    Flickr needs video like we all need a hole in the head. Tsk tsk for bloat mongering!

  19. Grog

    June 1st, 2006 at 8:11 am

    Yahoo is a slow moving company, with groups that don’t communicate well with eachother. It so badly wants to be hip and web 2.0 (sending my 5 cents to O’Reilly for coining his term), but it is not a nimble company that can create cool things quickly. Case in point - look how long it took for Y! to create their video site, where as Google has had theirs for a while. Yahoo maps was not improved until Google led the way. Same with Microsoft and their Live mail attempt - slow moving companies, too big for their britches and too slow to make changes. Microsoft has an excuse because they are a boxed product company and their CEO, board, etc. barely understands the interweb. They think just because they made an insecure browser, a “me-too” chat client and a search engine that nobody uses that they have an internet initiative and furthermore, that people should take them seriously when they say they really mean it this time, just like they did the last time they said it.

    Anyhow, I get this feeling that Yahoo has recently signed onto Microsoft’s “freedom to imitate” bandwagon. Don’t expect any miracles from Yahoo or Microsoft anytime soon.

  20. Patrick

    June 1st, 2006 at 8:35 am

    Nicely laid out and pleasant interface. However, there seems to be some issues with maintaining a uniform look. Click on the My Studio, My Favorites, or Help tabs and suddenly you’re back in old-school Yahoo land. Yahoo needs to get a good architect on board (Google made a smart move nabbing Doug Bowman). There should also be more focus on commercial content. If Y! Video gets popular with uploaders, they’re gonna run into the same troubles as YouTube - trying to balance revenue with all the bandwidth leaving their pipes.

    They should also allow browsing past the first 8 Featured and Popular videos. Media aggregators attract grazing audiences so they need to cater to that. At this point, I can’t view any more than the first 8 Popular videos. After that, I need to be specific in searching for a video. If I don’t have anything in particular I want to see, well it’s time to look elsewhere. Bad Move.

  21. anthony

    June 1st, 2006 at 8:59 am

    “I feel sorry for YouTube, now there’s really no one left to buy them…”

    Ebay.. why does it make sense? Skype uses the same On2 video encoding that’s used in FLV8.

    Skype / Ebay has the potential to be the biggest player in the space. Add PayPal into the mix and you’ve got a pay for downloads (and payment for ad revenue sharing for content producers) platform that could rock Itunes socks right off.

    Youtube could also provide Ebay / Skype a value add for Skype’s paid voicemail program. Videomail. Skypecasting / Vblogging / Archiving conferences..

  22. Christian Oliver

    June 1st, 2006 at 9:06 am

    I do hope that it integrates with Flickr, particularly due to the feature of blogging a video.

    However, I must point out that I uploaded a video and it takes way too long on processing. YouTube beats them in this respect by far. This is actually a deal-breaker for me. If it takes too long, it doesn’t work.

  23. Billy Warhol

    June 1st, 2006 at 9:22 am

    i agree with the majority here - Flickr does not need video. & i can’t believe how painfully SLOW video still is on the net! It’s ridiculous! Video has too many Frames per Second! Toss out the useless frames & get to the good stuff!! The beautiful Still Photograph!! ;))

  24. ted

    June 1st, 2006 at 9:27 am

    What will they do about copyright infringement?

  25. Jake Cressman

    June 1st, 2006 at 9:43 am

    Flickr and videos? It would work best if people only uploaded short, personal videos.

    What I’m afraid of is people uploading commercial videos, mini-movies, animations and the like. What makes Flickr photos so cool is that I feel like I’m seeing glimpses of another persons life that are authentic and earnest. Video could mess that up.

  26. Sundroid

    June 1st, 2006 at 11:06 am

    I’ve been uploading videos to YouTube and Google Video, and if I may say something nice about Yahoo, the Johnny-come-lately — all three services convert my original wmv files into Flash, but only Yahoo keeps the stereo soundtrack in. Not a big deal, but it matters to those of us who care about the sound quality.

    Here is an example of comparison. On Yahoo Video with stereo sound:

    http://video.yahoo.com/video/p.....b90.476710

    Same video on YouTube with mono sound:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDMIIUskffc

    On Google:

    http://video.google.com/videop.....2904258961

    (Memo to Yahoo Video team: maybe you guys want to trumpet this advantage over your rivals.)

  27. Harvard Extended

    June 1st, 2006 at 12:27 pm

    I agree with Razvan. The 100mb filesize limit is a problem — it means only relatively short videos can be uploaded, or longer videos with low quality settings. Storage costs and bandwidth are obviously concerns for Yahoo, but over time Google Video and others will eat Yahoo’s lunch if these restrictions are kept in place.

  28. jba

    June 1st, 2006 at 2:37 pm

    About yahoo’s decision to use WMV - they have a huge exisitng infrastructure for windows media streaming that was originally bought during the broadcast.com purchase, and extended over the years to supply video and audio for streaming events (state of the union, olympics), and launch.com/yahoo music.

    To those who say that this lessen’s Youtube’s chances of being purchased, yeah, that’s probably somewhat true, but recall that Yahoo bought HotJobs.com when it already had Yahoo Jobs, and bought flickr even though it already had yahoo photos. (i’m sure there are other examples of this too) It all depends on what yahoo can make of their new videos site. Youtube’s best bet is to keep-on-truckin. ;-)

  29. Sean Forman

    June 1st, 2006 at 6:31 pm

    I’ll have to disagree with the majority here. I would love it if Flickr allowed me to upload videos. I use flickr for family photos and sharing photos of the tyke with the grandparents. Being able to seamlessly do so with 20-sec videos or so would be tremendous.

  30. Doug

    June 2nd, 2006 at 5:54 am

    Yahoo made a great decision not to integrate video and Flickr! There are many other sites for people to upload video. I’m also really surprised that they are using WMV, but understand why.

  31. RBA

    June 4th, 2006 at 1:27 am

    So… Where’s the API? I know about the Y! Video Search API, but what if I all I want is, say, get the details about a particular video? That cannot be done with the current Video Search API.

  32. don yoshizawa

    June 4th, 2006 at 3:20 am

    Yahoo picture quality and full screen shots are great. The program however is similar to google video however googles advantage is over 100meg. is acceptable-this is a big plus. youtube advantage is to build your own site. I really dont see any competition between the two because they are in a different league. Maybe I am blind, but there are so many upload programs. ifilm veoh, revver. stupid videos, caught on video, etc. Yahoo does have the audience and name. But the main thing is originality not copy commercials,. All in all, I love all these programs that give just regular people with a camera to upload films so the world can see the life of normal people not actors in movie land making money and pretending to be something they are not. In the future, hopefully these upload programs can improve the world we live in.-yahoo video program is excellent-about time to give us a chance!!!!

  33. kuju

    August 13th, 2006 at 5:10 pm

    The last thing Flickr needs is video
    http://www.kuju.cn

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