Formed in February 2005, YouTube was soon purchased by Google in November of 2006.
While video on the internet is far from new, YouTube has some of the most watchable content streaming on the web. While Apple's QuickTime streamed video in 1999 and Real Network's Real Player in 1997, these were (especially in the 90's and early 00's) usually grainy video, not much bigger then a postage stamp.
These solutions also required the downloading of software especially for this purpose. This created a problem for web masters, as they needed to host multiple versions of the same file (wasting space and time), as well as a hindrance for users who needed to know which player they had and which file they should choose.
YouTube bucked the trend by building their player around Abode's Flash. Abode Flash is installed on 99% of internet desktops as compared to QuickTime's 65%, and Real Player's 38%. This means that the vast majority of people could begin watching YouTube videos right away, with no software to download.
Those that couldn't merely needed to download Abode's free software.
In addition, YouTube isn't only available on computers; it is compatible with most "Smart Phones" (and even some "Dumb Phones"), Apple's iPod Touch and Apple TV, Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PS3, some versions of the Tivo and many other set top boxes.
While the quality of YouTube's videos began modestly with standard resolution below that of the average television, they introduced "High Quality" mode in 2008 with resolution comparable to a standard TV. In November of that year they introduced HD with 720P video, and this week they introduce 1080P video.
1080P is also referred to as "Full HD" and is currently the highest quality signal available for consumer devices.
In other words, YouTube offers the same resolution as a Blu-ray player.
Some interesting facts about YouTube:
- It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.
- It is estimated that 20 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute. Consider this; If 99% of it is garbage, that's still 12 minutes of good content uploaded every minute.
- YouTube is the fourth most visited website on the Internet, behind Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.
- Over 1 Billion YouTube video's are watched every day. (Best estimates are 1.2 Billion per day)
- YouTube Partners make money off YouTube. YouTube partners get paid every time someone views their video.
- Teen sensation "Fred" makes 6 figures a year (exact amount undisclosed) from his YouTube channel.
See what J Imaging Design has done on YouTube, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/jimaging
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