• Perfect response to this feature: “I like the TEXTp, but could you cut the font size in half? some videos look horrible and you can’t even make out what it is with the current font size. If it were 6 or 8 instead of what looks like 12 then you would still cut down on bandwidth but get more people to switch because they will still get their video.” (Oh, and people are downright angry about the new layout, which has been around for a while in beta form, and are threatening to quit the site where they watch all their videos. Because, as we all know, the most rational people in the world are YouTube commenters.) source

• YES and this time it wasn’t
  a stray bullet source

• Oh boy, this is getting testy. YouTube and Viacom’s long-running lawsuit is still going on, and if anything, it’s heating up. On one side is Viacom, claiming the site was designed around copyright infringement. On the other is YouTube/Google, claiming that Viacom’s conduct suggests the company if full of hypocrites. Who’s right? Take a gander for yourself:

Viacom’s corner: “You’re stealing our stuff!”

• YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube’s founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement.
• A statement from Viacom • Regarding what they feel is a culture of copyright infringement – a statement they released after documents from a lawsuit between the two firms became public today. Viacom first sued the Google-owned company in 2007 for $1 billion. They used old statements from the founders suggesting that they knew what they were doing – ripping off copyrighted content.

YouTube’s corner: “You guys are total hypocrites!”

• Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. … Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt ‘very strongly’ that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
• YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine • Giving his take on the lawsuit and documents on the site’s blog. He argues that YouTube is following the “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Viacom themselves would send employees to a Kinkos for the singular purpose of uploading content to the site, going as far as “roughing up” the video to make it seem like it’s from a second-hand source. Oh, and allowing copyrighted video to just stay on the site. source

• This YouTube clip includes two things: One, a 30-second commercial for Priceline done in Seth MacFarlane’s patented animation style, and two, a not-funny one-minute clip that was seemingly rejected from a episode of one of MacFarlane’s three TV shows. If it couldn’t make it into three different TV shows, you know it sucks. This one, however, is a bit better. source

• 25% of Vevo’s traffic is due to Lady Gaga alone source

• We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.
• Google’s VP and Deputy General Counsel in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Matt Sucherman • Regarding a decision by Italian courts to criminally convict three Google employees for allowing a video to be posted to YouTube. The video showed schoolboys making fun of an autistic classmate. Despite the fact that Google took it down, the Italian court convicted them anyway – for not having a process of pre-screening videos so it would go up in the first place. In other words, kids, this ruling goes against everything that makes the Internet a cool place. If we were Google, we’d pull out of the Italian market entirely, just to show leadership there how ass-backwards this decision is. We’re sure that after two or three days without cat videos, there will be riots in the streets. Awful decision, Italy. source

• What Google was for search, YouTube is for video. Five years ago, the little-video-site-that-could registered its domain. And despite some early changes, it hit the popular consciousness fully-formed and just about perfect at what it did. And as huge fans of the site, we’d like to offer a little history on YouTube.

Early 2005: The (somewhat-disputed) roots

• The company storyline YouTube started after a group of friends (who were former PayPal employees) were at a dinner party and realized there wasn’t an easy way to share video. So they made it themselves. The rest is history.
• The other storyline YouTube came about as an attempt to make a video version of HotOrNot (yikes), but the model eventually (and fortunately) evolved into something a lot less like Chatroulette. The rest is history.
• Why two storylines? The masterminds behind the site reportedly realized a good origin story was the best way to push the idea to angel investors. Whether or not that’s true, it totally worked. The rest is history. source

May 2005: The first video

• The guy in this video, Jawed Karim, worked with founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen to start the service. While he didn’t have a huge role over time, he’s immortalized in the site’s first video. The lesson to learn from this? Bring more to the table than “Elephants have long trunks.”

Early 2006: Three reasons why Youtube got huge

• embeds YouTube made Flash embed codes a downright essential part of sharing video online. It was the spark that brought blogging to its logical next step.
• ease YouTube wasn’t first to the game. Vimeo had been around since 2004. But YouTube made it so easy, anyone could upload. Which helped it blow up quick.
• ethics At first, one could argue that YouTube’s ethics were light, which meant copyrighted stuff got on the site easily. But it also helped it build an audience overnight.

Mid-2006: The Google buyout

• $1.65 billion to hitch its wagon on the next big thing

• » At the time: It seemed questionable to many whether or not Google’s purchase was the right way to go. It was Google’s biggest purchase ever up to that point, and even if the site was heads and shoulders above Google Video, the fact it had no revenue model was risky.
• » Today: It’s pretty clear that Google was the right company to buy YouTube. Their support brought a lot of innovation, bandwidth, clout and opportunities to monetize. And it helped Google itself learn how to diversify its model. Even though it’s super-expensive to run due to the high bandwidth costs (and Google has yet to recoup its investment), it’s something of a crown jewel.

2006-2007: Three iconic early videos

• 
  “Charlie Bit Me” It has 160 million views, and counting. It’s the most-viewed video in the site’s history, and quite possibly the cutest thing we’ve ever seen. Besides this.
• “The Bus Uncle”This odd little bit of arguing in Cantonese was one of the earliest clips to gather a huge audience and draw massive media coverage in Hong Kong (of all places).
• “Guitar” Pachelbel’s Canon, as famous of a piece of music as it is, probably never got 69 million views before this South Korean kid got his grubby hands all over it.

2007: Growing pains

• $1 billion the size of the lawsuit Viacom hit the site with in April of that year; it’s still pending to this day (and we still miss Daily Show clips on YouTube)
• 10% the amount of traffic YouTube takes up over the ENTIRE Internet in 2007; it’s more than the Web’s entire bandwidth size in 2000

2008-2009: Growing gains

• 25% share of Google searches from YouTube source

• » Lots of videos: By October of 2009, YouTube was shoving through 1 billion views a day, a point which suggests the site’s gone beyond mere fad and is simply a part of everyday life.
• » Lots of bandwidth: YouTube’s bandwidth costs, depending on who you ask, are astronomical, but Wired notes that Google has so much clout (thanks to all the fiber optic cable they own) that bandwidth may in fact be a non-issue.

2008-2009: The mainstream takes notice

• 
  “Pork And Beans” Over time, the mainstream media got really good at manipulating the medium, and Weezer’s viral-encompassing clip was the best example. YouTube > MTV.
• “JK Wedding Dance” As great as this clip was (and it sure helped Chris Brown’s sagging career), the way it was used as a financial vehicle for the record companies was most interesting.
• 
  Boyle-mania The second-best-selling album of 2009 was sung by a middle-aged virgin with a heavenly voice. How? Simple. YouTube made Susan Boyle into a new kind of superstar.

2010: YouTube’s next step

• The Internet evolves at break-neck speed. We launch products quickly and constantly iterate to stay one step ahead of it. Our goal? To set the standard in online video delivery.
• YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley • In a message noting the company’s fifth anniversary. YouTube is big enough that it can set the standards for online video, and their next step will be by pushing HTML5 and high-definition video into the woodwork, along with growing the library of content to include more traditional types of video to complement its user-submitted offerings. A good start for a big player. source

• Over the last week or two, a YouTube user named iamamiwhoami has been uploading these insane music videos, featuring a blonde singer who vaguely looks like Christina Aguilera (along with a bunch of Europop stars) The videos are simply insane. The music sounds awesome, all distorted and electronic. Who is it? Is it a hoax? Is it an alternate reality game that someone’s about to dish out? We want to know. source

• This spot-on satire of YouTube comments and Diggs is pretty awesome, and it shows the Muppets to be very much “with it” regarding social media. Poor Beaker.