Michael Learmonth of Silicon Valley Insider has some great news for fans of Hulu, the online video site started by NBC and Fox to stream full episodes from their various properties.  In a post entitled "Hulu Beating CNN, Turner, Still A Fraction Of YouTube" Mr. Learmonth says...

Hulu, which didn't formally open for business until March, is now the 8th-largest video site in the U.S.

That's according to new stats from Nielsen, which reports that the JV between Fox and NBC racked racked up some  105 million video streams in July, up from 80 million streams in May.

He also provides this break down of the numbers...

I am a huge Hulu fan so let me get that out of the way first.

Having admitted that I don't think these numbers tell the whole story.  A couple things to consider...

1.  The report quotes "Total Streams" but doesn't give any indication of what that means.  This is important because Hulu streams largely entire TV shows with 4 or 5 ads embeded into each while all competitors above it tend to deal mostly in short clips with 1 ad at best.

2.  Hulu monetizes 100% of their streams while others who allow for user uploads don't get anywhere near that.  Youtube, for example, is reported to only monetize 3% of their total streams putting their number at 150,727 as compared to Hulu's 105,830.  Given that and Point #1 above I think it's very possible that Hulu is actually running more ads than YouTube on a monthly basis

So it looks like Hulu is actually turning into a success which is, in my opinion, as important as news on the web gets. 

You see, Hulu was an attempt by two major studios to actually do Internet Video  right.  Hulu offers full episodes that can be embeded, shared and e-mailed just like any other type of online video.  So positive numbers are a huge thing because they mean the idea of web video is starting to prove itself. 

The theory has always been that studios should put their video out there because it will generate more money in the long run.  But up until now that's all there's been, a theory.  Hulu's success could offer substantial proof of that theory which is a huge thing.

As the business model is proven successful we'll see other studios jumping in and allowing their video "out of the box" so to speak.  Once that starts we'll begin to see a world develop where people can view, share, mashup and whatever else without having to fear copyright violations or legal action.   

In many ways Hulu is pioneering a path that all media should follow into the new age.  Allowing widespread streaming so users can determine what they enjoy and then pointing them to purchase items when they want to take them off the computer.  It's a level corporate/user harmony that the music industry should be a jealous of at this point.

Techcrunch reports that Rocketboom, a pioneer in the online video space, has made a distribution deal with Sony worth somewhere in the seven figure range. 

I'm bullish about online video and while I've never been a fan of Rocketboom I understand why many people like it.  I do think it's gotten quite a bit better since host Joanne Colan came aboard.  That said, seven figures is a vast over valuation in my opinion.

This reminds me of a story that was covered by the LA Times a while back about a Youtube phenomenon named Fred.  Fred is a teenage kid pretending to be a hyper-active 6 year old while sporting an extremely high pitch voice.  His videos get, on average, somewhere in the area of 3 million views a piece. 

But given his audience is probably made up of 14 year old I think it's safe to assume many if not most of his viewers watch the show multiple times. 

His YouTube channel has about 364,000 subscribers which I think is a safe bet as far as how many unique viewers he actually has (its not unreasonable to think a 14 year old would watch something they like 10 or 12 times)

Now to put this in perspective, lets look at some population numbers.  The U.S. alone has about 53 Million kids between the ages of 5 and 13 according to the census bureau.  Of those kids, 71.9 % or 38.2 Million of them have Internet access according to InternetWorldStats.com.  So even if we assume Fred has absolutely no fans outside the U.S. (which is unlikely) his audience is still only a little over half a percent of the total available viewing audience (about .64% in case you were curious). 

Overall, Fred's actual footprint is pretty small.  Much smaller than say, your average TV show. 

Which brings me back to Rocketboom.  It might seem odd to spend most of my post on Rocketboom talking about someone else but I wanted to set a baseline.  Having done so I can now present these numbers...

Now, it's important to remember that Rocketboom has other means of distribution but visiting their home page opens the YouTube video by default so one would think this would be a large source of their viewings. 

Given that fact the numbers above are nothing short of dismal.  Keep in mind the point I made above which is that "Internet numbers" need to be put in their proper perspective.  Internet video is easier to consume, easier to distribute and usually comes in a form that lends itself to multiple viewings.  All those differences make it much harder to equate normal markers to actual people (as opposed to something like TV where 1 viewing almost certainly corresponds to one actual person). 

So you could easily cut the above numbers in half and still have fairly optimistic estimates.  Given that fact I don't see how Sony plans to make enough money to justify a seven figure guarantee.  I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong but this seems like classic "bubble behavior" to me.

The Wall Street Journal has an article on the current state of YouTube and Google's plans (as owner of YouTube) to add pre- and post- video ads  to all videos that they can verify as legitimate.

Sadly, the Wall Street Journal chose to put their article behind a subscription wall so I give you a quote from CNet instead...

Some of the other highlights in the Journal story:

• Google has identified 105 problems with YouTube's ad sales.

• Advertisers aren't willing to post their ads on many YouTube videos

• Because of legal questions, Google is only selling ads against video clips that have been approved by media companies and other partners, which, according to the story, is 4 percent of the total clips on YouTube. Think about the significance of that. Every minute more than 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube and only about 20 minutes is worth anything to the company.

YouTube has long been accused of being a warehouse for pirated material and media company, Viacom, filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google and YouTube. Google argues that the law doesn't hold it responsible for any illegal acts committed by users.

One of the books on my "personal favorites" list is "All The Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster"

The book purports to tell the behind the scenes tale of Napster 1.0 but really ends up telling the story of how Shawn Fanning's Uncle John squandered numerous opportunities to legitimize the service and eventually drove it out of business.  Essentially John Fanning deceived himself into thinking he had the upper hand against the Record Industry which led him to reject several offers to work with them towards monetization.

Offers that would have been much cheaper than the current iTunes model for consumers (and which resemble Napster 2.0's current subscription service)

I  suspect that Google, in its new found arrogance, is going down a similar path.  Services like Hulu, which works with the TV networks to bring their content to the web, seem to be booming while YouTube Flounders.  I think the reason for that is because Google refuses to admit what almost everyone knows which is that 99% of its business comes from copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the copyright holder's permission. 

Instead they chooses to ignore that fact and try to make their money on the miniscule 4% of verified videos which is a losing proposition.  What they should do is seek out copyright holders and say something like this...

"Look, we know your copyrighted material is being uploaded without your permission but the reality is there's nothing we can do to stop it.  If we take it down it will just be uploaded again and if we go out of business tomorrow it will just be uploaded to a different video service.  So rather than try to fight it let us help you to monetize the material (for a small cut of the profits of course)"

The above deal is identical to the one that Napster 1.0 almost reached with the Record industry and, had that happened, everyone would have been better off (cheaper for consumers, a bigger piece of the online pie for copyright  holders). 

I think the same deal would be perfect for YouTube but Google, the mighty king of online ads, has become too risk adverse to admit what is obvious and too arrogant to deal with copyright holders hat in hand.  So it looks like they'll continue to drown in a sea of red ink while taking a complete loss on 96% of their output. 

Either that or they'll just have to eventually give up on YouTube completely which would be a terrible loss for everyone.

When I was in Jr. High I was really into Standup comedy.  Much of my introduction to standup was through a show on VH1 that was running at the time.  That is where I first saw comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. 

The acts were given very little time so there was only one of his characters on the show.  He wisely chose Peanut, the purple Woozle you see in the picture to the right.  The entire act was great but I vividly remember one point where Peanut stops, looks around, and then in an accusing voice asks Mr. Dunham "Hey, where's your other hand?" 

Something about that one line played right to my Jr. High Age Sensibilities and I've been a huge fan ever since. 

Of Course, now that I'm older I can appreciate the act on many different levels.  The beauty of ventriloquism is that it allows the comedian, through the puppet, to tackle issues that a regular comic probably wouldn't dare.   That in turn gives him a much wider catalogue of material.  Beyond that the illusion of the puppet being another person allows him to use a lot of the staples of the old "buddy comedy" acts where two comedians would come out and play off each other.  That's an art that's all but lost in comedy these days so it makes Mr. Dunham's act that much more unique. 

Anyway, over the weekend Mr. Dunham filmed his Christmas Special in Milwaukee, WI and I flew out to attend one of those shows. 

As a general rule, comedians refine their act over tons of live tour dates.  What makes it onto TV or DVD is the result of that refinement.  So every show is just a little bit different but since 99.9% of people only see one show it doesn't matter. 

But with the advent of YouTube and Cell Phone Video a lot of the material from those various shows are making it onto the web.  Which meant that I'd seen each part of the new act at least a few times and each time there had been slight variations. 

Because of that, I found myself disagreeing with a lot of Mr. Dunham's judgement calls as to which version to use.  All through the show I'm thinking "That was great but I liked the way he did it in Raleigh, NC a little better" or "what happened to the laughing gag?  Why wasn't that included?" 

I don't know of what consequence this is in that most people won't be big enough fans to hunt down the YouTube videos and those who do will be such fans that they'll enjoy seeing different versions of the act.  But its still a good lesson in how you simply can't keep anything hidden anymore.  Do something in front of an audience and you have to assume its making it onto the Internet these days. 

Anyway, just an obvious observation for a slow Sunday.  Honestly half the reason I wrote this post was to brag about going to the show. I had to come up with someway to make it tech related :)

* For the record, the photo above is courtesy of Flickr user TMLeBlanc01.  The Pabst Theatre warning against photos being taken was quite compelling (actually their warning against everything was pretty compelling, I for one was scared to go to the bathroom)

I wasn't sure if I was going to comment on this until I read Marshall Kirkpatrick's take over on ReadWriteWeb.  But he sparked some thoughts in me that I wanted to share.  First, here's a quote...

The video uploading platform announced by YouTube last night may not have been what many pundits expected but it could mark a major turning point for both YouTube and thousands of other sites around the web.

By allowing website owners to combine an on-site video publishing option for their users with the huge number of people looking to discover new content on YouTube, the platform will create a mutually beneficial feedback loop that will breathe new life into both YouTube and the web at large. It's also got potential to show up all the other big platform plays we've seen to date.

and one more on Monetization...

One question that is still unanswered is advertising and revenue sharing. YouTube will likely use display advertising on the channel pages for their new partner sites and those partner sites can do the same back at home. Almost every video ad on the web is annoying and there's no reason to get those involved.

First let me say that I agree completely on the revenue sharing angle.  It would be nice if YouTube shared the wealth but sites can still put ads all over their pages so they can easily monetize their content.  They just have to give up any in-video ads.  Given how hard it is for even established video creators to get sponsorship I think allowing YouTube to put one ad in the video is a small price for the bandwidth provided.

On the platform itself, I'm still split.  This is a phenomenal opportunity for developers to build video centric sites for essentially no money.  Bandwidth is getting cheaper but for sites wanting to focus on video it can still be pretty expensive.  For hobbyists I think this is great.

On the other hand, I don't like HOW YouTube is doing this.  To me, one of the keys to being a platform is seamlessness.  If someone comes to my site and I'm using the YouTube platform there should be no way for them to know I'm using YouTube. 

To be clear, I'm not objecting to the ads because the user could just as easily think they were from the web master.  But the YouTube branding is a problem for me. 

Years of embedded MySpace clips have given the brand a certain stigma.  It isn't that people dislike YouTube its that they consider it a cheap way to get video and by extension any professional site that uses embedded videos with a YouTube logo comes off as unprofessional. 

YouTube needs to realize that being a web platform means stepping back and letting the developer take center stage.  Until YouTube does that I don't see this getting much traction with serious developers. 

 Addendum: From NewTeeVee.com...

You know how YouTube has its little logo overlaid in white in the bottom right corner of all its videos? Well, it seems to have gone missing. On both videos on and off the site, the files are playing free of any YouTube branding on top of the videos themselves. Meanwhile, the company logo has moved down into the frame of the player where the “menu” option used to be within embedded players. 

So at least they've dumped the watermark.  I still think any logo is a problem but this is certainly a move in the right direction.  That said I still think my original point stands.