Yahoo! Video
| Yahoo! Video | |
 Yahoo! Video mainpage in 2010-12-29 | |
| URL | http://video.yahoo.com |
| Status | Offline since 2011-03-14[1] |
| Archiving status | Saved! |
| Archiving type | Unknown |
| IRC channel | #archiveteam-bs (on hackint) |
Yahoo! Video was a video sharing website. Like many other Yahoo! products before it, Video was taken down on the big day of 14 March 2011.
Rescue effort
The ArchiveTeam worked hard to get all the videos before Yahoo closed the site down. Archives are available at the Internet Archive.
Announcement
Announcement[IA•Wcite•.today•MemWeb]
- Dear Yahoo! Video user,
- After careful consideration, we will be removing all general user-generated content upload capability and user-uploaded video from Yahoo! Video. As a result, your videos, user profiles, ratings, favorites, and playlists will no longer be available after March 14, 2011. User video content from Yahoo! Video that remains embedded on third party sites will no longer be playable after March 14, 2011.
- Available on your profile page is a software utility that will allow you to download the videos you have uploaded to Yahoo! Video to your computer through March 14, 2011. You can find your profile by clicking on the ‘My Video’ tab or going to http://video.yahoo.com/mypage.
- Once you download your videos, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video.
- Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Yahoo! Video.
- If you have any questions about this change, please visit our FAQ section, or contact Customer Care.
- The Yahoo! Video Team
Statistics
Yahoo! Video officially started as a user content system in June 2006. Previously, it had been a directory of other video sites around the net (harkening back to Yahoo's previous life as a directory instead of its short burst as a content creator). From the start, it was called a "YouTube Clone" and other derisive terms.
However, users did decide to go for this new environment. Archive Team found about 9,360,000 accounts in use on Yahoo Video. "In Use" is a relative term, of course - many, many users consist of no uploaded videos, no user picture, and no other activity - just a name. We'll have more, but for example, of 1.5 million accounts we've scanned so far, only 146,600 have uploaded videos, and if you shear off the first 100,000 (i.e., frontloaded with content partner) accounts, that 10% figure drops down to 5%.
It didn't take very long for users to figure out Yahoo! Video is not the way to go, either as participants or as viewers. The most popular video, "Baby Raccoons Saved from Soda Machine" has 14 million views. Compare with one of the top videos on YouTube - Justin Bieber performing "Baby" with Ludacris, which has 457 million views. By the time the raccoons are viewed, the next most popular video, "Worst Best Man Ever", clocks in at just over 10 million views. After the first 20 videos, the views per video are down to about 4 million. By the time we get to the top 100, we're already skirting 1 million. Again, a single video on YouTube, the most popular, has a number of views basically the same as the top 100 Yahoo! videos combined.
