let me explain my thoughts on why streaming is important and why some people
may want seperate hosting setups.
When working with a nonprofit or political campaign (and my focus right now
is primarily on political campaigns), you want to make sure that your videos
are viewed by as many people as possible. I cannot tell you how many emails
I get from people who are all upset because they can't get a 20 meg video to
display quickly on their box running Windows 95 on a dialup connection. The
ability to start viewing the video before the whole video is downloaded is a
very important feature. It has nothing to do with people somehow stealing a
video. Most non-profits and political campaigns I work with want their
videos stolen and virally distributed. I've been pleased that people have
taken videos from projects I've worked on and posted them to places like
YouTube, blip.tv, etc.
As to why you might want to host your videos other than your primary site,
well there are some simple economics here. Nonprofits and poltical
campaigns are often financially constrained. They want the cheapest
solution they can get. They often get accounts that are limited to as
little as a couple gigabytes of bandwidth a month. If they can have their
videos distributed without it hitting against their bandwidth alotment, that
can help a lot. If you have videos that are being viewed over 50,000 times
a month, it would be much nicer to have someone else pay for the bandwidth.
Likewise, if your traffic spikes, e.g. you release a video and you get
thousands of hits in the first hour, you want to make sure that the location
that is handling your videos can handle these sort of bandwidth spikes. If
you can get your videos distributed on sites like Yahoo, YouTube, Blip, etc.
it may well be worth it.
Another aspect to consider: To the extent that you want to encourage your
supporters, volunteers, etc. to create their own videos, you may want to
have them post to video sharing sites for other reasons. It relieves
administrative burdens that moderating and approving videos can produce, as
well as the concern about having to tell a volunteer that their video
doesn't meet the requirements of the organization, or the problem of an
inappropriate video getting on to your site.
Aldon
-----Original Message-----
Date: Thu Jun 1, 2006 8:27 am (PDT)
From: "nathan.freitas" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fw: RE: (ISF) Yahoo's video streaming service
An interesting cross post from another Yahoo group I'm on for non-profit
tech. This message discusses Yahoo vs. YouTube vs. Blip.
Note the use of the word "streaming", a word that often comes up when I
talk about videoblogging with people outside of this sphere.
Much of the worlds entire perspective and expectation of video is still
based on a web 1.0, "big iron" streaming model (aka Real, microsoft
Asf/asx, etc) They don't know anything else - they think if you can
download a video file you are somehow stealing it.
+nathan
-----Original Message-----
Date: Thu Jun 1, 2006 9:13 am (PDT)
From: "Joshua Kinberg" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Fw: RE: (ISF) Yahoo's video streaming service
I never really understand this... a lot of people think they *need* a
separate hosting solution for their videos. But for organizations that
already pay for a web server, this is generally not the case. There's
no reason they can't host videos themselves on their own servers that
they already pay for. Blip and YouTube are nice in that they make it
easy for people who don't have a server... typically people who use
Blogger, MySpace, or a very limited shared server situation.
Perhaps you are correct, Nathan -- there is confusion over the word
"streaming" and the perceived need for a streaming server when it
comes to video. For some reason people don't have this "streaming"
mental image when it comes to audio. MP3s entered the public
conciousness with Napster -- they are meant to be downloaded. This has
been reinforced with iTunes/iPod. Now, streaming audio usually refers
to something more like an internet radio station or live broadcast.
Blip and YouTube are not streaming services. They are hosting services
that offer easy uploads and progressive downloads (not technically
"streaming").
-Josh
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