The general reactions were that the video was either not going to load, or be painfully slow to load, or would require a plug-in users didn't have. YouTube changed that, because it just works.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have problems with YouTube and things like that, when you catch it mid production. If I'm doing a show and I'm working on a bit and someone's there with a phone, they record it and put it online - it's not the finished product.
I think the Internet has developed at this incredibly rapid pace because of net neutrality, because of the free nature of it, because a YouTube can start the way YouTube started.
Me, personally, I don't upload video to YouTube.
YouTube has made a lot of changes to support time on site - a statistic they care about. But subscriber support is lacking.
I was very unfamiliar with YouTube; I thought it was the place for dog and cat videos.
When I first started YouTube, I was using an old computer that I had had in high school that stayed with me through college that was on its last leg. The boot-up was, like, 25 minutes.
YouTube began as a failed video-dating site. Twitter was a failed music service. In each case, the founders continued to try new concepts when their big ideas failed. They often worked around the clock to try to overcome their failure before all their capital was spent. Speed to fail gives a startup more runway to pivot and ultimately succeed.
The strange thing was, when I was starting on YouTube, even the paradigm of YouTube and Internet sensation - or whatever - that didn't really exist. So I didn't even know that that was a thing.
YouTube is a free service that is extremely easy to use. There are no downloads, and hundreds of audio and video formats are instantly converted to Flash, which makes it fast and easy for the community to watch and share video.
The production value of YouTube videos is not there.