YouTube's Problem Is Not Advertising, Its Getting The Videos To Play

For all the talk of YouTube's new advertising model and the number of eyeballs they have, the biggest problem facing YouTube is the fact that half the time, their videos don't even play back properly. Why can't YouTube get poor quality, short-form videos to play back without all of the wait, buffering, and starts and stops that users are experiencing? I first wrote about this back in February with a post entitled "Is Google Having Problems Delivering YouTube Videos?" and since then it has gotten far worse.

Last week, I saw that my February post about the poor YouTube playback experience had quickly become the number one post on my blog that people were finding via Google. TypePad shows me the phrases that people are putting into Google and it's phrases like, "you tube video wont load", "slow youtube videos", "youtube video loading" and "can't load you tube" amongst others.

What is the problem here? This is not an infrastructure problem. Google is not lacking in technical expertise, capital, or the resources to make these videos work. If smaller companies can get high-quality, long-from content to work without these playback problems, then what is Google's excuse? They have no business model today for YouTube, have been working on their "advertising plan" forever yet they can't even get the basics to work.

When it comes to YouTube's advertising strategy, they have a major flaw. In order for their advertising strategy to work, it requires users to actually be able to view the videos. YouTube is the most overrated, over hyped company ever in this industry.

Comments

[Ronnie Somerville]

I have long been perplexed by what Google intends for Youtube.
I am coming to the view that the acquisition was a classic "Microsoft" tactic , (think of Explorer) of hoovering up the market and crowding out the competion. Google won't improve YT until they have to.

[sonora]

I believe there IS an infrastructure problem,
its now 10 in the morning in spain and videos work perfectly, however last night (when the entire US was online) the problem was there.

[soulchild]

wow I'm on YouTube regularly...never experience a problem in fact it seems to have started streaming faster in the past few weeks.

[J Carpenter]

I'm with soulchild on this. I have never noticed playback issues on YouTube that could be considered chronic.

Sites that do give me issues quickly drop off the list pf places I will frequent. My frustration tolerance is quite low, but YouTube has never come close to reaching it.

[Juan]

I think you should consider that youtube is made for PCs with some nice internet connection (256k at least)
I use youtube at a fried's house with a 256k connection and you just have to wait for videos to buffer a little just like any other video server.
In my PC with 768k connection it just runs great, wait a second to load then no stops at all until video ends.

[joe scmoe]

I have 56k dial-up and you tube plays smoothly, you dont even have to let it buffer.

[Steven Sanders]

Their servers are feeling the heat, loading times have slowed

[Larry]

I am sure that YouTube/Google does have some problems, but I think that quite a few people that think YouTube/Google are having problems should look no farther than their own computers. Not enough RAM or a Low Quality video card mixed with their processor speed is also a major problem. Oops, did I forget to mention internet connection? Dial-up vs Cable vs DSL!

[steve]

can we petition google to include dial-ups in it's youtube output? half of america is dial-up. we are from all strata. some can't get anything but dial-up. some don't want to pay premium for dsl. i don't own a tv, so no cable. what do i want with tv if i have a computer?