YouTube continues to be the biggest and best online video service on the Internet. And that means the stories come thick and fast. However, not all warrant full articles, so a news round-up is occasionally the order of the day.
YouTube
If you haven’t heard of YouTube then you must have been living under a rock for the last five years. The Google-owned video-sharing site is now ubiquitous and, with the possible exception of Facebook, the first port of call for most people on the Web.
News Round-Up
Turkey has lifted its ban on YouTube after more than two years. The unbanning appears to have come as a result of a third-party removing some of the videos deemed to be insulting to the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which were the reason for the ban in May 2008.
YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley is in the process of moving to a more advisory role at the company he created with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim and then sold to Google. He told TechCrunch he’s been making the transition for the past two years.
Google has allegedly moved Google TV over to YouTube, although the company insists it was already a part of the YouTube umbrella and this isn’t a response to the critical reception from broadcasters and networks.
Two milestones were hit this week: 1 billion subscriptions, and 500 million Promoted Video views. The former is gaining a new widget making subscribing even easier, while the Promoted Video effort continues to go from strength to strength.
Conclusions
A truly mixed bag of news, most of which show YouTube still growing and still maturing.
The Hurley story is particularly noteworthy as it shows YouTube is now very much a Google property, with the founders all having moved on either physically or mentally. As for Turkey: Welcome back, we missed you.
