YouTube Joins Beer Bongs In College Students' Tube Collections

from the youtube.edu dept

Thu, Aug 31st 2006 12:19pm — Joseph Weisenthal

One of the key differences between MySpace and Facebook is that the former is a totally open network, whereas the latter is geared towards building several smaller networks, primarily centered around universities. There's obviously merit in both approaches. But more companies seem to be interested in the Facebook, closed network, approach, even for non-social networking applications. Six Apart recently announced its new blogging platfrom call Vox, which emphasizes privacy for one's blog, and today YouTube announced it would take a page out of the Facebook playbook by allowing users to restrict content to others from the same .edu domain. The announcement is being portrayed as a move into Facebook's space, which isn't entirely accurate, as it will do little to impact Facebook's bread-and-butter business of helping college students hook up with each other. But it is an acknowledgment that for some types of video content, students may wish to target it specifically to others at the school. Of course, one of the key features of YouTube is the ability to embed videos on other sites, like a blog. It seems like they'd have to disable this very popular feature for the plan to work, which might ultimately doom the whole plan.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

®idiculous ©rap, 31 Aug 2006 @ 1:40pm

YouTube is a Beer Bong
Overindulgent and geared towrds 20-year olds. Perhaps this will increase traffic to the site. But unless it can package the traffic for advertisers it won't matter how many eyeballs the new service delivers. Seems so 2000.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Kristen, 31 Aug 2006 @ 1:45pm

Tubes
I think "the internets" are my favorite collection (or series if you will) of tubes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 1:58pm

I think this is a good idea, for many people with plans to go on to another school after their current one (med, law, grad, etc.) would not want a video of them doing a 3 story beer bong available to the general public. I know this will launch many of you to respond with "then why put it online at all?", but some people want a way to share photos with friends or acquaintances in their own school without sharing it with the entire world. This is just what facebook has done with their unlimited photo uploading.

and i love the phrase
"Facebook's bread-and-butter business of helping college students hook up with each other"
so true, no matter how you interpret "hook up" haha.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Sean Feeney, 31 Aug 2006 @ 4:34pm
  
  Re:
  Facebook's photo albums are for the entire world to see - you can send the URL to your album to ANYONE, whether they're on Facebook or not and they can flip through them. They just can't see much of your other info without signing up.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 2:07pm

Re: YouTube is a Beer Bong
this is exactly what's wrong with the internet today... ignorant twats such as yourself generalize the internet into a means to make money. you are all worthless scum who are destroying something that had so much potential outside of the "let's line our pockets" drivel.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 2:22pm

Please be careful with use of the term "open", since it usually refers to something completely different (open source and/or open content, or mistakenly, as a reference to Free Software). MySpace is certainly not open in any of those senses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Paul, 31 Aug 2006 @ 3:53pm

Bad delivery
Blocking content based on .edu domain is stupid.

This means that the only time this content is viewable is if the person is on campus or in a dorm that has college supplied internet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2006 @ 4:31pm

Re: Bad delivery
that's the point you brainless twit...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
dorpus, 31 Aug 2006 @ 5:54pm

Freshman Syndrome
Now you see, colleges throughout the country have just started their school year. Hordes of freshmen are having their nervous breakdowns right now. On my way home today, I saw the freshmen carrying their huge laundry bags, because they don't know how to do laundry yet haha.

Freshman who listen to too much pirated music look like this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Uni Student, 31 Aug 2006 @ 7:35pm

The Extension of Facebook
I don't think anybody is thinking about the bigger picture here. YouTube is obviously looking at a merger with Facebook to extend the services merely beyond hooking students up.

Its quite obvious the next step is to film the whole aftermath of the hooking up so that it can be viewed by all... AND PRESTO! A Porn Social Network is born.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
dorethy, 19 Dec 2008 @ 1:17pm

megaupoad downloading
Hi! I would like to recommend you the best Megaupload download centers- http://megaupload.name/ - download everything you want without registration and absolutely free!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]