The YouTube Government: Why Is YouTube Getting Preferential Treatment?
Lately, there has been a trend for government agencies and elected officials to put their videos up on YouTube. While we commend them for doing so, we can't help but wonder if this is, in the end, a positive trend. After all, while YouTube is definitely the most popular video sharing site, it is definitely not the only one. Yet, as we reported this morning, Congress is putting its videos on the site now, and President-elect Barack Obama is also making regular appearances on Google's popular video sharing service.
In Obama's defense, we have to say, though, that his team put his weekly "YouTube addresses" up on Yahoo and AOL as well, but the default still seems to be YouTube.
Why Shouldn't They Use YouTube?
YouTube is not a public service but a commercial enterprise. Google might, one day, decided to just shut it down, and take its archive with it. One might argue that this is unlikely, but it could happen.
A stronger argument against favoring YouTube, however, is that it does look like preferential treatment of a service that is already close to being a monopoly. Given that services like TubeMogul make it incredibly easy to post videos to a large variety of online video services, there is really no excuse for government officials to only post videos to YouTube except for being ignorant about the alternatives.
As for the new Congress sites, even though this is a bipartisan effort, it would still be in the government's best interest to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Google after all is a major donor to the Obama campaign.
No Ads - But Lots of Status
Also, while Google doesn't directly profit from these government videos (at least we haven't seen any ads on these videos yet), it does turn YouTube into even more of a household name and extends its status as the de-facto video sharing site.
Host Videos In-House?
Congress and the White House probably have enough in-house technical know-how to host their own videos or put their videos on a white-label site. While we commend the members of Congress who put their own videos on YouTube, we would also like to see them use Vimeo, Viddler, blip.tv, and others.
On the other hand, though, YouTube is where the audience is, so putting videos on there makes perfect sense, but we would argue that it shouldn't be the only place to find videos of our elected officials.
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I really think that Obama should put his weekly "talks" on as many video sites as possible. Not sure where you draw the line, but just 1 site seems like too few.
When the president gives a televised speech, its aired on at least 4 or 5 networks. Why not with this as well?
What a great question! It has always been interest that YouTube remains the #1 video source on the Internet with very little true competition. I guess psychology is a major part of it as everyone knows the name YouTube now.
Jesse W.
http://www.subprimeblogger.com
"...it does look like preferential treatment of a service that is already close to being a monopoly."
That's socialism in action. That's what you all voted for.
http://open-government.us/
Principles for running an open transition, signed by the EFF, Mozilla, Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, Jimmy Wales and many more. From the suggestions in the post, it sounds like R/WW might want to sign on to the principles as well.
This is a great point. I remember McCain using Blip.tv on his site... not the best example, but in a world of politics it's sometimes 100% about the #s.
@jmartens makes a good point about network syndication. Maybe they should be using Tubemogul for this type of syndication and statistics?
Rob
You nailed it with the advertising issue. Certain federal laws prohibit the use of such sites, which is why you find few members of Congress, for instance, using commercial video applications.
I question what the Obama Administration will do after January 20. As Obama has not been sworn-in yet, he is OK using Youtube. I don't know what happens Jan. 21.
As far as Youtube alternatives, one of the leading evangelists is Texas Congressman John Culberson. If you visit his campaign site - http://lettexansruntexas.com - you can see links to his tweets, but moreover, streaming Qik videos.
If the government want to put there videos online then they need a website to do that so why not put them on YouTube. It is after all the most popular one out there.
A funny thing happened on the way to building a user generated video sharing business... YouTube created the world's first truly 'public TV station'.
Considering that 'the public' cannot upload videos to the PBS version of "Public TV", and that PBS Public TV has more TV commercials than YouTube, the "commercial" v "public service" point is hollow semantics.
On the other hand, "User Generated Content" is Public Generated Content... so YouTube is Public TV, and it alone has attained the 'mass media' distinction, hence, it is a 'public service'. The other vid sites don't have the mass so they don't get the media because that would not be serving the masses as much as it would be serving content for private gains.
Perspective: C-Span was set-up by the cable companies and PBS is a private corporation. Cable, broadcast, and now Google/YouTube, online. Each plays a vital role in serving the public's right to information -in the information age.
This is absolutely silly. While TubeMogul is a useful service, the point is to reach a broad audience in a way that is familiar to the people. As for a white-label site, when the president issues an address he doesn't do it on a government mandated television channel, he takes airtime from all the channels everyone knows and watches. He also doesn't necessarily address the public on the Discovery channel or on Vh1 despite significant viewership. There is an established precedent for this kind of communication. From a PR perspective, it makes sense to make your video available only on the most publicly accessed video site on the internet, the one that's a household name, as it aligns you with the people. The point isn't to cater to the silicon valley technorati blogger elite especially that the majority of america are barely computer literate, let alone know what Vimeo or similar services are. You also forget that there are plenty of parts of the country that don't even have access to broadband, and the majority of communities across america while having access to broadband, don't have a tech culture or high tech literacy. Is the goal of reaching Americans directly accomplished through YouTube? Yes. That's all that's necessary.
Same goes for the UK government use of YouTube - handily tagged here.
The choice of YouTube makes absolute sense, for all public bodies.
Free video service rather than in-house: because it saves public money and is low barrier to entry.
YouTube versus other free video services: because it has the most users.
But it's interesting, this question of endorsement and anti-competitiveness. I do agree with you - govt should be sharing the love around a bit more. But in reality that will mean using other services PLUS YT, not others instead of YT.
See also Twitter.
Can someone say "Teacher Tube" for all of the Social Studies teachers out there that have You Tube blocked at their school?
Spend tax dollars to create a government service that does exactly the same thing as a successful private sector business? God no. We need more use of private enterprise, not less.
100,000,000+ - number of YouTube videos viewed per day
http://tinyurl.com/9axnuw
Why not?
I wrote about this back in November:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/obama_says_yes.html
I think it is a horrible move by the US government to push YouTube - maybe this happens because Google gives so much to the politicians but it's completely an unfair advantage.
My guess is that the politicians also have no clue and think youtube is the only service around.
If I was running a video hosting company, I'd file charges. Was a proper RFP completed? No. Were the minority, women owned, etc, etc considered? No.
This is a real shame and just keeps YouTube on top.
Over the last several years, the courts have taken a new stance regarding monopolies. It used to be if a monopoly threatened to destroy competition in an industry, that was enough. Now the courts seem to want to see that the "consumer" is being harmed before it will act. In the court's reasoning, if Microsoft, for instance, is giving away IE and the public doesn't have to buy it, the public isn't being harmed even if MS's actions forces Netscape or any other browser company out of business.
Well said; I've been wondering why it' the weekly "YouTube" address, and "Google for Government" (aside from the lure of alliteration).
Looks like the Obama campaign used Tubemogul. See their client list at http://www.tubemogul.com/about/clients.php