YouTube videos take up an estimated 45 terabytes of storage

[matcom]

<snip>

If the data from YouTube are to believed, the world has a lot of explaining to do.

The video-sharing site doesn't make public much of the information it has about itself, such as a breakdown of the nationalities of its registered users. But it's possible to piece together that sort of information by "scraping" the site, a popular and entirely legal practice of using a computer to gather methodically all the tiny bits of public information scattered around a Web site, and then piecing them together.

I did a scrape of YouTube a month ago and found there were 5.1 million videos. By Sunday, the end of another scrape, that number had grown by about 20% to 6.1 million. Because we know how many videos have been uploaded to the site, the length of each, and how many times it has been watched (total views were 1.73 billion as of Sunday) we can do a little multiplication to find out how much time has collectively been spent watching them.

We will get to the result in due time. First, some other bits of YouTube fun -- data-crunching style. For example, the words "dance," "love," "music" and "girl" are all exceedingly popular in titles of YouTube videos.

Also, nearly 2,000 videos have "Zidane" in the title. Who at a desk anywhere on the planet didn't watch at least one head-butt video in the days after French soccer star Zinedine Zidane's meltdown in the World Cup final? For all the talk of the Internet fragmenting tastes and interests, YouTube is an example of the Web homogenizing experiences.

YouTube videos take up an estimated 45 terabytes of storage -- about 5,000 home computers' worth -- and require several million dollars' worth of bandwidth a month to transmit.

Those costs are one reason that some predict YouTube will collapse under the sheer weight of providing a haven for every teenager with a cellphone camera eager to be famous for 15 minutes of video.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115689298168048904-f92aczYTlCtKrTSiZ8vumR3eZCI_20070830.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

[XNASA]

1. Hey. That's exactly the same amount...

...that your porn collection takes up. :hi:

[underpants]

2. What like other than the "booty" section?

:bounce:

:hide: booty

[Ravenseye]

3. They could easily be losing tons of cash

Then again, with 1.73 billion views that also means 1.73 billion ad impressions, from some major companies, not to mention that some of those views were specifically watching commercials, but lets put that aside.

If they got 1 clickthrough on an add for 1.73 billion impressions, then they have had 17.3 million clickthroughs. Depending on what they charge for impressions and clickthroughs they could be making BANK. I guarantee you that they're making more than what google adwords would pay you for that space. They're getting paid per impression.

Lets say theyr'e conservatively charging 10 cents an impression, 1 dollar a clickthrough (and I'd bet it's more than that) they've made 117.3 million dollars on impressions alone. Add in a dollar per clickthrough and their advertising revenue closes in on 140 million.

They could be just losing tons of money, but they could also be making serious cash right now, and the cost to host these videos pales in comparrison.

[ComerPerro]

4. that doesn't seem to add up. 45 terrabytes, 5000 home computer's worth?

is that saying each home computer can only hold 9 gigs of storage?

And its not like they are streaming all of their videos at once.

[RedStateShame]

5. So I should wait on my taped performance of a Dashboard Confessional song?

I mean, I look really angsty in it and everything!!!