One of, if not the biggest major problems that many popular and free (OK ‘Web 2.0′) websites face is how to make money and give a return to their, creators , owners and backers.
Sites such as Twitter have always had question marks hanging over them from the web community. Until they get taken under the wing of a bigger company who could use the technology or user information, how are they going to be able to keep running without generating large sums of income?
Due to the nature of the content on the site, YouTube needs to be able to make money more than most due to its storage and bandwidth needs alone. YouTube have claimed that 20 hours of video is uploaded a minute and it is believed that over 10 billion videos are streamed on the site (Just to quantify that number – it would take around 500 hundred years for a person to count to 10 billion!).
With this in mind YouTube need to start making some serious revenue and they have just announced that they are to offer a rental service for some videos. Initially there will be five videos available to rent but only to users in the USA. The films are going to be from the 2009 and 2010 Sundance festivals and most will be charged at £2.50 for a 48hr rental.
Content creators wanting to charge for the rental of their videos/films on YouTube will be able decide how much to charge, with YouTube taking a cut. It is an interesting development and we will know more when the service is initially launched on the 22nd January.
Tags: Film, Rental, Revnue, Video, Web 2.0, YouTube
