What the hell is going on with YouTube????

[FMiguelez]

[rant]
As of late, YouTube is quickly becoming an annoyance with all those damned embedded ads.

A few months ago I could simply skip the adds by pressing on the "Skip Ad" button, but most ads now do not posses such button anymore... Now, one must watch the full commercial before proceeding to the video one wishes to watch. Most are loooooong... and loud... and irrelevant.

So this thing is quickly becoming just like a TV set, where the most you can do is change channels. I'm really not liking this VORACITY where vendors seem to want to stuff useless things down our throats every single chance they get.

Has anyone discovered a way to bypass them or an app or add-on that skips them? Sometimes you can skip an add by pressing the little "next" arrow down to the left twice, and then going back in the pages twice again. This works some times only...

Does anyone else feel like I do, or should I just accept this fact and grow up?

Is there a better video site without all this ad-craze to watch such things as lectures, debates, and interesting stuff? :dead horse:

[/rant]

[bayswater]

It IS really annoying to sit through a :30 ad to see a 1:30 clip of something useful. I let it run in background with the sound muted while I do something else, and then come back when the ad is done.

I hope those who have something useful to show us will move to other platforms, and then I can just ignore Youtube like I can ignore commercial television, Facebook and Twitter.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Ah, the millennials discover that while the internet may be "free," sties are often owned by corporations out to make money by advertising. Add to that the fact that your Twitter, Facebook, and pretty much any other site you visit is at the pleasure of the site owner - including this one.

Fortunately for us, our Man of Steele (AKA James) doesn't put ads in our face and when they are there, they are relevant to our work - often giving us the chance to win free stuff we can actually use in our work. Bravo!

As for the "twits" and "tweets" and the "facers" and "tubers" (and I count myself among them) we must realize that dot coms like CNN, The NY Times, and Peoria Testicle are in the hands (so to speak) of those who hold the purse strings and they will try to reach as far into as many pockets as they can. And they do!

Sorry kids, but that's the way of the world.

[stubbsonic]

I really like using an app called "ClipGrab". I just put the URL in there, and it downloads the video. I can watch it when I want, then delete it. I can also extract audio (I just use Fission for this), and listen to audio only on my MP3 player.

This is especially nice for those lectures & debates we so enjoy.

Vimeo is awfully classy.

[James Steele]

I really like using an app called "ClipGrab". I just put the URL in there, and it downloads the video. I can watch it when I want, then delete it. I can also extract audio (I just use Fission for this), and listen to audio only on my MP3 player.

MacTubes is also good for that.

http://macapps.sakura.ne.jp/mactubes/index_en.html

[FMiguelez]

I'll check those links.

Thanks, guys.

I'm not familiar with its history, but weren't excessive ads the biggest factor in MySpace's demise?

I wonder how far advertisers will keep going with their futile and annoying offerings. It seems to get more aggressive by-the-week.
Next thing would be that, because of all the tracking they do, they will come knocking at our doors screaming and peddling their crap.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I'm not familiar with its history, but weren't excessive ads the biggest factor in MySpace's demise?

That and the fact that IT SUCKED!

[mikehalloran]

I'm not familiar with its history, but weren't excessive ads the biggest factor in MySpace's demise?

That and the fact that IT SUCKED!

And that FaceBook did what people wanted better.

YouTube will cease to be relevant only when something that is better becomes more popular. Assuming, that is, that Google doesn't buy and bury this as yet unnamed service first.

We the users have let Google become a very big and very powerful company.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

BING! Fast and easy...

http://www.bing.com

[bayswater]

Ah, the millennials discover that while the internet may be "free,"

But it was never free. There were people using it and not paying, but someone else was paying. Music now, that's free, right?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

My music is free once you pay for the license.

[billf]

Next thing would be that, because of all the tracking they do, they will come knocking at our doors screaming and peddling their crap.

Run Little Snitch and set it up so it has to ask for every connection request, then examine each link. You might be surprised to see a few that are connecting to the Borg without your knowledge.

[James Steele]

I'm not familiar with its history, but weren't excessive ads the biggest factor in MySpace's demise?

To my mind, what really killed MySpace was their ill-fated, forced migration of users to the new 2.0 experience which was poorly-coded and and a TON of bugs that slowed the most basic activities to a crawl. Additionally, the real beauty of MySpace was the ability for users to truly make their page, THEIR SPACE. Users could make their page look however they wanted by embedding HTML and and graphic wallpapers and the like. Yes... the result was mixed. Many pages were slow to load, or chock full of gaudy color choices and cheesy graphics, but it was empowering for non-web designers to carve out "their space" on the internet and decorate it any way they saw fit.

The forced update to the new format of MySpace took much of this away, as well as made it slow as molasses. The user base fled in droves. They pretty much shot themselves in the head. Epic case of dot.com suicide.

I think I told this story before, but I was backstage once at a corporate meeting for MySpace and the management was mostly young, aggressive 30-something dot-com types that were obsessed with being cool. They trucked in sofas and coffee tables into the meeting room rather than standard chairs, all as part of the hip thing and that they were spending venture capital money like it wasn't theirs. Umm... well actually... The corporate culture turned me off. Company officers giving presentations dropping the "F-bomb" on stage during presentations without batting an eye. You almost NEVER see that in corporate shows.

But to my point: I remember slipping and mentioning Facebook in front of a female junior exec and I immediately cringed and apologized. Her response shocked me: "Oh... we don't see Facebook as our competition." I think they saw themselves as some sort of music/media hub. Either way, Facebook was already cannibalizing MySpace's user base and everyone I knew was migrating there. Pride cometh before the fall...

[bayswater]

[they were spending venture capital money like it wasn't theirs.

There's the clue. Business success was not always the goal. I had a job offer from a similar company and an interview by the finance vp. She said they had x billion in venture capital and 3 years to spend it, and then they'd either be rich or in jail. A lot of dot.com money just "disappeared."

[BKK-OZ]

Hey James, tell Doris I will double-down on next month's Motunation rent if you set up Motunation so that we can easily embed Vimeo thumbnails/videos.

That's right, I will double my rent payments!!!

Example here (scroll down past the ewwwtube stuff).