Maybe the title is a little speculative, but browsing around YouTube I've ended on what I think it is a database error that returned the following image:
The above one is a screenshot in case they take it down, the original image right now is here: http://www.youtube.com/img/cache_error.jpg
It seems to be a scheme of how their different services interact with each other and the way the information goes from the user to their servers and the database: information that user sends goes through the ManagerTube, gets filtered using the Collaborative Filter and after that sent to the Video Servers and Image servers ending in the database (of course the process is reversed when user requests the information).
What's interesting about this is the Image Servers mention in there. YouTube stores for now the thumbnails for videos and other images (logo, design items) but why didn't that image be a small part of the Documents image and plus why it shows as a camera - may be a wild (speculative) guess but it's not that big of a deal if YouTube would add a photo sharing service like Flickr - after all, Flickr started the war when they added a way to do video sharing.
A couple of facts:
- YouTube already has the technological "social side" developed for the video sharing (you can upload, add comments, ratings, accounts, ...)
- Google already has an entire system set up for Google Images that might port to YouTube Photo sharing, not to mention the Picasa Web Albums service (maybe porting this into YouTube)
- Google lost the battle over purchasing Flickr a while ago, and there is market for photo sharing as Flickr itself proves it (and many others)
If you're thinking why Google would do that since there's already Picasa Web Albums you're also going to have think why Google Videos still exists and is not completely merged with YouTube - this proves that for Google it doesn't matter if it's offering the same service but under different brands.
Anyway, back to the photo of the YouTube cache error, I tried to see what it's written on those fingers and my (wild) guess is that it says Floood (not 2 but 3 "o") - meaning the action of the database being flooded and that's when those "hands" unplug the connection. YouTube Photo sharing, the more I think about it the more I consider it possible. On the same logic, given there's a Documents image in there too, maybe they'll add a document flash sharing sort of like Scribd is (if before you could say I was almost near the line, here you can say it I completely crossed it).
2 comments:
11:00 AM
Very interesting—I have seen lots of “videos” on YouTube that are actually just photo slide shows with music that people have created. I wonder how they would get still image sharing to incorporate in. Seems this may become a trend- Flickr added video, other services (Pixamo, Esnips) offer sharing in various file formats already. We shall see.
11:05 AM
well in my opinion it wouldn't be difficult: when you upload something you'll be asked if you want to upload a video or a set of photos; once you upload photos and they process them, you'll get some sort of a flash slideshow in the same format a video plays in - or have the photos displayed as single items. I don't know, we'll see if something will happen, because competition becomes more and more aggressive between social websites.
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