Mark this date. I have a feeling this is going to be a huge disruption in the TV space. It’s limited to select partners for right now, but I’ll bet that anyone with a YouTube channel will get the opportunity eventually. And as Mat Honan sais, this brings us “a small step closer to the dream of a la carte programming.”
YouTube will let you pay to subscribe to channels with a new pilot program that includes a limited number of channel partners for now. The company listed Jim Henson Family TV and Ultimate Fighting Championship as initial members.
Prices start at $.99 per month, paid via Google Wallet. Users get a 14 day free trial to channels, which are also discounted if you subscribe by the year. Once signed up for a paid channel, you can suck down as much video as it has to offer.
Just like some popular social networking sites, online video services are moving to become (big) networks on their own. This’s good news. But, this debate will continue, unendingly: Should we all pay for what we watch OR should we all pay for what some of us like to watch??
It’s getting harder to make money on YouTube even in this post-dial-up-modem era »
The surge in new content—about 72 hours of which is uploaded each minute today vs. every 48 hours in 2011—makes it harder for any one content channel on the site to get noticed. Even worse for creators: Rates that advertisers pay to be on popular videos have fallen by about one-third since last June, according to research firm TubeMogul, which bases its figures on rates for several video sites, including YouTube.
![theatlantic:
How Much YouTube Do Employees Really Watch at Work?
J.C. Penney employees are reported to have watched five million YouTube videos from the office during the month of January.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/336ed3487985c0c48b64596df803fb5b/tumblr_misirvt0RX1qcokc4o1_250.jpg)
How Much YouTube Do Employees Really Watch at Work?
J.C. Penney employees are reported to have watched five million YouTube videos from the office during the month of January.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
(via courtenaybird)
Everyone’s doing the “Cat Daddy” dance »
Who would have thought Kate Upton gyrating in an itsy bitsy red bikini would spark a trend?
Here’s a still from the BuzzFeed video uploaded to YouTube of a car chase that Fox News aired live Friday, in which the suspect killed himsellf.
‘Gangnam Style’ breaks Guinness World Record on YouTube »
Winning the hearts of South Koreans and Americans alike, the insanely viral song is now the Most Liked YouTube video of our time.
A California judge refused Thursday to order YouTube to remove controversial footage from “Innocence of Muslims,” the inflammatory film that sparked a U.S. backlash in the Middle East.
A woman who starred in the film, Cindy Lee Garcia, asked a Los Angeles County judge to take down the film because she said she was fired from her job, received death threats and was tricked into starring in the “hateful anti-Islamic production.” The film has possibly led to the killing of J. Chrisopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and about two dozen others the past week.
» via Wired
![tastefullyoffensive:
[via]
LOL, YouTube comments!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mah0r673441qewacoo1_250.jpg)
Giddy-up! Robotic mule is a YouTube star »
This week, robotics company Boston Dynamics dazzled us with the latest member of its robot menagerie: a robot that looks and acts like a mule, with hoof-like feet, a trotting gait and special sensors that enables it to follow a human over difficult terrain. […] Oh, and it can carry up to 400 pounds of stuff for 20 miles without refueling. […] Boston Dynamics calls the robot the Legged Squad Support System, or LS3. Its development is being funded by DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps.
An incredible feat of engineering!
According to Nielsen’s latest “Music 360” report, 48% of consumers in the U.S. still see radio as the dominant way to discover new music. For almost two-thirds of U.S. teenagers, however, Google’s YouTube is now a more important source of music than radio (54%), iTunes (53%) and CDs (50%).
Despite the growing popularity of Internet music services among teens, about a third of them still bought a CD in the last year and among all respondents, 55% said physical CDs are still a very or fairly good value.
» via TechCrunch
Perrier presents its new film, The Drop, shot by Johan Renck. […] When everything is melting on Earth, a gorgeous heroine is sent into space to refresh the world with a bottle of Perrier…
“The Drop” is a pretty fantastic idea — to spend a couple of million dollars to send the hottest babe ever into the galaxy to extinguish the two-nonillion-kilogram sun (with a liter of spring water) threatening to destroy Earth. But does this ad impress you? Don’t judge this ad by its YouTube comments. The video did, at least, deliver this message: Perrier quenches (thirst and fire).
