5 Ways YouTube's New Unlimited Uploads Will Change The Face Of Web Video

YouTube has been gradually increasing their upload time limit, first to ten minutes and then to fifteen. Yesterday they announced that they have just raised their limit to allow selected users (including me, yay!) to upload videos that are even longer than fifteen minutes. If you ask me, this is big news for the world of web video. Read on to find out more about the upgrade, as well as the ways in which YouTube's new upload limits (or lack thereof) will change the face of web video forever. If you are a lucky user who has "a history of complying with the YouTube Community Guidelines", then you should see something like the following image when you log on to your YouTube account and click to upload a video: But what exactly are the implications of longer YouTube videos? Here are my predictions. Lots Of Painfully Boring Videos Await Us, Hooray! Okay, maybe this isn't such a positive thing. Personally, I thought 15 minutes was a bit much for the average YouTuber. Online video viewers don't have a very long attention span and if you create a 15-minute or longer vlog where you just talk about your opinion about various cheeses, or upload a 25-minute clip of your niece splashing around in the baby pool you are going to put a lot of people to sleep. And I have a feeling that a lot of YouTubers are going to start doing just that - uploading really long clips that don't go much of anywhere. Why? People can't be bothered to edit their videos down, especially now that they don't have to. Oh, and I just want to take a second to offer up some words of wisdom. In most cases, shorter is better in the world of viral video. A 7-second YouTube clip has much more viral potential than a 7-minute clip. People have short attention spans, they want instant gratification, and unless your video is really good they aren't going to sit past the 1-minute mark. The good news is that hopefully some of the longer-than-15-minute-clips will actually be worth watching, and that's where my next point comes in. We'll See A Huge Rise In Feature Length Films & Web Series On YouTube Many YouTube partners already had the time limits lifted on their YouTube accounts and have been producing videos that are longer than 15 minutes for some time now. However, the longer YouTube videos haven't really gone mainstream yet. I hope that they will start to. At the end of last month YouTube megastar Ryan Higa released a 35-minute YouTube film. It got over 3 million views in the first week and currently has over 5 million views. What does this tell me? People out there have a hunger for longer, compelling web video content. Now that the everyday Joe who isn't a YouTube partner has the ability to upload longer content, I'm hoping that we will begin to see longer form YouTube content become more popular. Hours Per Minute Uploaded To YouTube Will Increase Tenfold! Shortly following YouTube's increase of their upload limit from 10 minutes to 15 minutes the number of hours of video uploaded to YouTube per minute jumped from 24 hours to over 35 hours. As more and more people begin uploading longer videos we are sure to see a gigantic jump in the amount of video content being uploaded to the video site. OK, it might not be literally a tenfold increase overnight, but it's going to be a lot! Average Viewer Time Spent On YouTube Will Sustain A Major Boost According to comScore statistics, viewers on Google sites (which consists primarily of YouTube) are currently watching about 4.5 hours of video on YouTube per month. However, viewers are currently limited to watching videos under 15 minutes long. As more users start uploading watchable, intriguing web series and feature length content, viewers will have a lot more to watch and will spend a lot more time watching. Hulu has been on the rise against YouTube in terms of minutes spent per month. But watch out, Hulu! YouTube's playing a whole new ballgame with their longer limits. A More Creative & Artistic YouTube Culture Will Emerge YouTube is currently most known for it's short viral videos, made up of news clips, FAILs that happened to be caught on tape, silly sketches, bloggers and weird, random clips. With longer limits there will be more room for filmmakers and artists who create feature length content or even short films that happen to be over 15 minutes long. I have a feeling that as more of this type of content emerges on YouTube things are going to get a whole lot more artistic and creative. We might see an increase in YouTube film festivals, more creative collaborations, and a new artistic revolution on this site, which made its name from sort of silly home videos and amateur video content. How do you think the new upload limits will change the face of YouTube and web video?

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5 Ways YouTube's New Unlimited Uploads Will Change The Face Of Web Video

Megan O'Neill

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Megan O'Neill