Ampers & Dot

If you’ve ever read this blog before then you’re probably overly aware that I enjoy numbers, online video,charts and graphs, and search engine topics. If you already knew I like these things then meet me at section “2″ while we bring the stragglers up to date on things. If you haven’t read this blog before, then go read a few other posts and you’ll immediately learn how geeky I am about these things. Then you can pick up meet me at the next paragraph, labeled “1″… we’ll wait…

1. Oh, hi- you’re back! Thanks for reading a some other posts- I appreciate your time. Wasn’t that great though!? I know, thanks. Ok, well now that you’re up to speed you can resume with the rest of the group at #2

2. Good, now that we’re all together there is just one last bit of required reading: Compete’s chart of top YouTube search terms

Basically, the chart shows you what people were searching for on YouTube in the month of March. I have to say that this is both fascinating and hilarious.

First and foremost, let’s just get this one out of the way. Who goes to YouTube for porn? The site is pretty well known (at least I thought) to have a strict “R” rating… to me this is like buying candy at a health food store. I mean, if you’re going to do it wrong… do it right!

But interestingly, what the chart shows us is that actually a LOT of people go to YouTube for “sex” and “porn”. With over 60 million viewers last month and .21% of all YouTube searches for one of those terms… we can only assume that there are at least two million idiots out there (or one extremely horny dude searching over and over again…).

Anyway- let’s look at another weird part of the chart - the number 10 search term: “Funny”. Do we, as a society, really have that much time on our hands that searching for something “funny” is a good use of time? Don’t get me wrong, one of my favorite sections of YouTube are the hilarious clips (and it’s a pretty well known fact that I’ve seen almost every America’s Funniest Home Videos ever), but I’m more interested that people are searching “funny”.

No real direction, no focus on anything, but something “funny”. If you look at the rest of the top ten you’ll see there are only a three general terms (Sex, Porn, Funny) and the rest are for specific content.

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. The beauty of YouTube is that it’s all there. All of it. There are videos for anything you can imagine, so of course people are just browsing. On one hand this is a great thing for YouTube because it provides a home for people to find “whatever”. But on the other, this is a huge opportunity for other online video providers.

This is a chance for other video sites to make a name as the authority of content. No, you won’t have “everything” - that’s what YouTube does. So what do you have? This is the reason I love WineLibrary, Funnyordie, or Hulu (no Hulu doesn’t pay me, I just talk about them all the time because it’s awesome). WL is the home of videos on wine- FunnyorDie has much of the comedy I would want online, and Hulu has all the network shows I’d want. I don’t need to go searching because I know the source already.

YouTube channels are only the tip of the iceberg and in the coming months I expect to see many more specialty video sites pop up and declare themselves as an authority on the subject.

If I were creating an online video channel the first thing I would do is look at the Compete chart and see what people specifically want (hint: rhymes with Busic Fideos). The audience is there- they just need a place to find the right content. As YouTube continues to expand it will only become more of a hub for generic searches and less of a place to find what you’re actually looking for.

UPDATE: It turns out that NewTeeVee (great online video site) wrote about a Music Video startup site today.
UPDATE 2: I’m really, really smart.