Google seems to have bought youtube for 1.6 billion dollars... so from now on we'll see Google ads on youtube pages, which isnt too bad since we were seeing Google ads on youtube for the last couple of months anyway.

1.6 billon dollars!! Goddam!! Back in the dark ages, Microsoft used to buy out companies which made cool OR competitive products (a very strict OR application here), now it's like if it's cool, Google will buy it, unless Yahoo buys it first, think Flickr (they were talking with Google too back then... MS also). So instead of buying youtube Microsoft actually made their own video sharing site, I think it's called SoapBox. Like MSN Spaces, it too is probably used by full time employees only.

So anyway, youtube is now GooTube, YAAY!

This is not about the buyout though, it's about the sheer amount of user submitted content on individual -popular- content. The whole point of sharing a video/photo/blog post is to get views, comments and feedback. That may well be the whole point of all these Web 2.0/Social/Rounded rectangle sites. To share: Give and Take.

Danah Boyd says:

On MySpace, comments provide a channel for feedback and not surprisingly, teens relish comments. Of course, getting a comment is not such a haphazard affair. Friends are _expected_ to comment as a sign of their affection.

Furthermore, a comment to a friend's profile or photo is intended to be reciprocated. It is also not uncommon to hear teens request comments from each other in other social settings or on the bulletin boards. In MySpace, comments are a form of cultural currency.

boyd, danah. 2006. "Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace." American Association for the Advancement of Science, St. Louis, MO. February 19. [Link]

Think comments on blogs, scrapping on orkut. And forget Teens! Everyone likes comments. We pimp and hawk our content for more views, more comments, more favs, more linkbacks... more popularity. These are the popularity currency of the second version of the Web.

That's right we DO pimp our content. "Hi, NICE blog post, I feel the same way about it, please check out my totally cool blog post about it, over here" "Hey y'all! Check out my new photos from the superbly awesome road trip over here, here and here."

We're looking for more views. More comments. And we're hoping other people would be going so crazy about our content they'll mail all their freinds about it, and we'll get more views. More comments.

All this is fairly obvious.. the only problem being most popular sites dont seem to have a mechanism of handling this feedback very effectivly. The Digital Inspiration Blog says the most popular YouTube video is this: Evolution of Dance.

It's been viewed about 33.7 million times. It's been faved by 85,000 people and there are 10,642 comments on it. Views and Favs can be handeled. It tells you this be popular. Very Popular. But how do you handle 10,000+ comments?? For that matter how do you handle 50 comments?

Earlier avtars of youtube used to show all comments in the same page as the video. As more and more people signed in and started commenting, later versions showed a few, and you could view all after clicking on an ajax powered link. Now they've just put in a separate page for ALL comments. Gets ridiculous though... >20 comments dont make sense at all. I just pulled the number out of the air.. it could even be less.

And most of the comments are same - "Cool stuff dude!", "Really nice video", "OMFG! I wish I could do that" etc etc. A large percentage would be spam "Check out this totally cool site", "Make money sitting on your ass at home and answering surveys!! I got 1,000 dollahs last week!! This is not fake!!" And the rest are racist comments "Only you fat american bastards would spend so much time on this crappy video! America sucks ass!!" etc etc..

And what's with the racism on the internet??? Is it that the new internet is putting content generated by the common man available to the comman man across the globe? Is that it? Is it the fact that after looking at USA through the telly, and all those beutifull people on the telly, the fact that every american on youtube/flickr seems to be way too fat is too much of a shock to non Americans?? What's with the anti American comments on youtube?

For that matter, what's with the anti Indian comments? I mean... they've been seeing a distorted view of India on TV since forever... and on the internet the most popular India related videos are just reinforcing the same thing. Bollywood spoofs, 70's C grade telugu movies, Dr Rajkumar singing a fucked up song in English... Terrible, terrible stuff that will kill even a pure bred Indian raised on a healthy diet of bollywood trash.

A recently popular India related video on the internet was some old south Indian movie (I'm assuming it's C grade or worse) song which is a copy of Micheal Jackson's thriller. Of course, the total movie budget was 1/10th the price of Micheal's latest nose job, so the costumes and makeup are horrendous. So is the music. So is the dance. Everything is terrible. It's something you watch and die laughing or of shame (whichever is first).

But this was too much of a India-Racist-Comment bait. Here's some comments..

• THATS WHY FOREIGN PEOPLE ARE ON THIS PLANET FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT PLEASURE
• Can u fuckers be more ignorant?
• faggots, please nuke India
• Indians are officially the funniest people on the face of the planet. THe only thing that makes it funnier is that they all think they are awesome actors and dancers and take themselves soo seriously.
• who the heck would pay to produce this thing? It totally made my top 10 most wierdest internet videos. Kalimar, mar, mar, mar, mar. Hehe, crazy indians with their curry and stuff.
• JESUS VISHNU!! Go eat a cow dipped in rat sauce you fukin dotheads LOL!!!!
• WTF These are the same people who answer you tech questions when your computer crashes

What's with the hatred dudes?? These arent the same people who answer the tech questions when your computer crashes... these are cheap ass actors (or at least NOW famous actors from their starting days) doing a cheap ass movie shown to a public that couldnt care less if the original song was thriller or if the zombie makeup is good quality or not. The tech question people are regular educated young people and they dont go dancing like crazy, taking themselves all serious and shit. Though they might be >>EATING<< curry, they might even be eating cows.. but not in rat sauce. [Here's the link to the video on break.com]

Coming back to the comments overload problem. Popular content does not just have comments... it becomes a discussion forum. Positive comments get mixed up with racist talk, positive criticism gets mixed up with viagra peddlers. Someone needs to fix this thing.

Websites, can we have something like a classification system? Sounds lame I know... a viagra pimp wont file his comments under MISC/Spam, but maybe some type of basic classification. Some better content management.... threads? Please can we have threads?? Someone replying to a comment from 10 scrolls up doesnt make any sense. Tagging anyone? That's so early 2006ish, but still...

And please please please.... No generic drupal interface. Free is the new ugly.