New YouTube Videos Won’t Play. Day 4 Without Explanation.

youtubebroken.jpgYou won’t read about it on the YouTube blog. And it’s not widely reported in news. But YouTube has been infested by technology problems that have spawned countless video rants by users. Most new videos take 10-24 hours to appear on the site, which has especially frustrated those that attended the “One YouTube” event in San Francisco. Thumbnails appear for the new video, but the videos aren’t viewable. I first reported this on Saturday, February 17 (although it appears to have started on Feb. 16).

Every site has periods of down time. But imagine if eBay, Google or Amazon crashed for four days. Imagine if your NBC shows weren’t available tonight through Thursday due to technical problems. It’d be the headline of every major newspaper.

My theory on why this isn’t more widely publicized… a visitor to YouTube wouldn’t know otherwise. Only the core YouTube users are constantly viewing new videos by people to which they subscribe. So if a reporter was to visit the site, they wouldn’t experience what a regular viewer would. The homepage videos are working.

In any event, I join probably hundreds of thousands of people in disbelief that this could go on this long without an explanation.

I’ll still post to YouTube. But I’m going “bi-situal.” See you on LiveVideo.

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25 Comments

  1. My head-line chasing Britney goes bald video finally went live sometime midmorning….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdO8W0JHxI

    When you rely on celebrity mishaps, you can’t be having 24 hour delays…

    I do generally find that YouTube downtime varies by browser & platform (Firefox on Mac vs PC) but I forget which one tends to respond first…. gah.

  2. Weird, I just posted four old videos to youtube that were lying around on my hard drive to test out Nalts’ issues.

    The first and fourth are still waiting to be processed, the 2nd and 3rd are up already…

    It’s not length or settings as #3 and #4 are identical.

  3. NALTS! There’s a cure to fix videos not showing… AND IT WORKS!!

    All you have to do is…

    Once the video is uploaded and the thumbnail is showing, click on the ‘edit video settings’ then edit something… Like add a space to the comment… Then go and ‘update video’ This will then make the video 100% LIVE!!! KAWABUNGA DUDE!!! This was made possible by blunty3000’s awsome video!

    Demonstrated by my newly uploaded rant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPznBJfy2v4

  4. Signed up for Live Video and I have to say it’s really nice compared to youtube. I think I may have found my new video site unless youtube can get their shit together. Seeing a new video posted on youtube and not being able to watch it till the next day is getting old really fucking fast.

  5. tripplehelix – it does work, but sometimes the videos will go back to being “unavailable”, and you have to do it, again.

    As frustrating as this weekend has been for YouTubers, I bet the people who run LiveVideo are LOVING it!

  6. Nalts, I know you’ll be interested in this vid. Not only do YouTube rip my idea off but they wilfully infringe the filmmakers copyright as well. They featured it today. It’s down now but still on the site. “Malkie’s Pissed at YouTube” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39zTlfnCar0 and then have a look at “Fuck You” – another guy’s attack on YouTube copyright infringement. Amazingly it’s been up since January 7. Unbelievable. I’ve made a copy for when it gets taken down – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCmMKQUVitU

  7. is youtube ever going to address this issue – I don’t like after the fact announcements.

    best thing to do is talk with your feet or fingers or mouse… clicks?

    the next new youtube video anyone uploads now should feature and tell subscribers of an alternative place or places they can be found. Perhaps that will send a message.

  8. A big part of YouTube’s business model is to ensure the site breaks down periodically, without explanation, in order to provide a sizable cross section of its users with something to vlog about.

    That’s why they have meaningless and unhelpful error pages – to further taunt users into creating content. Youtube is famous for its ‘Rant’ videos.

    It’s hard work keeping people unhappy just enough so they’ll make more content. I suspect Youtube actually factors in a ‘Rant percentage’ when making any decision in order to balance the number of people who love the change with the number who don’t.

  9. there’sa dead set drop kick out there jaming the frequency like we used to with our cb”s,put an elastic band around the mike.this person has an IQ. of 46,i know im being very generous.he’d be better off spending his time in a dark closet doing what he does best. are you with me on this one my fellow tubies.

  10. let me inform you my long suffering tubies,the reason why these people cant explain things is because they dont know anything.they would’nt know s—-t from clay.some of them are still struggling to work out if their male or female.i need stematil to get thru this.

  11. I cant watch videos on youtube. when i try to play a video i get this message

    (Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia’s Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player. )

    does anyone have any kind of information to fix this? i have the flash player installed and javascript is enabled.

  12. i cant get sound when i play the youtube`s videos. the thing is, i belive that i havent the right java or something, can somebody help me?

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