Your 15 Minutes of Fame..ummm...Make that 10 Minutes or Less

The past few months have been phenomenal for us here at YouTube, thanks to all of you. We've been going through unprecedented growth. Most days it seems we can barely catch our breath trying to keep up with everything, and sometimes I sit at my desk and look around at the 20 or so people around me and cannot believe how far we've come in such a short period of time. No matter how fast we grow or how large we may become, our primary goal is, and will always be, about being in touch with our users and providing them the best online video experience possible. That being said, we've gotten a fair amount of emails lately about the new 10 minute limit we've implemented for video uploads. For those of you not familiar with this change, we've always had a 100MB file limit for uploads. We also recently implemented a 10 minute length limit. This change won't impact the vast majority of our users. We know that over 99% of videos uploaded are already under 10 mins, and we also know that most of our users only watch videos that are under about 3 minutes in length.

So, if most of our users are uploading and watching short form video clips, why even bother to make the change? If it ain't broke, don't fix it right? Well, if you've followed our blog postings or any of the press articles, you know we're constantly trying to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of our users. We poked around the system a bit and found that these longer videos were more likely to be copyrighted videos from tv shows and movies than the shorter videos posted. However, we also recognize that there are legit content creators out there who may have videos over 10 mins, so we've created a Premium Content Program for those of you with professional-produced videos.

What about the little guys you ask? We hear ya. We know that although most users are uploading short form clips, there are those of you out there that are video bloggers or amateur film makers that have legitimate, user generated content over 10 mins, and obviously, this is not an ideal situation for you. We recognize that, and we're actively working on a solution that will allow for those of you with longer form user generated content, while still preventing copyrighted full length episodes from entering the system. In fact, if you are a user with videos over 10 mins, please contact us. We want to hear from you. We want to know how you've been impacted by this change and any thoughts or ideas you may have.


Remember: this site is about you, and we're listening.


Best,

Maryrose