A new phenomenon is sweeping the internet. We are witnessing the rise of the tube sites.
Tube sites are websites with Flash video files which can be streamed to the user’s computer. User’s can upload video clips to tube sites to share with other users. The enabling technology for tube sites is Adobe Flash which has become the defacto means for streaming video on the internet. Also, the wide availability of high bandwidth internet connection by cable and DSL was necessary.
The significance of tube sites is that they are replacing the broadcast television model with a narrowcast model. For decades, what we watched every evening was determined by a handful of executives at the three big networks NBC, CBS and ABC. In Great Britain an even a smaller clique, BBC executives, decided what Brits should see. But the days of everyone tuning in at 11:30PM to watch Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show are finished. Nowadays you can watch a video clip of Jay Leno’s monologue on the internet whenever you feel like it. This is the end of the television networks as we know them.
So what are these tube sites? Naturally, being the internet, the are two kind of tube sites: mainstream and adult.
Mainstream Tube Sites
Youtube. (Alexis #3) Ths is the original and biggest tube site. You can find all kinds of clips here from music videos to old television shows to user’s home videos. Users can upload amything that is within the guidlines, but there are restrictions on the kind of content that is allowed. For one thing, no nudity is permitted. Also, some videos are flagged as not suitable for minors because of the content. Youtube is now a part of Google.
Daily Motion. (Alexis #92) This is the second biggest tube site and the biggest competition to youtube. Daily Motion is a French site ad is less restrictive than youtube. They don’t allow users to upload pornography, but nudity is allowed. Daily Motion is growing faster than youtube and may surpass it at some point unless youtube becomes less restrictive.
MetaCafe. (Alexis #168) Another big tube site is metacafe. They seem to specialize in online video entertaiment like movie trailers, TV clips and music videos.
Break.com. (Alexis #445) This tube site seems to specialize in funny videos and homemade prank videos.
Adult Tube Sites
Like every technology in the internet, the adult industry leads the way. The big adult tube site are Pornhub (Alexis Rank #54) , XVideos.com (#65), xHamster(#89), Redtube (#91), tnaflix.com (#294), Shufuni.com (#335) and hardsextube.com (#376).
Adult tube sites have made older sites like thumbnail gallery posts and link list sites obsolete. Thumbnail movie galleries had pages with three or four short movie clips. Some of the tube sites like xHamster.com have full length adult movies that have been uploaded by users. These are 30 or 60 minute films that might be 100 Megabytes in size. Obvioulsy they require a high-speed internet to access them.
How Many Tube Sites Are There?
Submittubes is a website that lists tube sites. When I wrote this, they listed nine mainstream tube sites and 68 adult tube sites. (The number of adult tube sites is probably overstated because some of the sites are aggregators and only link to content on other tube sites.) As you can tell from the Alexis rankings, many of the top sites on the internet are tube sites.
Ramifications
The effects on our society and culture are huge. Not just for the United States and Great Britain, but for the entire world. Tube sites are redefining how we communicate. No longer do networks control what we watch. Today, everyone has a video camera, can produce content and upload it to the internet. Many of the video clips you see are from a high school kid’s cell phone camera.
I will be writing more editorials on how tube sites are impacting the world we live in.
