YouTube Statistics - Good or Bad?

Last night at dinner my mother really shocked me –

Mom: I am really learning my Spanish now, and I can really read that great Spanish book my friend gave me.
Me: Oh how nice.
Mom: Then I went onto YouTube to find search for lectures by the author so I could learn more about his ideas and practice my Spanish some more...
Me: You what? You used YouTube?! To find what?!

I never expected (1) my mother to use YouTube and (2) find Spanish spoken lectures to use for Spanish practice. This is my mother, whom I had to first teach how to use a mouse and now she is fully leveraging the spoils of the Web 2.0 world.

Our conversation made me wonder what type of statistical information I could find out about who viewed YouTube videos (and maybe their ages).

My first solid Google hit was this blog, or viewed better here, which contained interesting facts such as (as of March 2008):

Total # of videos (~78,000,000)
Total # of videos uploaded per day (200,000)
Time it would take to watch all of the currently up loaded videos (~412 years)

Interesting, yes, but what I found next was most intriguing. Apparently, last year YouTube released YouTube Insight, which lets users see a wide variety of statistical information about their videos.
Examples include:
# of people who watched the video tracked over time
Geographical location of viewers
Where the viewers came from to see the video (website link, Google search, YouTube search)

YouTube's Own Video Describing Insight


A quick search on YouTube produced two good personal videos describing the details of YouTube Insight from their own perspectives. The first one highlights the positive side of YouTube Insight.


The next video casts Insight in a negative light and highlights how the statistical information can be used by the 'evil' advertisers and marketers.



I disagree with the negative tone of the second video and feel that it is only fitting that information provided for 'free' to the video owners can also be used by money making minded people and organizations as well. Each party is getting access to interesting information.

Yet the average user can not do too much with the information while the advertisers can make a profit from the same information as an article in the New York Times highlights, " But it is likely that marketers rather than casual users will be clamoring for these tools the most. YouTube executives suggest that marketers can use the tools in several ways. A movie studio might run several versions of a trailer to see what is catching on where, and if a humorous spot is catching fire in Texas, might start running that trailer as a TV ad in the state."

What might be an interesting byproduct, though, would be a synergy between the average uploader and advertisers. Maybe video uploaders could analyze their own video's statistical information and used that knowledge to market their videos popularity to advertisers in order for each party to generate revenue.

Finally, as I have said in other posts I understand that we as Web 2.0 users must allow our 'personal' information (personal video statistics) to become part of the public domain us in order to enjoy the 'free' (advertising supported) Web 2.0 applications.