ABSTRACT
In April 2007, 45 million people visited the video sharing site YouTube, and each spent nearly 41 minutes there. Combining those minutes and converting them to years, these figures equate to 3,510 years spent watching YouTube in one month. Never before has people’s play with moving image been viewed and discussed as it is at this moment. It is no surprise that YouTube has captured the attention of journalists who have written about ‘clip culture’ and the ‘YouTube’ effect, companies who have brokered deals with YouTube to set up channels and release copyrights on their videos, and of course Google, who bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006 (Geist, 2006). With the sale of YouTube, one of the questions being asked is how the site is going to start deriving revenue. Previously free from advertisements, how YouTube will be monetized is not yet clear.
