YouTube Strikes Back at Yahoo Video

By Ed Oswald | Published June 5, 2006, 11:32 AM

Just a day after Yahoo relaunched its video site to better compete in the viral video market, YouTube shot back Friday by introducing new features of its own. Users would now be able to create "channels," where they can aggregate either their own content, or that of others.

Other users would be able to subscribe to these channels, which can be created through the user profile feature. "Now all content creators and collectors, be it professional filmmakers, videobloggers or just people who love Chihuahuas can broadcast videos from their channel for all the world to see," YouTube's Maryrose Dunton said.

A new blogging feature will allow users to post YouTube videos directly to Blogger, BlogSpot and LiveJournal blogs from the Web site. Each video would include a clickable "blog it" link. Support for additional blogs is on the way, Dunton added.

Finally, the site added a feature that allows the user to view a history of the last 100 videos watched on the service.

While some saw the new Yahoo Video as a threat to YouTube's dominance in the viral video market, others said the search provider has a ways to go before it can compete. According to Hitwise, traffic over the past three months to YouTube has increased 110 percent, versus 22 percent for Yahoo.

Futhermore, YouTube was the 43rd ranked Web site, whereas Yahoo Video came in 205th. YouTube is viewed 50 million times and 50,000 video uploads occur each day, according to company statistics.