User Generated Content, Youtube in the NYT

A good piece in the NYT about user generated digital content. The article describes the amateur creation of video content on You Tube

It's not seminudes or celebrity satire or kittens' antics that dominate the most-viewed list at YouTube.com, the popular clearinghouse for international homemade video. So exactly what videos are drawing viewers to this ascendant site, which, less than a year after its launch, averages about 25 million hits each day?

YouTube makes this question easy to answer by giving users several ways to sort the videos, including by "most discussed," "most recent" and, handily, "most viewed." It turns out that most of the videos that get millions of looks are humorous posturings by kids who in other places and at other times might be collecting near-mint X-Men comics, or practicing Metallica licks.

Why do I blog this? first because I tend to replace tv watching by you tube scanninng, and second because I am really impressed by the burst of creation on the net. See for instance this graph generated via Alexaholic: after the explosion of pictures exchanged on flickr (in red which is still increasing), the traffic on youtube (in blue) is now starting to skyrocket, even more than flickr: