The speculation over how YouTube will continue to operate and if any other web-based companies can compete with the web video giant is never ending. The comparisons to Napster are inevitable. They have had issues with copyright infringement and have been trying to work out licensing deals.

When Google purchased the popular site it impacted online video in a positive manner.
Smaller online video companies viewed it as an opportunity that they could be the next YouTube or at least compete in the same arena.

Their concept would be different than YouTube. Focusing mainly on original content that could be episodic in form or something that's entertaining in general. Smaller competitors generally want to stay away from the "Sword of Damocles" that copyright infringement has become for YouTube and Google.

YouTube has shown an increase of 3 million users in the last 3 months that puts them at 23.5 million visitors for October of this year according to comScore Media Metrix. With those kinds of numbers it would be a challenge for other web video sites to build that size of an audience.

YouTube has the traffic but will user's become burned out on the short clips and look else where for longer, better video content? With the push in the digital world to be able to watch anything, anytime there may exist room for a number of web video based sites. In an article by Jason Fry for the Wall Street Journal Online he writes "Digital technology has exploded the old paradigm of content being handed to us at a set time in a set format. We now increasingly repackage media to suit ourselves - time-shifting it with TiVo, clipping it with video-editing software or remixing it for other purposes, and posting it with YouTube"
As technology, quality and content continue to improve so will the options of the viewing audience. It is happening now and somewhere in the near future watching web video on your own living room TV will be the norm for the majority.

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