For a lot of users, the world of online video sharing begins and ends with link. And, to a certain extent, it did for me too, up until a few months ago. Over the past few months YouTube seems to have become less and less compelling. In fact, I find myself using the site less and less and going to other upstart video sharing sites with greater frequency (like link, link, link and others).

Now I can't knock the success of YouTube. These guys pioneered simple, easy and addicting video sharing (the guys at link and link must be kicking themselves that they missed out on YouTube's winning formula). And the fact that they were acquired in a $1.75B 谷歌 buyout speaks volumes.

BUT...

All this doesn't mean I'm going to stick around. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Copyright crackdowns
Yeah, I know. It's not right. But copyrighted material is the reason we all went to YouTube in the first place (comon', admit it!). And, 由 all accounts, it's one of the signifcant factors that led to YouTube's stratospheric rise. Post-acquisition YouTube, however, can't 摇摆, 秋千 quite as freely, so we've seen a marked crackdown on copyrighted 视频 on their site ranging from rapid removal of movies, to tv shows to short tv clips and excerpts. The crackdowns also create a lot of uncertainty for uploaders. If I'm uploading something in that "grey" copyright area, should I bother with YouTube knowing that it might be removed the 下一个 day?

2. Server outages
This one drives me nuts. YouTube still seems to be the most outage prone 最佳, 返回页首 10 web property I've ever encountered. Whoever is managing the server operations, production upgrades, etc. should be fired. Late summer the outages were really bad. I remember several in a single week with one even occuring in the middle of the day. Even last night, during primetime surfing hours there was a lengthy 1-2 小时 outage. I know they're dealing with growing pains, but outages just plain suck. If I can't count on your site to be around when I need a fix (and I'm already dinging 你 on point #1), then once again, I'm off to greener pastures.

3. The 10-minute cap
I know 你 can get a special account that lets 你 上传 longer length videos, but the 10-minute 帽 for free accounts is completely lame.

4. 上传 Woes
Uploading to YouTube is like playing Russian Roulette. 你 never really know if your video is going to make it. Sometimes when it does, 你 get strange video artifacts from the compression/conversion routine (this has happened to me a couple of times with perfectly good 来源 material). I've also experience long 12-36 小时 waits for my video to be fully processed and posted. This is painful when I need to get something up and available quickly. I've used several other sites for video uploads and have had the video post almost instantly following upload.

5. 搜索 Indexing is Slowwwwww
The new trailer to The Simpsons movie premiered the other night and I figured I'd check YouTube to see if it was available. Of course, when I received 搜索 results for Simpsons sorted 由 日期 the most 最近的 clips available were from over 16 hours ago. And this isn't the first time I've seen this on YouTube. YouTube's 搜索 index 更新 far too infrequently for a site with such a rich 图书馆 and constant inflow of new clips. I went to 谷歌 Video and sure enough, there it was (along with freshly added 视频 in the 搜索 results).

To be fair, YouTube still does a lot of things very well. There is no other site out there with the breadth and variety of video offerings and the huge audience means 你 have the *potential* to get your material in front of a lot of eyeballs. The 最近的 谷歌 acquisition (hopefully) means that server issues, 上传 woes and 搜索 indexing will be improved with the help of a technology-savvy and deep-pocketed parent. And with the biz-dev effort to strike meaningful content partnerships with the large media companies there's bound to be 更多 legal content on YouTube. But all of this will take precious time (and lord knows we webizens are an impatient lot).

So while I will still be using YouTube for some of my video sharing needs, it's no longer my primary nor sole 来源 for online video. There's just too much great stuff being 发布 to Daily Motion, Bolt, VidLife, Guba, OUOU and other sharing sites out there (and as always, I'll be using link for organizing and grouping cool 视频 regardless of where they're hosted - gotta 爱情 the eps on the link).

But enough of my rant, what do 你 think? Does YouTube suck? Are 你 using it less? Are there other alternatives 你 think are 更多 worthy?