Items tagged with YouTube
If you've ever questioned your financial worth or how much you're making at your current job, you might want to stop reading at this point. A new report is detailing just how much the world's top streamers can earn for a few hours of streaming, and it is a staggering amount. The report from the Wall Street Journal claims that some of the top game publishers like Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two are paying streamers upwards of $50,000 to stream. And no, we're not talking about $50,000 for a week's or even day's worth or work. Instead, these companies are paying $50,000 per hour. Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins These publishers are counting on the huge followings...
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Google and Amazon have long feuded when it comes to their streaming offerings, which means that users beholden to each respective platform have needlessly suffered. As a result of the tech giant squabbling, Fire TV users have been without the YouTube app since late 2017, while the Prime Video app has been missing from the Google Chromecast. However, the two companies today officially announced a truce. Google's YouTube app will now be available on Fire TV streaming devices and Fire TV Edition Smart TVs. Likewise, Amazon's Prime Video app will be accessible on Android TV, Chromecast and devices that have integrated Chromecast capabilities. But it doesn't end there. It has also been revealed...
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When YouTube TV launched at a price of $35/month, it was seen as a breath of fresh air in the streaming TV market. The service offers live programming (including local network channels) that can be streamed from just about any device, and includes Cloud DVR functionality. However, the $35 monthly price rose to $40 in March 2018, and now Google is instituting another price increase for YouTube TV. Effective immediately for new customers, YouTube TV subscriptions will cost $50 per month. A $15/month increase in two years sounds like something that we’re used to from Big Cable, and not more lithe competitors in the streaming world, but here we are. And we’ve...
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Could YouTube partly be responsible for the increase in “flat earthers”? Researchers have discovered that many flat earthers were persuaded by YouTube videos. Many of these videos had been recommended or promoted by YouTube’s algorithm. A “flat earther” is a person who believes that the earth is a flat plane or disc instead of a sphere. Many ancient civilizations including the Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians held this belief and incorporated the theory into their cosmology. Although modern scientists have concluded that the earth is a sphere, the flat earth theory never truly disappeared. The theory has recently gained popularity thanks to social media. Dr....
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Following its initial launch in select markers back in 2017, Google has announced that its YouTube TV streaming service is now launching nationwide today. YouTube TV is up against a number of big players in the market including DirecTV Now, Sling TV, and Hulu + Live TV. This market expansion should make the service appealing to even more Americans at a $40/month price point. Google says that YouTube TV is now available in the top 95 markets, as of today, and that 98% of households in the U.S. are covered. The remainder of the people not covered today will get coverage "shortly thereafter" today's nationwide launch. The benefit of YouTube TV is that it allows users to watch feeds...
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When the average American likely thinks of a hardcore gamer, they likely picture some nerdy kid with a beard and a ponytail living in his mom's basement. However, the world of professional Ninja, aka Tyler Blevins, is a 27-year-old Fortnite beast that has not only helped to popularize the incredibly prolific game, but has amassed a huge following on his two social media platforms of choice: YouTube and Twitch. On YouTube, has nearly 21 million subscribers. On Twitch, he has 12.8 million followers. Ninja’s “street cred” skyrocketed back in March 2018 when he teamed up with rapper Drake for a Twitch live stream. That stream broke records at the time with over 660,000...
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Yesterday, a story critical of Google was making the rounds purported to be from a former intern that worked on the Microsoft Edge team. Joshua Bakita detailed one particular instance in which Google allegedly altered site code to make Google apps/website either not render properly or perform poorly on competing browsers. "For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail," wrote Bakita. "Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance...
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YouTube has been pushing its upscale YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services since it hacked YouTube Red into two parts last May. The streaming video giant is now reaching out to students by offering lower-cost subscription plans to YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium; both are ad-free streaming services. Under the new payment plans, Students can get YouTube Music Premium for $4.99 per month, a discount of $5 monthly. YouTube Premium will cost students $6.99 per month rather than the $11.99 monthly rate it charged before. Students that sign up before January 31, 2019, can get YouTube Premium for $5.99 per month pricing locked in for four years. For those unfamiliar with YouTube...
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If you are looking for something to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, YouTube is showing some top-tier Hollywood films in their entirety, but you do have to sit through some commercials to watch them for free. Among the free movies, you can watch are the sci-fi classic The Terminator, Rocky, and newer films like Legally Blonde. These free, feature-length movies are offered in the Movies section of YouTube and have been there since October. YouTube has sold movies in that section of its website for years. This marks the first time that YouTube has offered free streaming films in exchange for users watching ads. A quick search on YouTube shows that the full-length film The Terminator has ten commercial...
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As much as we like Nintendo's hybrid Switch console for gaming, there is not much in the way of non-gaming entertainment, and certainly not on the level of an Xbox One or PlayStation 4. If the latest rumor has any truth to it, however, Nintendo might be starting to change that with the introduction of a YouTube app, perhaps as early as this week. The streaming situation on the Switch is underwhelming at the moment. Nintendo launched the console with not just a limited catalog of games (which has since been rectified), but also a lack of any streaming video services. That changed a year ago this month when Nintendo introduced support for Hulu. However, both Netflix and YouTube remain noticeably...
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Over the years, Plex has grown to become a feature-packed multimedia hub for people looking to cut the cord. From its support for news programming, live over-the-air programming with DVR support, and the usual staples like local- and internet-based streaming of music, movies and TV shows; Plex seemingly does it all. Today, however, the company has announced yet another new extension to the platform, and it's called Plex Web Shows. Currently available in beta, this free service provides unlimited on-demand programming that you can view from anywhere. Plex is quick to point out that you don't need a paid subscription or a Plex server in order to take advantage of Plex Web Shows. You'll...
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We have all been down the rabbit hole that is the Internet. It starts with a simple search, perhaps a lookup of the weather for the weekend, and then hours later you find yourself streaming "Little Joe Sure Can Sing" by Joe Ritchie, who you found out is actually Joe Pesci from Goodfellas fame. And woe is you if you trip into a endless sea of YouTube videos. How do you possibly climb out if that happens? We're not sure, to be honest, though Google is now throwing users a lifeline of sorts by showing you how much time you spend watching videos. This is a new feature that is rolling out to user profiles, available in the account menu starting today. The profile lets you know how long you've watched...
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Google has been working on a dark mode for its YouTube app for a long time now, after having rolled it out to the web and then later to Apple's iOS platform. Well, guess what? Android users finally have access to it as well, and can join the dark side. It's not clear if Google has enabled the dark theme on all Android devices just yet, but it is available on at least some of them. The dark theme option started appearing on Android devices as we headed into last weekend. Some users report having seen it enabled automatically when firing up YouTube on their smartphones, along with a pop-up notifying them that it is a new feature. Users could then choose to dismiss the prompt and enjoy the dark...
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Have you noticed that YouTube pages appear to load slower in Edge, Firefox, and Safari compared to Google's own Chrome browser? If so, you are not alone. Google redesigned the YouTube experience last year, but the site still uses an older shadow API that is only used in Chrome, which makes other browsers render YouTube much slower. Chris Peterson, a program manager at Mozilla, noticed the performance disparity and posted about the topic on Twitter. According to Peterson, the YouTube page loads five times slower in those other browsers "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome." YouTube page load is 5x slower in Firefox and Edge than...
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