AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Tech Crunch

“YouTube sold for $1.6 billion. How much will you sell yours for?”

That’s the over-optimistic hook being used by StartYourTube to entice people into setting up branded video sharing sites on its white label platform.

StartYourTube does exactly what the name implies. You can go onto the site, create your own “tube”, customize it with colors and graphics, mask it to your own domain, invite friends, and start loading content. The tubes not only host videos but have sections for pictures, audio files, and blogs as well.

hey also look and feel much like YouTube, with most recent, most viewed and most viewed lists. Users can vote and comment on videos; however, there’s no related videos list for each video.

This is entirely a free service with, puzzlingly, no perceivable revenue source for the owners. (Update: As has been noticed by commenters, it’ll actually cost you to raise the limits on how much content can be added to your tube and how many views you can receive). Publishers get to keep 100% 60% of ad revenues and the site is even running a $500 promotional giveaway campaign for the “top tubes”.

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