uTube.com Business Stalled by YouTube Purchase Hype

prostoalex writes "Google's acquisition of online video sharing site YouTube.com resulted in massive traffic headed to uTube.com, "the number one supplier of used Tube & Pipe equipment in the world!", according to the site. CNN Money reports: "The company, which sells used machinery for making tubes to clients worldwide, has seen its site utube.com knocked off line by millions of online searchers looking for video site. "It's killing us," said Ralph Girkins, president and owner of the 22-year-old business. "All my worldwide reps use our Web site. Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there."""

Insult to injury

On top of that, now Slashdot links to it...

Re:Insult to injury

If all slashdot readers can AVOID the temptation to visit the utube site I'm sure the company would much appreciate it!

Re:Insult to injury

I think the company will be quite happy when all the readers at least buy something

Re:Insult to injury

Umm... As a /. user, what exactly am I supposed to buy from utube.com? Extra pipes to get more internet?

Re:Insult to injury

Ahem, I think you mean tubes. And, yes, given that the Internet is a series of tubes, it stands to reason that buying more tubes would allow you to get your Internets faster. After all, it's not just a truck that you can dump stuff on. Good grief, everyone knows that, you loser.

Re:Insult to injury

As a /. user, what exactly am I supposed to buy from utube.com?

2.5 inch PVC happens to be very close to the size of a tennis ball.

Not that anyone would ever special order 2.5" PVC for use in a pneumatic air cannon.

Re:Insult to injury

You'll need one hell of a truck to ship those tubes.

and now we /. them

Good job y'all. They're already complaining about traffic and you link to their site?!

Re:and now we /. them

Worth noting that the professionally edited article at CNN links to everyone concerned except utube.com. At least they engage their brains before publishing stories.

there's a reason I don't give slashdot my money!

Well, actually several, but mostly it boils down to the utter lack of editorial standards. Bad grammar, bad spelling, slashvertisements, links to semi-literate amateur blogs for stories carried by decent, high-quality sites, and ... sheer idiocy like this. I enjoy slashdot. It's an interesting diversion. And I've been around for a long time, and I still haven't given up on it. But the complete and utter lack of editorial common sense or professionalism is simpy infuriating at times! I would miss slashdot if it disappeared, but there's no way I'm willing to pay for something this poorly produced. And that's the bottom line.

However, at least this time I can be proud to announce that I did not RTFA! :)

Re:and now we /. them

...professionally edited article at CNN...[snip]...At least they engage their brains

Two firsts in the one day!

(Someone had to say it. But I agree they made the correct decision)

And as if that wasn't enough..

they're now at /.
Poor guys.

Tubes

Well luckily he has enough tubes for all those internets!

Oh, come off it.

Take the link out of the story, seriously.

Next aquisition

Obviously, utube.com will be Google's next aquisition - just look at how much traffic they get!

Re:Next aquisition

They don't, I checked. Several times.

Slashdotted for the soul

... and someone was kind enough to help them out a bit more with their traffic.

Put up some advertising/adsense banners

While you can. Might as well score some cash from the traffic.

Or is it free publicity?

The site seems to be performing fine. Maybe someone's just taking the opportunity to get their company in the news. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

-b

Oh, boo hoo

If they can't figure out a way to profit from this, too freakin bad for them.

Are they confused as Ted Stevens?

Let Jon Stewart Explain [youtube.com]

It's 2006

It's the year of the tube [ewetube.com]

Deja Vu

And how kind of the slashdot editors to link to utube directly, just to rub the slashdot salt into the wounds.

(I can hear their servers weeping in the corner right now).

Solution

You know, MLB.com had this problem a few years ago when it was owned by some law firm. Their solution is simple, have a really simple front page saying "If you are looking for the video site YOUtube, click on the link,
if you are looking for used hardware, click on Utube
It will save them some trouble in the short run, but my question is shouldn't this be happening all along since youtube is popular BEFORE google decided to buy it out?

Nothing to see here, it's up

Their site is fine now. Their equipment, though...

They're a surplus machinery dealer, and much of their equipment has seen hard use followed by neglect. The neglect is worse than the hard use. This lathe [utube.com] is a good example. That's a good Monarch precision lathe, but the picture, taken in 2000, shows considerable rust. Most of their gear is like that; it looks like it came out of an abandoned factory. It's repairable; you can send the lathe back to Monarch [lucasprecision.com] for an overhaul. But it's not good for much in its current condition. If there's any rust in the bearings, the precision is lost.

For comparison, see this Monarch Lathe [ebay.com] on eBay. Made in 1950, and still in good shape. Those things will last a century if cared for.

If you have machinery like that around that's not in use, you have to oil it, then wrap it in plastic with some dessicant inside.

Spelling is HARD

The most frightening aspect of this is that there are tens of millions of people out there that are having a difficult time spelling out YouTube. If it were a case of mistyping, would that particular iteration really show up that much? Perhaps we have millions of kids out there who genuinely believe that you is spelled u.

Re:Spelling is HARD

Can you tell the difference between uTube and YouTube when pronounced? No?

Re:Spelling is HARD

Crap, you just took out my server.

Lesson in domain names for YouTube

Wherever possible, pick a name that is easily read in an email or understood when read out over radio, on the phone, or in conversation. Also, easy to remember and spell.

But almost $2b later, I can't imagine that the founders care all that much!

Ancient Slashdot Joke Retread

Suggestion to CEO of uTube:

1. Register utube.biz or similar alternative name; make utube.com a lightweight page redirecting actual customers to the .biz site
2. Start selling ad space on the rest of the utube.com pages
3. Profit!

Also suffering from YouTubing are...

EweTube, the world's premier manufacturer of sheep storage devices,
EwwTube, suppliers of air freshener to travellers on the London Underground and
YuTube, a site dedicated exclusively to promoting the restaurant of David Yu, chinese cook.

That's not nice!

How could all those internet users knock the main company offline who was responsible for construction of the Internet?

Hmm...

Perhaps Google can buy Utube.com for a tidy sum!

Sheesh..

Talk about common sense.

Pope: "We have decided to ban certain type of statues inside Vatican City depicting erotic postures. Come here Father Bryan and Sister Camilla, and take of your clothes please. Ok this is pose 1..Bryan put your hand there.. this is pose 2... oh and..(takes off his clothes).. eh..yeah that seems right.. this is pose 3.

A million slashdot editors gasp in shock and then erect similar statues all over the city to inform everyone what kind of statues are not allowed.

Where is his problem?

If anyone, HE should have enough tubes for the internet!

Ok, I'm quite sure someone beat me to that lame joke. But can someone come up with any reason why anyone on this planet would go to utube.com instead of youtube.com? I mean, who doesn't go to youtube.com by link but actually by typing in the URL? Usually I go there 'cause someone posted a "must check this out" on some bboard.

opportunity knocks

They should have thrown a few google ads on the home page. Easy to do. If they can specify youtube ads, they'll get click thru too.

YAFIYGI

"All my worldwide reps use our Web site. Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there."

I guess they found out the hard way that making normal business operation dependent on the availability of the website, without taking great pains to assure that availability, is asking for trouble.

This time, they got slashdotted by mistake. Next time, it could be a targeted DDoS attack.

Probably just a misguided marketing ploy anyway

Utube marketing guy: WTF? Our server is down!
Utube hosting provider: (putting down fire extinguisher) We want more money, you're burning bandwidth like the U.S. burns fossil fuels!
Utube marketing guy: Wait - I've just hear that Google bought YouTube and people are interested. Hey! This is an amazing marketing opportunity, I wonder how we can make use of it? (Pays hosting provider big wodge of cash)

(...ten minutes of googling later)

Utube marketing guy: My highly expensive and accurate research shows that tubes are incredibly important to our new potential customer base at slashdot.org, they talk about them a lot.
Utube CEO: OK, so how do we get their attention?
Utube marketing guy: Simple, we whine to CNN about how our business is going down the toilet thanks to google, then submit a story to slashdot - they love that stuff!

(...)

Slashdot editor: Hmm, I've been rejecting a lot of stories like this recently, and this one appears to be suitably poorly put together - perfect!
Slashdot editor: (skipping "Dupe Check"/"Spel Check"/"Grahma Check" buttons) *PUBLISH*
Slashdot readers: Oooh, how cruel to link to that site! (Follows link to see if servers really are down or not).
Server room: (indifferent rattle of hard disks)
Utube hosting provider: (puffing on expensive cigar) Suckers! Time to order my new Humvee.

Used tubes and pipes

Maybe Google should buy some of those tubes and pipes to stop the internets clogging up.

Now the name makes sense

Now i know why they named their site YouTube instead of uTube. The second would be more appropriate given the audience, but was already taken.

Overage charges

If their website host gives them overage charges they might be able to get google to pay. Then again they might get some extra business out of it by change. Either way I would like to see their website stats

Rus

Money opportunity

Sell utube.com to Google/YouTube and then buy universal-tube.us, universaltube.us, or any of the .biz extensions.

Its not really that much of a problem for them, and a more practical naming opportunity.

Ooops...

And now its going to get slashdotted! Like it was'nt getting enough hits already. :-)

myspace video

How long until fox buys the domain (or just ad space) and sticks a big myspace video there to confuse the already confused?

Free Advertising?

Well shit, this seems like pretty good free advetising for these guys. I'd stop complaining if I were them...

Easy solution

Customers all over the world use it to bring up photos of the machinery, descriptions and specifications there

uTube should just post their photos and specifications as videos at youtube, and their server problems are solved!

In other news...

NotATruck.com has also experienced a major spike in traffic, due to confused congressmen.

also ewetube.com

It's a site for oddly shaped female sheep. They're getting hammered baaaaadly.

can you hear the difference?

youtube
utube
jutoobe
ju2b

Temporary workaround

They have nearly a meg of images on their home page. If they are really dying and their reps can't get through, why don't they just have a simple 500-byte text first page that says, "This is not YouTube. Click here if you want the YouTube video site. Click here to enter the Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corporation site." or something like that. All of a sudden they can handle 1000 times the traffic.

Of course this isn't ideal, but it can allow their reps to get in while they work on a permanent solution. Isn't that what is important from a business perspective? I doubt this one extra click they have to go through would significantly impact sales (or at least much less than people not being able to get in at all). Sure, it's a problem and should be worked on and resolved, but there's no reason business has to come to a standstill. Sometimes people don't seem to have common sense, or perhaps they just like to complain to the media.

This reminds me of the copyright whiners who complain and threaten lawsuits about search engine caching, instead of just editing their robots.txt.

I don't hear sysco complaining (cisco?)

2 companies, same pronounsiation.

sysco - provider of food stuff to eateries
http://www.sysco.com/ [sysco.com]
cisco - provider of network equipment.

Brand Concentration

Consumers confusing uTube for YouTube and getting a broken/down site (uTube) instead of the gleaming new $BILLION "Internet TV" site is bad for YouTube. It makes those confused people think that YouTube is crap. So it's in YouTube's interest to subsidize uTube's site capacity for a while to handle the extra YouTube traffic. YouTube can get an idea which sites are getting that "brand leakage" by looking at their incoming logs, for referrer sites, if the referring site survived long enough to put a link back to YouTube. Of course broken sites can try to figure out which site the incoming stampede was looking for, and notify the actual site (from another working computer). And the same people who research trademarks to ensure they don't infringe inside industry sectors can also find likely casualties even outside the sector. Google seems like an excellent resource, and could offer a "close domain" tool that would also help regular googlers.

There is probably some residual promotional value to the other sites, like uTube, even if few YouTube customers will ever do business with uTube.

So a little proactive capacity planning by YouTube for its "typo neighbors" would help both of them, without the nasty (and somewhat silly) lawsuits. Should be a lesson to others scaling their brands on the Internet.

Hallelujah!

Maybe this will teach some people how to spell "you". That is an art form that seems to be lacking among the under-25 crowd these days ...

Make the page a little more HTTP-friendly?

Their home page loads 100 images and has HTTP headers that forbid caching. I realize that not everyone can hire good web developers that take scalability issues like this into account, but surely this is an example of when you need to bite the bullet and do so.

Our top story..

"Utube's tubes are being clogged by YouTube boobs"

(Shamlessly stolen to share to the word)

Bigger Picture

Don't worry about uTube, in the long run they will make a heap of money on the Google/YouTube deal. As the consumption of online video continues to grow at an exponential rate, and as Google and the major studios and networks continue to adopt online delivery models for television and film, the infrastructure of the net will naturally have to scale with it. Telecomms and ISPs will be allocating huge sums for the materials they need to expand their physical networks.

Back in the day, that would have benefitted mostly copper and fiber-optics manufacturers, but that was before the technology to move data through a series of tubes came into widespread acceptance. uTube stands to sell BILLIONS of tubes because of this deal.

This is Senator Stevens Tube Company

do these guys make the internet tubes?

How can this get worse...

Oh, yeah, post a link on SlashDot. That will ease our traffic woes. Yep.

if it's a link.. clikck on it?

since when does putting a link in an article make anybody click it, i'm as mmb happy as the next guy, but i get the jist of the site from the article, surely just mentioning the name of it is enough to make anybody who would click it to just type it in. i bet half you guys who mentioned the link being in the article didn't even click it.

publicity stunt

It can be a publicity stunt by Utube to get more traffic on the site.

Re:It's not down yet...

Or they sent some (now illegal in the US) Gambling Balls down the tubes to clear the clutter.

Re:EVIL?

No, its just lots of people being dumb.

Re:OMG

Bad idea - vigorous plunging actions can sometimes make the tubes burst at their joins - usualy were they're hidden behind some hard/impossible to move kitchen furniture.