What happened to YouTube?

It seems to be back up now. The outage lasted at least 5 minutes. I’d still like to know if anyone has an explanation. This clearly wasn’t scheduled downtime.

the videos are taking too long to load for me right now

There seem to be a number of corroborating reports.

LOL :-)

What happened to YouTube?! Oh no!!! The world is standing still!
I NEED MA’ YOUTUBE!!!

Don’t mind me. :-)

i think its an over abundance of Ron Paul supporters trying to look at his videos.

question : why do you guys use youtube so much ?
i mean there are better sites with more quality content. For example if u want to see creative videos and videos made by actual users, you have vimeo.com (which also supports HD). If you want really good quality of videos, you have stage6.com . The only reason i use youtube is to watch copyrighted content like music videos and interview which should not be allowed onto youtube on the first place.

This sounds like a wholly new Fluther question…but I was attempting to watch these videos, which—as far as I know—aren’t on any other video sharing site. There’s plenty of other content that’s only-on-YouTube.

@sferik: actually it’s on google video
just to add to my argument above, google video has more documentaries and educational content than any other video sharing site

I use Google Video sometimes but—given the choice between the two—I prefer YouTube. YouTube has a better full-screen mode and supports queueing.

Maybe the explanation is more cultural…youtube is the most commonly shared referent for online video. Picking it is less about assessing the available tools (as mirza is doing) and more about using the thing everyone else is using—not to be following the crowd as much as being able to share the same cultural referents.