Analyzing the Video Popularity Characteristics of Large-Scale User Generated Content Systems

TLDR

User‑generated content platforms are reshaping video consumption by enabling asynchronous, unlimited selection, fostering new viewing patterns, social interactions, creativity, and business opportunities beyond traditional VoD. This study analyzes YouTube and Daum Videos to empirically demonstrate how UGC services differ from traditional VoD and to examine popularity distribution statistics and long‑tail demand opportunities. Using multi‑day traffic traces, the authors assess video popularity lifetimes, request‑age relationships, and quantify content aliasing and illegal uploads that distort popularity rankings. The analysis reveals significant aliasing and illegal content that compromise accurate popularity ranking, underscoring implications for site administrators and content owners.

Abstract

User generated content (UGC), now with millions of video producers and consumers, is reshaping the way people watch video and TV. In particular, UGC sites are creating new viewing patterns and social interactions, empowering users to be more creative, and generating new business opportunities. Compared to traditional video-on-demand (VoD) systems, UGC services allow users to request videos from a potentially unlimited selection in an asynchronous fashion. To better understand the impact of UGC services, we have analyzed the world's largest UGC VoD system, YouTube, and a popular similar system in Korea, Daum Videos. In this paper, we first empirically show how UGC services are fundamentally different from traditional VoD services. We then analyze the intrinsic statistical properties of UGC popularity distributions and discuss opportunities to leverage the latent demand for niche videos (or the so-called "the Long Tail" potential), which is not reached today due to information filtering or other system scarcity distortions. Based on traces collected across multiple days, we study the popularity lifetime of UGC videos and the relationship between requests and video age. Finally, we measure the level of content aliasing and illegal content in the system and show the problems aliasing creates in ranking the video popularity accurately. The results presented in this paper are crucial to understanding UGC VoD systems and may have major commercial and technical implications for site administrators and content owners.