Lee Gomes of the WSJ has dug into YouTube, and come up with some fascinating statistics - head on over there for them, or check Steve Rubel's post for a quick summary. Here's the part that still makes me wonder:

YouTube videos take up an estimated 45 terabytes of storage -- about 5,000 home computers' worth -- and require several million dollars' worth of bandwidth a month to transmit.

Those costs are one reason that some predict YouTube will collapse under the sheer weight of providing a haven for every teenager with a cellphone camera eager to be famous for 15 minutes of video.

I've been wondering about those costs for awhile - it seems to me that unless they start charging a subscription fee, or start selling ads on the TV model (i.e., patched into every uploaded video), there's simply no way they can stay afloat for the long haul. Am I wrong? What am I missing here?

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