On this Valentine’s Day, I have to confess to a love-hate relationship with YouTube for over three years.

• On the one hand, you’ve got to love the speed at which YouTube rocketed into the world’s consciousness. (Take a look at my Sept 2006 post, “The Most Impressive Growth Chart, Ever?” to see just how fast.)
• On the other hand, you’ve got to hate how much of that growth came from playing fast-and-loose with copyright laws in the early days (See my Oct 2006 post, “YouTube’s Legacy…After the Fall”)
• You’ve got to love how YouTube was almost single-handedly responsible for taking web video viewing habits from a sideshow for tolerant webheads to a mainstream American activity
• On the other hand, you’ve got to hate how much money they’ve blown on a business model that would not be sustainable without huge cash infusions from its deep-pocketed owner, Google
• You’ve got to love how YouTube has given a brilliant new channel for companies, organizations, and political candidates to get their message out in dramatic new ways.
• But you’ve got to hate how Google’s willingness to pour massive cash subsidies into YouTube’s losing business model is suppressing the success of smaller entities who are working hard to support the strategic use of web video with much more sustainable business models.

Today, strong as its market presence is, YouTube is still flailing about. The latest traffic charts from Alexa.com show that YouTube’s popularity has leveled over the last six months, and in fact has even tailed off a bit (other than the blip around Inauguration Day):

After declaring near the end of last year that monetization is the “number 1 priority in 2009”, its first new effort of the year — giving content providers the option to charge for video downloads — has been greeted by the market with a yawn. A deal with MGM to run full-length feature films on YouTube is nearly invisible on the site. And today’s YouTube home page ad for condom-maker Trojan — just in time for Valentine’s Day — is just plain lame. (Tellingly, Trojan didn’t use YouTube to host the videos once you click through to its site; they merely use YouTube to generate traffic, not to engage them once they’re there.)

But as frustrating as the YouTube journey has to be for Google investors and management (who are on the hook for the $1.65 billion they spent to buy it and the countless tens of millions they’ve poured into it), that’s their problem, not ours. As YouTube viewers, content creators, and marketing communications strategists, we’re happy to benefit from Google’s largesse in providing a great platform for distributing video messages and getting people back to our clients’ websites…just as we are happy optimizing our website for Google’s text search and reaping the benefits.

But when clients ask whether they should invest in building enduring channels on the YouTube infrastructure, I generally wave them off…for just like Google Search, the infrastructure, rules, and success formulae are constantly changing.  You can’t build a lasting foundation on sands that are so fragile and dynamic.

Better, I tell them, to use a foundation like Brightcove for building an online video presence, and to use YouTube opportunistically for customer acquisiiton and broad dissemination of messages. For the one thing we know about YouTube is that it must change — substantially — for Google’s charity and patience will not necessarily last forever.