Omega
Post by beth on Apr 26, 2010 13:06:24 GMT -5
YouTube: five years on
In just five years, YouTube has changed the world. It has also brought us breakdancing babies and a host of back-bedroom celebrities. So what's next for the world's third-biggest website?
How has it changed things for you?
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/23/youtube-five-years-on
YouTube turns five today. It is the third most visited website in the world, behind Google and Facebook. Its users will soon be uploading 1m videos every day. It is revolutionising advertising, broadcasting, music and the media; it is also changing us.
YouTube has changed Gordon Brown. It made him smile. Gruesomely. YouTube has changed the way we talk to each other. Confronted by absurdity in real life, we no longer wonder if Beadle's about, but fear it is a "YouTube moment". It has changed the way we complain; Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician, may have helped wipe $180m (£117m) from United Airlines's value after uploading a song of complaint, United Breaks Guitars, when his beloved six-string was smashed on a flight. Mostly, though, YouTube has changed the way we waste our time, filling our Friday afternoons with skateboarding ducks and breakdancing babies.
/snip
People put their personal videos online before YouTube. But after struggling to find clips online of Janet Jackson accidentally baring her breast during the Super Bowl in 2004, YouTube's three founders, Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, created the site that made it easy, for the first time, to upload and share video footage.
YouTube took a while to flicker into life. New users had to be bribed with an iPod Nano competition to register. Its first mention in the British press was not until November 2005. That month, shortly before YouTube was boosted for the first time by venture-capitalist cash, the site showed 2m videos a day. Two months later, it broadcast 25m. Today it is well over 1bn.
When Google bought YouTube in a deal worth US$1.65bn in October 2006, it was not simply purchasing a hot website. It was acquiring a community. Like other social media that define the era of Web 2.0, YouTube is participatory. Users don't just watch silly videos, they join in: imitating, parodying, mocking and paying tribute with their own clips. The loss of physical communities has been well documented during recent decades. Through YouTube, many users have replaced that with a virtual one.
"Don't forget how recent is our apparently universal willingness to share – our private confessions, our creativity, our humour," says David Rowan, editor of Wired UK magazine and the man who first mentioned YouTube in the British media. "YouTube has helped destroy the barrier between our private and public selves, much as blogging did a couple of years earlier and tweeting is doing today."
/snip
In just five years, YouTube has changed the world. It has also brought us breakdancing babies and a host of back-bedroom celebrities. So what's next for the world's third-biggest website?
How has it changed things for you?
www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/23/youtube-five-years-on
YouTube turns five today. It is the third most visited website in the world, behind Google and Facebook. Its users will soon be uploading 1m videos every day. It is revolutionising advertising, broadcasting, music and the media; it is also changing us.
YouTube has changed Gordon Brown. It made him smile. Gruesomely. YouTube has changed the way we talk to each other. Confronted by absurdity in real life, we no longer wonder if Beadle's about, but fear it is a "YouTube moment". It has changed the way we complain; Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician, may have helped wipe $180m (£117m) from United Airlines's value after uploading a song of complaint, United Breaks Guitars, when his beloved six-string was smashed on a flight. Mostly, though, YouTube has changed the way we waste our time, filling our Friday afternoons with skateboarding ducks and breakdancing babies.
/snip
People put their personal videos online before YouTube. But after struggling to find clips online of Janet Jackson accidentally baring her breast during the Super Bowl in 2004, YouTube's three founders, Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, created the site that made it easy, for the first time, to upload and share video footage.
YouTube took a while to flicker into life. New users had to be bribed with an iPod Nano competition to register. Its first mention in the British press was not until November 2005. That month, shortly before YouTube was boosted for the first time by venture-capitalist cash, the site showed 2m videos a day. Two months later, it broadcast 25m. Today it is well over 1bn.
When Google bought YouTube in a deal worth US$1.65bn in October 2006, it was not simply purchasing a hot website. It was acquiring a community. Like other social media that define the era of Web 2.0, YouTube is participatory. Users don't just watch silly videos, they join in: imitating, parodying, mocking and paying tribute with their own clips. The loss of physical communities has been well documented during recent decades. Through YouTube, many users have replaced that with a virtual one.
"Don't forget how recent is our apparently universal willingness to share – our private confessions, our creativity, our humour," says David Rowan, editor of Wired UK magazine and the man who first mentioned YouTube in the British media. "YouTube has helped destroy the barrier between our private and public selves, much as blogging did a couple of years earlier and tweeting is doing today."
/snip
