Since it's creation in February 2005, the video sharing website YouTube has created a large worldwide frenzy. YouTube is available to all, registered users or not. Those who are not registered can watch personal video clips, movie or television clips, and even music videos. And registered users can upload an unlimited amount of video footage. Founded by three former PayPal employees, in 2005, YouTube was one of the only websites where video sharing was offered. In 2006, Google Inc. acquired the company for $1.65 billion U.S. dollars.
People today search YouTube for practically anything, and usually find it. A 2008 study showed that the website hosts 83.4 million videos and about 3.75 million user channels. Personally, I use the website often, searching for everything from music videos, to clips of some of my favorite movies, to video montages done by people I do not know.
The website has also offered an outlet for aspiring musicians, actresses, or performers in general. One popular budding musician I have heard of and watched on YouTube is Nick Pitera. Pitera posted many videos of him singing popular songs and clearly got noticed with over 7.3 million views on just one of this songs. Performers like Pitera uploaded those videos with high hopes of record labels, recording artists, etc. to notice.
YouTube can be classified as a social networking site, but I have heard of very little negative issues involved with the website, such as those with sites like Facebook and MySpace. Because users can upload video footage, the website does monitor and videos containing defamation, harassment, illegal content, and videos with commercial advertisements.
With that said, the website is very helpful to many. A lot of my professors, even outside of Electronic Communication class, have showed YouTube videos in class as a good source of information, or even a good laugh. My Christianity professor uses the website usually in every class to show music videos and relates them to our class discussion for the day. In my advertising class, we use the website to look at various television commercials.
With the rise of technology in the past decade, YouTube has only become an asset. Just as many say "Google it," people now say "YouTube it" as well when talking about some sort of information or entertainment is desired. Though many so some internet websites, and in particular social networking sites, are harmful or impersonal, I feel as though YouTube only shines and stands alone in this category.
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4 comments:
Similar to you Kate, I also use YouTube often and it is a very useful site. There are funny videos and several may be annoying but overall I think it is a great tool for people to use. It is nearly impossible not to find something on YouTube and I think it will grow in popularity in the future.
I have to admit that I "Youtube" everyday for various reasons. Sometimes it's for music, or to watch an episode of one of my shows that I missed, or for the sake of a good laugh. But youtube is very useful to me for informational purposes as well. I recently have been youtubing things about the election, so it's been helpful.
I know I have found YouTube to be very helpful. I have used it a lot recently, listening to authors speak about thier books. This helps me in my research as well as understanding of the books. YouTube is also just good entertainment. I love to sing and would love to have a way of being heard and noticed and its great that there is a monitored site out there to help aspiring preformers do so.
I think this is very interesting to think of YouTube as a social networking site. Prior to reading this I may have thought otherwise but the fact is that there are constantly comments on every video you watch, no matter how popular it is. It is no doubt an entertaining site that we've all experienced which says something about its popularity. You made the point that all your professors have used it at some point, showing not only its popularity but its diversity as well.
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