Good morning and happy Monday! Welcome to #trending in video, a new blog by Best Made Videos®! This is our catch all where we talk all things video and spotlight what’s trending in the marketplace.
Today is a special day because we are celebrating a birthday! (of sorts) as YouTube, the largest video search platform in the world turned 15 years old last week (April 23, 2020 to be exact). Our friends over at www.digitaltrends have a great article breaking down the rise and history of the juggernaut video platform and I’ll do the best I can to recap some of the highlights here!
Back in 2005, on Valentine’s Day 3 PayPal employees activate the domain www.youtube.com which according to legend, they were originally envisioning to use as an online dating service called “Tune in, Hook Up.” That service failed almost immediately, but the trio of engineers discovered that the site was still a great way to upload and share videos.
In just a few months the video sharing platform started to see site visitor numbers around 30,000 per day with that number climbing to almost 2 million just six months later. Within a year the site visitor count climbed to over 2 million and the rest in history. In 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in sock.
“What YouTube had tapped into was a younger generation that had no problems sharing themselves through video. Anyone could participate and post anything they wanted. As you can imagine, this has had some positive and negative impacts.”
The article lists a couple of major reasons why YouTube has changed society in the way that it has, starting fist with how it upended the music scene. From Justin Bieber’s mom uploading a video of him singing (he sold out Madison Square Garden less than 3 years later) to Psy becoming a worldwide phenomenon when Gangnam Style when viral in 2012 (and racked up more than 3.5 billion video views to date) the impact of YouTube cannot be understated. What YouTube did was take the power out of the hands of the talent agents and record labels and put it directly into the hands of the artists who were creating the music, and videos.
Besides musical artists being able to gain their own popularity on the video sharing platform, shows like SNL with viral videos like “Dick in a Box” were able able to gain worldwide popularity as people who might not be inclined to view the original platform of the content could soon discover it being shared person to person on YouTube instead.
“With YouTube, high video production value and high-fidelity audio weren’t important — at least not right away. YouTube proved that videos made with very little money didn’t just have the potential to be popular, they were actually preferred.” This lowered the barrier to entry and made participating much much easier for upcoming artists and video makers alike.
An interesting point this article raises is that unlike traditional TV, which has prime viewing slots and ratings diaries which are collected from all over the country (a truly ancient way of collecting such data in the 2000’s), YouTube is able to correlate what is shows people based on actual real-time viewer count, therefore the more popular a video is, the more easily it is going to be shared and seen by an even bigger audience. This can lead to a spike in viewer count once a video goes viral as can be seen in the top ten list of all-time video views on the platform. TV ratings are very much decided by a “what was popular last quarter” mentality, in which they take past data and project what they think will happen in the future. YouTube is able to take a “what is popular right now” mentality and adjust real-time depending on what people want to see.
The article brings up many more interesting tidbits including the rise of the YouTube algorithm and the new way in which all of the video artists are being paid through monetization so I encourage you to check out the article in full to learn more. Needless to say the world of online videos and video production would be completely different today without the creation of YouTube. The ease of video sharing and the reach that new artists of all kinds have today have shaped our world in a way that truly could not be comprehended otherwise.
The final point this article arises in our current COVID-19 affected world is “And as for the future of YouTube? I think we are witnessing that right now. As more and more folks are stuck at home, desperately seeking creative outlets, we’re seeing a flood of new content on the platform. Even late-night talk shows and comedians are turning to YouTube as their primary broadcast channels.” I personally think this trend will continue as the era of traditional TV with its appoint-viewing habits is a thing of the past and the on-demand, “I want it now” mentality of today’s internet-based cultural will continue to explode for years to come.
Thanks for checking out today’s issue of #trending in video as we talked all about the birthday of the video sharing giant YouTube! What did you find most interesting? Be sure to comment below and check back next time for more interesting content in the world of videography and more!!