Unit 8 – Task 4 – Youtube

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Unit 8 – Task 4 – Developing Technologies Mini Essay - YouTube
By Chelsie Brandrick
I. INTRODUCTION
YouTube is an American video sharing website that allows users to upload, view,
rate, share, add to favourites, report and comment on videos. Available content
includes video clips, television show clips, music videos, short and documentary
films, movie trailers and individual content like vlogging, original videos and
educational videos. The purpose of YouTube is to allow people from every corner of
the earth to upload and share clips with a wide variety of different content and to have
them viewed by anyone with access to Internet on the planet.
II. HISTORY
The site was founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve
Chen and Jawed Karim. The group got the idea whilst watching Janet Jackson portray
her nipple to the audience during the Super Bowl in 2004. After the show, search
engines showed that people were looking for images of the performance and decided
they should create a site that could display the entire video clip for anyone to watch. It
took the team a year of coding the website and pitching it in an attempt to gain
funding before the site was created. The first video was uploaded in April 2005 by
one of the sites creators, Jawed Karim, and is titled ‘Me at the zoo’; it currently has
over 38 million views. During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest
growing sites on web; hosting more than 65,000 new video uploads. The site delivered
an average of 100 million video views per day in July 2006, out ranking MySpace’s
rate of growth significantly. According to the website Hitwise.com, YouTube
commanded up to 64% of the UK online video market.
On October 9th 2006, it was announced that Google would purchase YouTube for
$1.65 billion in stock, which was completed November 13th 2006. The agreement
between Google and YouTube came after YouTube presented three agreements with
media companies in an attempt to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits.
It is estimated that in 2007, two years after the site was created, it consumed as much
bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000. Originating in 2007, the YouTube
Awards are annual awards given out in recognition of the best YouTube videos of the

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preceding year as voted by the YouTube community. Also in 2007, MGM, CBS and
Lions Gate Entertainment reached an agreement with YouTube to allow the
companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site to be watched
for a small fee in addition to advertisements in a section for the US viewers.
In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service, which is
currently available to the UK, US and Canada.
In May 2010, it was reported that YouTube was serving more than 2 billion videos a
day, which was ‘nearly double the prim-time audience of all three major US
television networks’.
In May 2011, 48 hours of new videos were uploaded to the site every minute, which
increased to 60 hours in January 2012, 100 hours every minute in May 2013, 300
hours every minute in November 2014 and 400 hours every minute in February 2017.
The site now has over 800 million unique users a month. It is reported that mobile
YouTube users spend 40 minutes on average every session and more than half of
YouTube viewers come from mobile devices. YouTube reaches more 18-49 year olds
than any cable network in the US, which is the fasted growth of any company the
world has seen in years.
III. ADVANTAGES
Since the sites birth over 12 years ago, it has benefited millions of people around the
world. YouTube is regularly updated with millions of minutes of new content by
billions of users around the globe so there are always new videos for viewers to
watch. Plus language barriers are not a problem as YouTube can be navigated in a
total of 76 different languages, which covers 95% of the Internet population.
The site also enables people or families who may live on different continents to
connect via video clips and be part of each other’s lives despite the distance between
them. A good example of this was when Justin Bieber’s mother uploaded videos of
him singing in competitions so his grandparents and distant family members could
watch him. The video uploads eventually lead to Justin’s discovery by a talent
manager and resulted in him being signed to RBMG. Now Justin Bieber is one of the
most famous singers on the planet, so not only can YouTube bring families closer
together it can be used as a platform for musicians or filmmakers to be heard. The site
acts as a free service for musicians to advertise their music before it is released and

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filmmakers can showcase their talents by uploading short films or creations. YouTube
has also created a new community of people who use the site as a job. Many
‘YouTubers’, someone who uploads regular content to YouTube and get paid for it,
have created a network of fans and contacts for themselves through the exposure they
have gained by posting on the site. Since YouTube launched advertisements on the
site, YouTubers can now earn a healthy income by the revenue earned by the ads
placed before their videos. YouTube also allows creators to live stream themselves,
which makes their fans feel more connected to them thus ensuring the fans will watch
the creators videos and earns YouTube and the high profile YouTubers more money.
The majority of the population use YouTube for pleasure and entertainment, as the
site contains many different music videos, film trailers, comedy sketches, television
shows and YouTuber content. However YouTube can be used for work and self-
education, as many users opt to teach and inform themselves as well their viewership
by watching live news broadcasts, university lectures, language learning content and
how to videos.
IV. DISADVANTAGES
Despite the many advantages, YouTube does have a few disadvantages that can
prevent some people from using the popular free service. The site doesn’t have any
restrictions on the comment section beneath videos with can lead to users posting
violent threats, racial slurs and inappropriate language which encourages bullying.
YouTube does have an age limit on certain videos that acts to prevent inappropriate
content being viewed by under 18 year old users. However, the explicit videos can be
found in abundance on YouTube.
YouTube are trying to tackle the problem by making changes to their rules and
regulations whereby users now have to sign up for an account to access the 18+
material, but many of the explicit videos are titled in languages other than English
which aren’t detected by YouTube. Parents are advised to create a parental block if
their children can access YouTube.
The main disadvantage of YouTube is how expensive it is to become a YouTuber. To
be successful on the site, viewers expect creators to edit their YouTube videos and

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shoot high quality content, which requires editing software and camera and sound
equipment. It also takes a lot of time to make good content and YouTube users want
new videos from creators at least every week. In addition to this a creator’s account
could be disabled or flagged with no warning if the owner copied someone else’s
content or broke the YouTube terms and conditions policy. This can prevent a lot of
creators becoming successful through YouTube, as there are too many rules that
restricts the aspects of a creator’s creativity and channel optimization.
V. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, YouTube is used by the vast majority of the population and is
accessible to most of planet. There are many restrictions on the site for creators but
the main users of the site just watch videos rather than upload their own so the
restrictions do not effect them. YouTube could improve their site by enforcing a
stricter mediation process to prevent underage users to watch restricted content and to
limit bullying in the comment sections of videos. Despite this, YouTube is growing in
users every year and is becoming one of the most used sites on the Internet. Many
users of the site can improve themselves by watching videos to learn languages,
connect with distant family members and teach themselves new skills.
I believe that the future of YouTube will be strong due to how many users have joined
and are enjoying the service year. I think YouTube will morph and adopt the practice
and profits that major television networks do as well as featuring more and diverse
content such as video games and a music streaming service like Spotify.
Word Count: 1429.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Journals
Massola, J. 2006. Google pays the price to capture online video zeitgeist. Eureka
Street. [Online]. 16(15). [Accessed 27 April 2017]. Available from:
http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=1837#.WQMuVDucJlI
Websites
Chapman, G. 2010. YouTube serving up two billion videos daily. [Online].
[Accessed 27 April 2017]. Available from:

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http://www.smh.com.au/technology/youtube-serving-up-two-billion-videos-daily-
20100517-v8sf
Donchev, D. 2017. 36 Mind Blowing YouTube Facts and Figures. [Online].
[Accessed 27 April 2017]. Available from: https://fortunelords.com/youtube-
statistics/
Wikipedia. 2008. History of YouTube. [Online]. [Accessed 27 April 2017].
Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
Wikipedia. 2011. Me at the zoo. [Online]. [Accessed 27 April 2017]. Available
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_at_the_zoo