Читать книгу The REAL TRUTH About Social Media - FastPencil Premiere - Страница 9

YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can upload, share and view footage that runs the gamut from terrible to transcendent. Individuals like you and me produce most of the content, although media corporations, businesses and other organizations are broadcasting there now, too. Registered users may upload an unlimited number of videos which unregistered users are then free to watch—and, boy, do they! Roughly two billion YouTube videos are viewed every day. That’s billion with a “b.” In November 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, though it has yet to turn a profit due to its monstrous server demands.

The oft-reported story of YouTube’s creation goes something like this: Co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim used to toss around ideas for startups while working together at PayPal. One of those ideas—for a video version of the website “Hot or Not” (quite the muse, that virtual beauty contest!)—came into clearer focus in early 2005, after Hurley and Chen had trouble sharing videos of a dinner party shot at Chen’s apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, while Hurley said that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party “was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible.”

Regardless of its origins, YouTube has profoundly changed the world we live in. If you have a story to tell, the world will watch. Your videos can spread across the globe and have a real impact on people’s lives. YouTube is arguably the biggest game-changer in social media, for two reasons: 1) Video is highly compelling media; it establishes emotional connections that can immediately impact the way people think and act. 2) Armed with a camera-enabled phone, YouTube grants anyone, anywhere with instant, worldwide distribution. For free. Think about that for a moment. Until just a few years ago, to broadcast video, you needed to be part of a news organization. Now, you are the news organization.