Abstract
It is no secret that YouTube is one of the most visited websites in the whole world. This is because it is the leading website as far as video sharing is concerned. This paper traces YouTube back to the days of its inception and how it has evolved over time to be what it is today. I examine the advantages of this invention as well as the disadvantages
Timeline
The 1920s: the first-ever display technology which was referred to as a cathode ray tube (CRT) is invented. This was the foundation of viewing videos of videos (Bug Club).
The 1970s: IBM Company comes up with a color display that had the first-ever color graphics adapter that rendered four colors. This meant that videos could now be seen in color (Bug Club).
2005: Youtube is co-founded by two gentlemen, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen. The two were colleagues at PayPal. They worked as designers and engineers respectively. The two friends had met at a party and taken some videos.They experienced a lot of difficulty in trying to share the videos and that got them thinking about how many others on the globe found themselves in such a state. They decided to tailor a solution and it led to the birth of YouTube. The 15th February 2005: The YouTube.com domain was activated 23rd of April, 2005. Three months after the domain was activated, the first video “I at the zoo” is uploaded. Since then, YouTube has been responsible for transferring and sharing millions of videos the world over. The diagram below illustrates this:-
Introduction
YouTube began with one video upload in 2005. Since then, the California-based company has seen major transformations and achievements. By December the same year of debut, YouTube’s pages received over million hits a day (Art). The groundbreaking video for YouTube was when the video entitled “lazy Sunday” was uploaded. The websites hits per day skyrocketed from 50 million to 250 million per day. The traffic to the website continued to skyrocket until they hit the 7000 million mark per day. Perhaps it was this success that made MySpace and Google come up with their versions of YouTube but they never saw the light of day. By May 2006, Google developed an interest in purchasing the company, and an agreement was realized. Google bought YouTube to the tune of 1,650 million dollars.
The diagram below sheds further light on the impressive growth of YouTube in the last five years.
Advantages of YouTube
One of the biggest advantages of YouTube is its critical role in entertainment. Whether it is a video of an event that you want to share with friends or a clip of a music video or a movie trailer, YouTube is the p[place to find that and more. This is the reason YouTube has become the third most visited website on the internet (Hardy).
Another important use for YouTube is helping Education. Even those that visit the website with only entertainment and leisure in mind learn something either through the video of a song or a video posted by an expert outlining the steps to follow in doing something. There are thousands of online video tutorials on almost any subject. Many students go to YouTube to access these education videos and tutorials.
Last but not least, YouTube has become a powerful tool for video marketing. As Jarboe explains in his book, a business entity can post a video on YouTube explaining the services and goods that it offers (26-42). The target audience is millions of potential viewers while it costs nothing at all to post the video. This is a very effective marketing tool for startups that may not have enough capital to invest in other forms of traditional marketing.
Disadvantages of YouTube
The biggest disadvantage has been the concern that YouTube infringes on copyrights of music, movies, and other types of videos. Despite the disclaimer of the company, users are still free to upload the videos at free will. Universal Music Group claimed that the company owed tens of millions as a result of copyright infringement. Youtube has had to tackle lawsuits in this regard (Zappone).
The other challenge YouTube has is revenue. While it attracts a lot of money through advertising on the website, the revenue collected is not seen enough to pay for the web sites maintenance alone. (Hardy)The company also faced a lawsuit that had nothing to do with videos. It was about their domain name. The issue was before youtube.com was registered, there was already another company by the domain utube.com. This company sued YouTube claiming that their choice of a name that resembled theirs had made them receive overwhelming traffic from people who were actually looking for YouTube.
Conclusion
If past performance is anything to buy, YouTube will no doubt continue growing in leaps and bounds. It is interesting to note that YouTube is only a few years old yet has managed to become one of the websites with the largest number of hits. YouTube has indeed impacted life both in the social as well as in the business aspects.
Works Cited
Bug Club. History of Monitors. 2010. Web.
Hardy, Hessel. “GooTube”. Forbes Magazine, 2008. Web.
Jarboe, Greg. You Tube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day. Canada: Willey Publishing Inc., 2009.
Zappone, Christian. Help! YouTube is killing my business!CNN. 2006. Web.
Zibreg, Christian. Happy Birthday YouTube. 2010. Web.