Youtube, a young (an infant?) web service/application which is one of the biggest internet successes in recent years. A simple web platform that enabled for everyone to upload their own videos and share them with everyone else online. To make it as easy as possible for the user to upload videos without any pre-knowledge of videoediting, encoding or formats, the accessibility speak to everyone. Also integrating the feature to share videos with other people and sites with a simple URL-string contributed to its success. Its a free service and all of the content is submited and created by its users. Built on web technology (Flash) which basically every average web browser today have. It have transformed internet video how we view, distribute and create videos.
It have been some controversies surrounding Youtube concerning Copyrighted material thats being uploaded without permission. Videos have been deleted and users baned. And the question how Google (the owner of Youtube) can profit from the site is still unanswered.
But what I find more interesting is how Youtube have become a business tool and marketing channel. If companies produce a new commercial, its only natural to upload it on Youtube and start distributing it. The platform offers statistic like numbers of people watching the video and enables the ability for comments, and easy distribution. Here you basically get a free complete marketing tool with millions of users. On the contrary, if you upload shit, the probability is high it will get a very low view “score”.
The same can be said about Facebook. It started as an easy, closed community in the US, and is now a worldwide business. Here in Sweden we have some Universities that offers courses in Facebook Marketing! How sick is that? Facebook, like Youtube, build much of its foundation on the user activity. And the more content and user a services get, the more buzz it will create that result in companies, corporations and organizations start looking for ways to profit from. Whether as a new marketing channel or business platform, when the number of users rise, you can bet your ass that the people in businesses start looking for a way to use the service to their own advantage.
Its interesting how a service must expand to a certain volume of content and/or users for the business sector to discover them at all.
Only chase the popular one. But when the numbers starts falling, move on to the next one.
