Ethosolution YouTube: Change the World Through Free Video Sharing and Storage
Youtube’s stated mission is “for YOU to discover and shape the world through video” and they are doing just that. There are few ethosolutions that have changed the world like YouTube has, offering free video storage, sharing and viewing to everyone, everywhere, all the time. Built on the idea of giving people what they want, for free, YouTube became a smash sensation across the world, connecting people in ways and at speeds never imagined, and appearing in the homes of almost every person on the planet with a computer. In 2006 YouTube was sold to Google for 1.65 billion dollars; in May of 2010 YouTube exceeded 2 billion views a day, 24 hours of video uploaded every minute; this year (2012) YouTube passed passed the 1 billion dollar revenue mark… and they are still growing with no end in sight.
Want to see how much YouTube has affected your life? Here’s YouTube’s 100 greatest hits in 4 minutes, see how many you can recognize:
How Nice it is Laugh and Watch as You
Continue to Change the World YouTube
What a lot of people don’t know is that YouTube was created by three design and computer science graduates working together as early employees of PayPal. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim (pictured in order) saw a need for an easy way for people to share videos and started YouTube from their first “headquarters” above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant located in San Mateao, California. They purchased the domain name www.youtube.com in February of 2005, uploaded their first video in April of 2005, and beta tested the site in May of 2005. In November of 2005 YouTube officially launched and acquired 11.5 million dollars in venture startup money (mostly from Sequoia Capital) within their first 6 months and by July of 2006 they were receiving over 65,000 new video uploads and 100 million video views EVERY DAY day.
The First YouTube video ever: “Me at the Zoo” : Jawed – April 2005
YouTube is now growing so fast that the numbers are hard to keep track of but here are some staggering statistics from the past. In 2010 YouTube had 43% of the 14 billion videos viewed in the US with some 60 hours of new video being added (75% of which is actually from outside the US) to the site every minute. YouTube uses so much bandwidth that it was estimated that YouTube used as much bandwidth in 2007 as the entire Internet in 2000. In May 2011, YouTube reported receiving more than 3 billion videos per day and over 1 billion unique users per month.
“What makes us a bit nervous is, in this instant age, to release something that might take more than one listen. Where everything is instantly judged on YouTube or something! It’s a bit like releasing a horse and cart on a racetrack.”
Chris Martin, From the Band “Coldplay”
Changing the World Through Video Sharing
Along with short bursts of entertainment, movie previews, and educational videos, for most people YouTube is now the easiest place to go for current events as well – including the latest popular TV clips, political gaffes, or controversial or inflammatory amateur videos shot by regular people every singel day. Now, thanks to YouTube and smartphones, video is constantly being taken, uploaded and shared with such ease and speed that it has literally changed the way we interact with life itself because anything we do or see can end up captured on video and shared globally.
Facts about YouTube that Your Friends Probably Don’t Know
- 30 percent of YouTube videos account for 99 percent of views on the site
- The average US internet user watches over 3 hours of YouTube videos per month
- Music is the most popular YouTube category (31%), followed by entertainment (15%), and People & Blogs (11%)
- The average length of a YouTube video is 4 minutes and 12 seconds
- Over 50% of all video embedding and linking comes from 20-35 year old bloggers
- People in China and Morocco don’t have access to YouTube
- YouTube has played an April Fools joke every year since 2008:
- 2008: All the links to the videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley‘s music video “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a prank known as “Rickrolling“.
- 2009: When clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down. YouTube claimed that this was a new layout.
- 2010: YouTube temporarily released a “TEXTp” mode, which translated the colors in the videos to random upper case letters. YouTube claimed in a message that this was done in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second.
- 2011: The site celebrated its “100th anniversary” with a “1911 button” and a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including “Flugelhorn Feline”, a parody of Keyboard Cat.
- 2012: Clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about “The YouTube Collection”, an option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD. The spoof promotional video promised “It’s the complete YouTube experience completely offline.”
YouTube as a World Changing Idea
How we share and access information has the power to educate and unite our entire species. Its potential is vast and YouTube has created the ability for people to open-source share, or “free-share,” content from anywhere in the world to anyone in the world. This has opened the doors to a whole new realm of possibilities that we are only just beginning to experience and for that we thank YouTube for leading the way to a better future for us all.
You can visit YouTube’s homepage at: www.YouTube.com