An Analysis of Web 2.0: ‘YouTube’
Youtube turned the passive ‘user’ into an active producer of content and shaper of the ultimate user experience. It is more playful, more participative and often joyful to use. It allows users to store and share personal videos, subsequently, linked, searched and/or rated. Its huge and sudden popularity made it the Internet phenomenon of 2006. You tube might be the best known web 2.0
YouTube turned out to be something quite different than what its creators earlier imagined. It was originally created as a dating website based on videos … It was launched in April 2005 and it didn’t take off. People didn’t use it (YouTube) very much. The founders looked at the product and realized that it should open to any contact. Also, the interface was opened up so you could choose what you wanted to watch, search for videos, link to related videos and give people the ability to ‘tag’ videos so other people could find your video with a keyword. It grew explosively.”
So adaptability to user demand is one key to success in launching a new computer-based system such as YouTube. The computer-dating concept was too limiting. You Tube’s founders tinkered with the product to allow activity that the users wanted. They made it easier to post and locate videos, regardless of use or intent. The product took off. http://www.worldhistorysite.com/YouTube.html
Also, if we look at the Web ratings by country, we realize that YouTube is also quite popular, for instance, it is the 5th most accessed site in the US, Portugal and Spain, the 6th in Canada and Japan and the 8th in the UK. Each day, there are 100 million downloads and 65, 000 uploads, that is 1,538 downloads per upload.
Total videos uploaded as of March 17th 2008: 78.3 Million. Videos uploaded per day: over 200,000
YouTube by Category:
Music: 19.8%
Entertainment: 19.0%
People & Blogs: 14.2%
Comedy: 13.4%
Sports: 6.9%
Education: 6.0%
Autos: 5.2%
Film: 4.7%
HowTo: 2.6%
News: 2.6%
Pets: 2.2%
Science: 2.2%
Travel: 1.3%
Most commonly used tags:
video, sexy, sex, music, rock, rap, funny, news, pop, dance, film, short, TV
Average Video Length: 2 minutes 46.17 seconds
Time it would take to view all of the material on YouTube (as of March 17th 2008): 412.3 years
Average Age of Uploader: 26.57
Unambiguously User-Generated (amateur): 80.3%
http://ksudigg.wetpaint.com/page/YouTube+Statistics
YouTube Has Speech-to-Text Functionality…..and it Works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA1gvEYg-M0
Barack Obama released his video announcing his candidacy for nomination of the Presidency on YouTube. A video made by the campaign for Hillary Clinton released on her website and widely watched on YouTube, it was a creative hit. Mrs. Clinton and her would-be First Gentleman sit in a diner, discussing which song she will choose for her campaign theme.
According to Sara, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and probably greater, for it extends into the worlds of justice, politics, education, and entertainment and also dispelled the myth that celebrities are flawless.
Sarah could not have put it better.
However, it also has its shortcomings beyond seemingly being a poorly designed, chaotic and cluttered website;