You Tube – 5 years old today!
YouTube, which now clocks up more than 1 billion views a day, is 5 years old, and I am struggling to remember what we ever did without it.
What in the world did we ever do without YouTube? What did we do during boring lunch breaks at our desk, where did we go to watch some of the world’s funniest ads?
When the three former PayPal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim created the video-sharing site in February 2005, they had no idea of the phenomenal success they would endure.
In fact, they were so unsure, they sold the site to Google in November 2006, for $1.65 billion.
Anyway, when registering the YouTube domain on February 14, 2005, Chen, Hurley and Karim set out to create a place where anyone with a video camera and an internet connection could share a story with the world – how romantic.
Now YouTube is one of the most visited websites in the world. Actually, according to latest internet viewing figures from Hitwise, YouTube was the fifth most visited site in the UK last week.
Nielsen figures put it at the top most visited site in the US for the month of January.
Coining the term ‘vloggers’, YouTube gave people a voice – for free. It said on its official blog: “Breaking open access to media and distribution means delivering the world’s largest global audience and the revenue models they need to succeed, as well as the tools they need to control their content.”
Advertisers have long taken advantage of YouTube, especially in the viral marketing arena. These days, advertisers will actually ‘test’ their campaign son YouTube before officially rolling it out to TV and cinema audiences. Some campaigns are just made with YouTube in mind – for a website to be able to do that, to set itself up as an advertising delivery platform that can reach millions around the globe, is quite frankly phenomenal.
It changed digital marketing forever and allowed advertising to be passed around via the office email, between friends and social networkers. Whole TV episodes can be watched via YouTube as well as music clips and radio channels.
Even the Queen and the Pope have their own YouTube channels. So what’s next for YouTube?
Looking forward, the site’s goal is to set the standard in online video delivery. Fast loading, high quality videos need to be able to play on any device, anywhere, anytime. Chad Hurley said on the sites blog, “Whether we’re supporting 1080p, 3D, or deploying auto-speech recognition technology, we innovate with an eye toward providing the best possible experience.”
Source : U talk marketing.
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