The Power of eCommunication

(This feature article is intended for women's magazines and/or any other medium dealing with YouTube or new technologies.)

“Hi! My name is Katz20two and I am a YouTube addict.” In front of me, an attractive thirtyish brunette is opening up. She nervously rubs her fingers while she talks and, with a mixture of anxiety and puzzlement on her face, she slowly adds, “I am relatively new to YouTube, I have only be putting on videos for about a week, maybe over, maybe two weeks now…seems longer.”
These words you can heard on a video, posted 3 months ago on the most popular video sharing Web site on the Net: YouTube.
Her profile displays that she has already viewed more than 3650 videos in a short 4 months period of time. This is extremely impressive for anyone not too familiar with the service. You quickly learn, while skimming through other users’ profile's that she is not alone.
On the same page, another self-declared YouTube addict, known under the pseudonym “crs992”, states a number of symptoms to help people determine if they suffer from the same YouTube addiction. Under the title, “Are you a youtube addict?” he states, “You know you are when…immediately after you wake-up you log-on and check your video views…you are constantly on in your free time…”and so on.

Seriously, what is this all about? Does this Web site really deserve so much attention?

If you are aged between 12 and 35, you probably have already heard about YouTube via a friend or have been emailed a link to a popular video. You may have watched some videos and even, for the reckless one, have posted a personal video of your own.
The idea of YouTube is surprisingly simple: it allows anyone to upload, view, and share freely their video clips with the rest of the world. You can keep your videos private if you want, but that is definitely not the point! All you need is a broadband Internet connection and a recording device (such as a digital camera or a camera phone).

Here are a few facts that will bring you up to speed, just in case you have been living under a rock:
YouTube receives more 100 million video views a day, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours.
According to the internet audience measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings, the site has also been viewed by an audience of almost 20 million unique visitors each month, making it the leader in Internet video broadcasting. Its audience is comprised of approximately 44% of female and 56% of male and the 12- to 17-year-old age group seems to be the most involved in the Web site's dynamic.
Another web measurement site, Hitwise, reveals that it is also situated as the leading position in online video views with about 29 percent of the U.S. multimedia entertainment market and displays more than 60 percent of all videos viewed online.
On October 9, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for an incredible US$1.65 billion. This sale provoked an enormous amount of media coverage, with everyone having something different to say about the deal and a sudden wave of interest for consumer-generated media sites. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks (NBA) and internet entrepreneur, was especially direct in saying that, "Anyone who buys that [YouTube] is a moron". Steven Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive preferred to adopt a neutral position, "If you believe it's the future of television, it's clearly worth $US1.6 billion," promptly adding that, "If you believe something else, maybe it's not worth much at all."
In any case, we can’t deny the fact that the YouTube's founders, Chad Hurley, 29, and Steven Chen, 28 had an extremely innovative idea.

Personally, the first time I stumbled across YouTube was recently, while I was researching for an assignment in my Managing e-Communications class. The content of one of the units for the class turned at to be orientated towards the development of new mobile technologies, more specifically the study of online communities and their use of new Web 2.0 technologies like YouTube.
I learned that the term Web 2.0 is now largely used to portray all the new generation of Internet-based services who's underlying purpose is the interaction among users. Social networking sites, such as MySpace, Wikis or YouTube are key components of this trend, as their main successes depend on the size and involvement of their user community. The more users that contribute by adding content to the site, the better and more successful the site is.
These site's are real world examples of a word of mouth marketing system. This is brought forth by Nicolas Gendron, a converted 23 years old YouTube user. He asserts, “Since I have discovered YouTube I keep spreading the word around me on how cool this site is, at the beginning, no one really knows what it was, but now all my friends have become true YouTube fans! I even received mails of friends from friends sending me very funny stuff!”
To better grasp the extent of this subject, I decide to completely immerse myself in the intriguing world of online communities, especially the phenomenon YouTube. Poor justification, I know! Conclusion: as Katz20two and Cr992 describe earlier, it is purely addictive!
In less than 2 months, I have already viewed more than 500 videos, ranging from amateur video's with no real topic, to professional television shows. It seems as though the more videos I watch, the more videos I have to watch! It shows in the amount of time that I have put into it. If a typical homemade video lasts an average of 2 minutes, then I have spent approximately 17 hours nosing around in other people's creations. However, that is nothing compared to certain users. There are many more like the viewers I named earlier and some gladly admit that they have spent more than 500 hours on the Tube – and that is without even including the time they devote to creating their very own videos!

So, why YouTube has become the focus of such a frenesy?
Marie-Therese Barbaux, lecturer in Managing e-Communication for the University of Sydney explains “I believe YouTube is a key initiative in the new world of the collaborative web. For the first time, ordinary web users can publish their own videos to a wide audience. It is free and extremely efficient technically: it automatically (and invisibly) converts the format of the videos people upload to one that provides seamless viewing to all YouTube visitors. If you have tried using Google videos or Yahoo!video, you very often encounter decoding and viewing problems. With YouTube this does not happen.”
Interrogated on what attract people about the service, she also adds, “Another reason would be that the younger generations are very much into producing their own multimedia, so it is natural to want to share one’s own video productions, show them off to the world and get feedback on them, and make connections with likely minded people.”
Observing user comments show, she can’t be more right! Not only do the users want to watch videos, but they also want to create their own and to receive feedback from the rest of the world. It is staggering to see how eager people are to comment.
The most discussed video, which is as well ranked as the second most viewed videos of YouTube, had received a massive total of 22721 comments. These numbers continue to increase everyday and definitely show the popularity of the video. Nothing exceptional or world-changing occurs in this video though! It is simply two guys, known on YouTube as “Smosh”, parodying the Pokemon Music Video in their bedroom with a lot of exaggerate gestures and funny faces. However, in the YouTube community, this video is a revelation! 'NeoInvader' exclaims, “Legends Pure Legends”, while another remarks, “God, their facial expressions are priceless.”, and some even go further commenting that they have watched the videos a thousand of time “You guys are my heroes!”
In fact, these guys have managed to gain so much success with their videos that a new entry about them had been appointed in Wikipedia, the world most popular and free online encyclopedia. This is what you can read, “Smosh is a web site that was created by Anthony Padilla (born 16 September 1987) 2002 and often features videos and skits featuring himself and good friend Ian Hecox (born 30 November 1987).” and “The site's featured duo, Padilla and Hecox, are most widely known as the masterminds behind YouTube's former #1 most viewed video of all time for 6 months/the all-time ‘Most Discussed’ video- The Pokémon Theme Song. There have been over 16,000,000 views of the Pokémon Theme Song alone (as of September 2006) and it has been featured in an article by the New York Times in an article about YouTube on April 7th, 2006”.
Their videos have been seen by millions of people worldwide and they have even appeared in such mainstream media as the Sacramento News on channel. In addition, they apparently have made a deal with the MTV network to produce two videos a month. This is surely the dream of every “YouTubers”!
As Andy Wood (the casual YouTube user) puts it, it is true that the popularity and fame are also part of the big picture/debate in YouTube, “I guess it is popular because so many people want to have some sort of fame or celebrity and they see YouTube as a way that anyone can become famous for no other reason than they have some sort of web camera” he says.
As a matter of fact, it appears that many members perceive YouTube as a new way to get an instant status of a celebrity. This sadly adds to the phenomenon of reality television, where people are willing to do anything in order to catch a glimpse of what it is like to be a celebrity.
Some users such as “m0llym03” are really desperate in their quest for recognition. She exclaims, “Hi! I have recently posted lots of new videos on my channel and I need someone to check them out! plz help me reach my goal of 4,000 channel views! you don't even have to look at it just click my name then click back! easy as pie! thanks for your support! every user counts!! take care!!”
Such comments are annoying and often emerge as spam by group of 10 to 20 on the comment pages of more popular users. It might be working though. So far, her channel has been seen around 3700 times. Yet her number of subscribers struggles to reach 10 members.
The Holy Grail for these “YouTubers” is to see one of their videos featured on the site’s front page. This represents the promise of an immediate boost in the number of views and ultimately YouTube stardom.

So, is there a sure way to become a YouTube Star?
This is difficult to say! Nicolas believes, the best way is “to find a new or innovative idea or to be extremely talented”. A video that is capable of grabbing the attention of the larger audience and appealing to them is the key. It seems that it can be achieved with universal and. unfussy subjects. For example, the most popular video clip loaded on YouTube of all time (more than 34 million people have downloaded the video!), only shows a fit man performing what it is called the “Evolution of dance”. There is nothing complicated about it and no language barrier to cross, it is just a young man dancing to classic popular music. No one, including myself, really understands why this video has had such a huge success, but that is the mystery of YouTube.
The range of videos is remarkable; from grave topics to silly ones, from videos of soldiers in Iraq showing the atrocities of their everyday, to people creating rockets with coke and candy, if you can think of it, you can find it on YouTube.
A number of topics resurface more frequently than others: family pets acting silly, people sharing their daily life and thoughts, people showing their favorite choreography, parodies of well known show etc. It also gives a good idea of the disparate preferences and interests of the average YouTube user.
Surprisingly, there are no sexually explicit videos on the “Tube”. Everyone knows that Internet has always been overflowed with this type of material, so what more could we expect from the most popular videos Web site? Nothing in fact! This was the observations of two other YouTube addicts. Loic Agent, 28, says, “Yep, no porn on YouTube…can you believe that!” Tony Bremner, 25 corroborates this point, “Just type sex in the YouTube browser and you’ll see that the videos have some sexual content but are nothing like porn.” It looks as though YouTube is under control and respects the community guidelines of the site, “YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it's a video of yourself, don't post it on YouTube."
People respect no pornography, but violence is a different story. YouTube policy states, “Real violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don't post it.”
According to an article published in October, 15 in the Sydney Morning Herald, violent content is a reality on the site and it can clearly encourage copycat behaviors and bullying amongst teenagers. Part of the concern is also the recent development of a disturbing phenomenon called happy slapping; young people filming attack of unsuspected victim on their mobile phone. Those videos seem to quickly spread on the service. While the site provides a function for reporting excessively violent videos (you can “flag” them which will automatically advise the administrator of YouTube to check the video) it is stated that communication with the company was difficult.
With so many different contents on the site, some still manage to work their way up to the exclusive status of “YouTube celebrities.” If you are a regular on YouTube, then these pseudonyms probably sound familiar to you: lonelygirl15, geriactric1927, Brooke or LittleLoca…these are some of YouTube most popular people. The best way to determine a “YouTuber’s” popularity is to check how many people have subscribed to their channel. Lonelygirl15 and geriactric1927 are the champions in this category with approximately 56000 and 29900 subscribers respectively. But do not blink because as YouTube becomes more well known, these numbers should increase exponentially!
The subjects of their videos are the same, they both share details of their private lives with the public. It has recently been revealed that lonelygirl 15 is in fact a fictional video blog in which the central character is played by actress Jessica Rose whereas geriactric927 is a 79-year-old English pensioner who posts (real!) autobiographical videos.
Marie-Therese comments, “[…] it is interesting that the most viewed videos are those where people disclose intimate issues and confide in the public. The human element in the videos is still the strongest and beats other artistic considerations.”

These new aged videos, created by everyday people, appear to be the fresh initiative and quick entertainment break in a world of giant media organizations.
YouTube challenges traditional media, revealing a surge in demand for alternative contents and new flexible ways of accessing these videos. It shows that the audience is now demanding for a more proactive role in what they watch. The users wants to have more control over how they consume media content but more specifically, they want to be involved in the creation process, from selecting to sharing the content. The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform which finally gives the audience their turn to speak.
This desire for online interaction among users definitely represents the next step in the evolution of the internet. As Marie-Therese says, “It will evolve with the technologies, and the increasing expectations of its users, but I think the principles it is based on will last a long time.”

CATCH-UP VIDEOS, what makes YouTube so popular:

(But as Katz20two advised in her video about the YouTube addiction, I must tell you, “Be warned, it could happen to you!”)

-A Message From Chad and Steve
-Where the Hell is Matt?
-Evolution of dance
-Hey clip
-Pokemon Theme Music Video
-Cingular Presents: YouTube Underground - Submissions Open!
-Real Life Simpsons Intro
-Lonelygirl15: First Blog / Dorkiness Prevails
-Geriatric1927: first try
-LittleLoca Prom! and A Flow!
-Last Goodbye
-The infamous headbutt
-Free Hugs Campaign. Inspiring Story! (music by sick puppies)
-Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years.
-White & Nerdy
-Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment
-Youtubers
-Sleepy kitty kitty!
-Addicted to YouTube