YouTube: A Valuable Tool in Society [Infographic]

Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 5m 1,187

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

YouTube: Powerful Business Tool

YouTube has become an inevitable but valuable tool in our society. Twenty years ago, no one would have ever imagined being able to grab a camera, a web camera, a mini-portable camera, or a cellphone with a camera, and in just a few minutes—speak into that camera to record themselves, upload it, and have it displayed to the world.

YouTube was originally founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were employees of Paypal. The history goes that they wanted to share a video of a party that one of them could not attend, and the marketing and ideas were born for such a website that could do it. The idea for this video site was only the beginning because YouTube would soon escalate into sharing music videos, recording and sharing personal webcam personalities, business meetings, and expanded into sharing commercials, ads, news broadcasts, live news broadcasts, and much more.

YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion dollars—whether this was a smart move on the part of Google is still up for debate. The cost to run YouTube per month far outweighs the actual profits of a video site. YouTube costs almost a billion dollars a year to continue to run. While prices may decrease based on the price of technology, it is yet to be understood if there is any profit in the video sharing business. If there is any company that could acquire a video site, take the hit and still somehow manage to be profitable, it is Google.

Why does it cost so much to run YouTube? Consider the costs of the hard drives that have to store all the videos, the bandwidth costs of billions of videos being downloaded or uploaded, and the licenses that must be acquired in order to actually continue to play music videos, regular televisions shows, and movies on YouTube. Why keep YouTube if it costs so much? Only Google knows. Perhaps the reason is… there is no other place, other than Google.com that receives more visitors. It is the dream of every corporation in the United States to receive worldwide recognition. If YouTube puts up a LIVE STREAMING VIDEO FEED of the President speaking, more people are likely to see it on YouTube before they see it on FoxNews, ABC, CNN, or any other place on the Internet. YouTube is the #3 most visited website in the world with Google being the most visited and Facebook in at #2.

YouTube has been turned into a career for many people with the launch of YouTube Official Partners. Many comedians and organizations turn to YouTube to broadcast their visual social media to the world. With the amount of traffic a certain video receives and the popularity of a YouTube account comes a paycheck. While YouTube Partners agree never to release their official salary, the most popular YouTube comedians could easily pull in a steady salary for the year and could possibly make up to 7 digits (yes, over a million dollars). This is not easy work and does require a lot of effort and a specific personality that attracts a lot of attention.

“Going Viral” or being featured in on a national News station is probably the easiest and best form of advertising there is and could bring in millions of new visitors and gain the attention of people interested in making investments. More and more musical artists and other talent is being discovered this way. In fact, there are many companies now requiring people to upload interview videos to YouTube and just sending them a link in order to be considered for a certain position.

With Google Hangouts and YouTube expansions, anyone can broadcast a show live to their audience and have it later uploaded automatically to YouTube for those who missed the show. Nearly every type of video—with the exception of pornography, extreme nudity or mature content, and violence—can be uploaded to YouTube. No matter what your profession or specialty is—if you sell products, bake, cook, are an auto mechanic with tips and advice, a doctor with helpful medical tips, business tips from a CEO, marketing advice, a company making fitness videos for an audience, a news vlogger, or a comedian, you can upload it to YouTube and share it with the world!

What does this cost the registered member? Absolutely nothing! It is completely free of charge! And what can a member who goes viral make? Well, if the registered member who owns the video uploaded it and owns the rights, gains subscribers, and the video remains popular for years, they certainly could be entitled to a very nice paycheck from YouTube. Other than paying the taxes on the reward amount, it is a real paycheck and real money. Everything is technically on Google’s bill. Not to worry though… Google isn’t going bankrupt anytime soon, and if Google makes $30 billion dollars in a year, they would probably be the company that could end world hunger very soon. So as I said before—YouTube might not be profitable, but Google is and can certainly afford the bill.

YouTube will continue to remain popular and serve a very vital function for society. In more than any other generation on this planet, we are the most visual, the most connected, the most seen society in the world. YouTube has editing tools for people who want to add more to their videos. And nearly every account that has existed and has a solid reputation has gained permissions to upload unlimited videos. Originally, YouTube would only allow people to upload 10 minute videos, so more videos has to be uploaded or split up. With the removal of YouTube time limitations, everyone is free to upload hour long videos or even day long videos.

Aside from the top websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—YouTube is probably the most useful tool for every single person living on this planet—whether it is used as a personal video journal-diary, used to give advice, or even make money. YouTube connects everyone with the entire world and the entire world is connected through YouTube. The effects of YouTube on the world are great. I couldn’t possibly list all of the things that YouTube has helped people to do, but YouTube is here to stay, remain free, and provide a great benefit to all of the world.

This infographic, short and sweet, provides some insight into how we use YouTube.

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YouTube
Just The Facts

YouTube has 490 million users worldwide (unique visitors per month)

Average YouTube user visits the site 14 times per month

Users spend an average of 25 minutes on the site each time

92 billion page views each month (~13x World Population)

We spend 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month. That’s 326,294 years.

There are more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link

On Facebook over 150 years worth of YouTUbe videos are watched every single day

Courtesy of EricWelke.com

Matthew Gates is a freelance web designer and currently runs Confessions of the Professions.

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