Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 5m 1,276 #youtube
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
YouTube World Wide Web Network
It is hard to imagine that once upon a time “big websites” did not exist. It is even harder to imagine when I was younger, the Internet did not even exist. A computer was something only rich people had, and Windows 3.1 was the operating system along with some DOS games. Within the past decade, the Internet has gone through an ever-evolving process in which it has grown and become more useful to the entire world.
The Internet has the great potential to make any company who utilizes it very profitable if the Internet is used correctly. Then came LinkedIn (2003), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006), which are the most dominant tools and form of media on the Internet today.
The article solely focuses on YouTube, founded in 2005 by three friends – Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and eventually bought by Google for $1.65 billion dollars.
YouTube is hardly profitable and could probably be considered one of the worst and best investments Google has ever made. On the one hand, it costs almost a billion dollar a year to run YouTube including bandwidth costs, licenses, hard drive space, and hardware.
On the other hand, YouTube is one of the most visited websites on the Internet and provides a wealth of information in the form of video streaming, including breaking news broadcasts, broadcasts from the President of the United States, and thousands of companies that run webinars daily.
YouTube proves a valuable asset, whether directly or indirectly, to companies looking to advertise on YouTube. A company can pay YouTube to have their video advertisement or text advertisement stream on every video, or it can easily upload several videos to YouTube and not pay a dime for advertising on YouTube. For example, GEICO has plenty of commercials, specifically noting “Guess What Day It Is? HUMP DAY!” — in which a camel is walking through an office asking what day it is. This commercial aired on televisions for months and no longer airs on television.
As of this posting, a search for GEICO HUMP DAY on YouTube shows this video has over 21 million views. Any company would love to have over 21 million views to their video, especially because GEICO paid nothing except maybe a little above minimum wage to an employee who handles the Social Media aspect of the business to upload that video.
Aside from the potential free advertising YouTube offers, it also has an abundance of ways for people to host their own shows, host television network shows, and plenty of music for people to watch and listen to – all for free. There are many people who have been lucky and fortunate enough to make a living right off of the YouTube videos they make – becoming YouTube Partners – and receiving a very nice paycheck.
Some YouTube personalities can make as much as $50,000 up to and over $250,000 a year. YouTube holds so much potential for people to be discovered and make a fortune. Sophia Grace and Rosie were discovered by Ellen when they released their first YouTube video – which at the time of this article publication – has over 45 million views, and Ellen has been very generous with them – introducing them to celebrities, giving them their own spot on her show, and even funding a movie.
YouTube is mostly used by the world for entertainment and educational purposes, with people looking on YouTube for “HOW TO” videos (how to change a flat tire, how to perform an oil change, how to cook a roast, how to clean a septic tank, how to date, etc.) which come mostly from people just making videos, to more formal educational videos by professors and professionals who can teach you a new language, chemistry, biology, psychology, and many other things.
If you cannot find it on Google, search YouTube, and if you cannot find it on YouTube, Vimeo may just have it, or it does not exist. The reason YouTube is valuable as its own search engine for information is the fact that some people are better visual and audio learners. A Google search will reveal mostly text-based results, while a YouTube search will always reveal a video result.
One of the primary uses of YouTube is for music. Once upon a time, Viacom attempted to sue Google for having copyrighted music uploaded to the website. It was an ongoing battle which resulted in several wins for YouTube. While other companies, such as VEVO embraced the opportunity to make money while being able to get out their video distribution for free. Music artists have a way to distribute their music and become known, while also finding many new audiences and fans.
Those of us who are programmers know what it is like to “get into the zone” when it comes to our favorite music playlists on YouTube. While silence sometimes remains golden for programmers, there is a zone that programmers, coders, and office workers get into by listening to music and being taken to another world that keeps them sane while still being able to perform every aspect of their job functionally and correctly — as one YouTuber commentator put it, “This should set the mood right for some code magic to happen.”
While YouTube hardly seems profitable and the determination by Google of whether it is a solid investment is questionable, it serves a great purpose for humanity: To open up a stream of communication and distribute videos throughout the world in any language by and for any age group. It will eventually serve as the archive of human history for humanity presenting everything we have done – professionally and personally.
YouTube is one of the best and most useful websites that was created. The original creators had a wonderful idea and while they probably did not know at the time how far their idea would have expanded, it was probably in their best interests and everyone’s interests for Google to actually take over and run it, as Google has nearly an unlimited amount of money and the potential to handle the demand for YouTube.
YouTube Statistics:
Viewership
- More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
- Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth
- 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
- 80% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
- YouTube is localized in 61 countries and across 61 languages
- According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network
- Millions of subscriptions happen each day. The number of people subscribing daily is up more than 3x since last year, and the number of daily subscriptions is up more than 4x since last year
YouTube Partner Program
- Created in 2007, we now have more than a million creators from over 30 countries around the world earning money from their YouTube videos
- Thousands of channels are making six figures a year
Monetization
- Thousands of advertisers are using TrueView in-stream and 75% of our in-stream ads are now skippable
- We have more than a million advertisers using Google ad platforms, the majority of which are small businesses
Mobile and Devices
- Mobile makes up almost 40% of YouTube’s global watch time
- YouTube is available on hundreds of millions of devices
Content ID
- Content ID scans over 400 years of video every day
- More than 5,000 partners use Content ID, including major US network broadcasters, movie studios and record labels
- We have more than 25 million reference files in our Content ID database; it’s among the most comprehensive in the world
- Content ID has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for partners
(
