Blog #5- YouTube

Learning Something New- YouTube

Did you know that YouTube was the first ever video sharing platform? Or that Facebook started out as a way for Harvards students to rank the girls of the incoming class? I sure did not. After watching and learning from presentations by my peers, I learned more about communications technologies than I ever could have guessed. 

Olie Perret-Gentil focussed her presentation on YouTube. This was particularly interesting to me because I have never known a time without YouTube, but it was only published in 2005. It is a very new technology but it grew so quickly that we would not even realize how fast it came to be. 

How It Started

It all began in 2004, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim (as pictured) all knew each other from working at PayPal but did not know the impact they would have on our society. The three men were in San Francisco at a party when the idea came about, a way for people to make at home movies and publish them online. They wanted a way for people to easily find and share clips online, the average joe not just people with access fancy softwares or connections in the right place.

Jump forward to February 14th, 2005- it has began. YouTube was officially registered. The first video was published over a month later, with a title we would never see today - “Me At The Zoo”. By May, there was tens of thousands of viewers on the site every day. Come November, their views were increasing and YouTube was ready to be used by the public.

"Me at The Zoo" First ever YouTube Video

Reflection

YouTube was a new way to share media, it wasn’t just photos or messages- it was picture and sound all at once. This platform opened up a whole new world of social media. To me, it opened up the new “influencer era” a time where people who put their lives online can also gain traction, similar to actors and musicians. Brands utilized these online faces to spread their products and expand their outreach. This platform is more than those three men could have ever imagined. It also has inspired other platforms like Music.ly and TikTok, platforms based on sharing shorter videos and quick clips. YouTube has even expanded to the point of having “YouTube TV” a subscription based platform to stream shoes and movies. 

Social media is always evolving and YouTube is no exception to that. It can only make you think, without YouTube- would we have other video based social media like TikTok?