What is YouTube 

What is YouTube?

If you are currently reading this post, chances are you have heard of a website called YouTube. YouTube was launched in February 2005 and one of the reasons it worked so fast was because it allowed anyone to upload an unlimited number of videos and watch as many videos as they wanted for free. As YouTube has grown, so have all the features added to the website for free. And as I've thought about the many changes that have been made to YouTube over the years - some good and some not so good - it has become clear that there is one thing at the forefront of everyone's YouTube experience interactions. Your conversation is everything you actually do besides watching the video. Rating videos, leaving comments, subscribing, creating playlists - these are all things you do on YouTube that make YouTube the way you want it to be. I guess that's why they call it YouTube. But I think the word 'interaction' starts to lose its meaning after a while. This is the new Buzzword that is trying to force you to join every social media site and link all your profiles to everything so that everything you do is relevant. So you can't browse, or breathe, or eat, or sleep, just about everything you do with everyone. I understand that what more accurately describes my relationship with the website I am using and what I see in the videos are not 'interactions'. They are connections. You watch, because when I watch a video on YouTube, it's not like television and movies. YouTube is a very forward experience where I am not just watching a video, I am reading comments and I am clicking on comments and I am watching related videos and watching what other people have to say. And through me, from YouTube, from the videos I watch, and from the people who make them, I join a connection that was never possible before the Internet. You see, because YouTube is a new form of media, and when people compare it to television and film and radio, it becomes increasingly clear. Oh, YouTube is the new TV! And it's a big comparison between new media and traditional media as if YouTube is somehow replacing television. Okay, guess what? For hundreds of years, the theater has been a major form of entertainment. Then in August 1877, Thomas Edison completed his first phonograph, a new invention that would allow audio recording for the first time in human history. But it seems that the incredible development of human invention has not been as warm as you might expect. You see, until then, every musician who ever performed had to do it live. There was no such thing as recording audio. So it feels like piracy for a musician to be able to record and then play it back without the need for a musician. And believe it or not, a lot of people thought, "This is the end of live music." And again with the invention of Motion Picture, the ability to film something and then the ability to play something back, meaning, the theater is dead! And then when television came out, people were able to experience the theater and put it in their homes. So of course, movies are dead! Time has proved to us that theater, radio, television, and film have gone nowhere. Even in a world where YouTube can be your mainstay of media, I don't think it's fair to say that the old forms of media are dead.YouTube is just a new form of media, one of our favorite media. But when we look at the interaction we were talking about earlier, we realize that the YouTube video section is just a small part of the site. You see because while YouTube is a form of media, it's bigger than that. YouTube is a form of communication. Don't get me wrong, television and movies are also a form of communication. For the past hundred years, however, most forms of evolved media have been structured from top to bottom. This means that studios and networks and record labels create content and then you choose which content you want to use. If you don't like this show, you will probably like this show. And you don't like this movie, maybe you like this movie. But somehow, we didn't have much in the way of content creation. We just sat back, ate, and handed over our money. But now things are different. It's not from the top-down, it's from the bottom up. We live in a time where anyone with a camera and internet connection can put something online and the whole world can see it. For the first time in human history, the playing field is equal. And what are we doing with this opportunity? We're creating, and we're communicating. We spend our time in entertainment, in filmmaking, in blogging, in pets, in gaming, and in teaching, but most importantly, we spend our time in each other. And these contacts and these communications and these investments are the best things I've ever had. YouTube is not a website I visit, it's a community where I live.