What is youtube?
YouTube is a community, a platfrom where you can upload your own videos and share it to the world. It stand as an important site of a cultural aggregation, whether we consider mashups in the narrow sense or the site as a totality , where variousely sourced videos, commentaries, tools tracking devices and logics of hierarchisation all combine into a dynamic and seemless whole. It's economic model is in fact predicated on participation; it fails the "2.0 test" since users may only upload and not download. The "YouTube screening room" declares itself to be the "world largest theater" and part of a new generation of filmaking and distribution. YouTube, like film, use to miss the capacity of liveness but there is this brain new thing since a couple of years ago called "YouTube live" where YouTubers and other people can talk live to the audience. From what we have already seen, YouTube's focus is on the "periphery" of what has long been held as the center of attention, communities of interest, and the frameworks of evaluation so important to the cultural experience.
The television industry has stuffed itself into an unecessary small conceptual space, and YouTube is providing a set of radical alternatives. It seems particulary persistent about targetting community engagement. Youtube is making use of network affordance, unlike its industrial counterparts who are using the network as little more dan a data dump and alternate channel. The appearance of youtube, dailymotion and video servers has ended the hegemony of the " hertzian broadcast" and represents an irreversible break with the model of the cultural industries whose domination marked the 20th century.
As you know, the catch phrase of YouTube is "YouTube broadcast yourself". But we could also say "first look for yourself" (push media) and of course again, "produce yourself": what this self, this autopresupposes is the existence of the navigation functions. Home video allows the public to access for the first time the functions of freezing image, of slow motion and of rewinding the film. Internet users are invited to produce tags, keywords, indexations and annotations of all kinds for this "new screen", which becomes a collaborative effort, that one calls web 2.0
The television industry has stuffed itself into an unecessary small conceptual space, and YouTube is providing a set of radical alternatives. It seems particulary persistent about targetting community engagement. Youtube is making use of network affordance, unlike its industrial counterparts who are using the network as little more dan a data dump and alternate channel. The appearance of youtube, dailymotion and video servers has ended the hegemony of the " hertzian broadcast" and represents an irreversible break with the model of the cultural industries whose domination marked the 20th century.
As you know, the catch phrase of YouTube is "YouTube broadcast yourself". But we could also say "first look for yourself" (push media) and of course again, "produce yourself": what this self, this autopresupposes is the existence of the navigation functions. Home video allows the public to access for the first time the functions of freezing image, of slow motion and of rewinding the film. Internet users are invited to produce tags, keywords, indexations and annotations of all kinds for this "new screen", which becomes a collaborative effort, that one calls web 2.0
In 2006 a video became viral on Youtube. It was a quick message from Chad and his partner, both founders of Youtube. They wanted to thank everyone for watching and using their platform but also had a big annoucement. Google had finally decided to buy the platform. In other words, that day, they became billonairs. Youtube has come a long way since then. A new team internet is born this past few years and it is only the beginning. YouTubers are influencing the world by making awesome videos and getting a lot of views. Here is the channel trailer of the famous Youtuber "Zoella". This year has been quite a journey for her and we can only hope it doesn't stop. Go team YouTube!
|
|