Stan Beer
Sunday, 20 August 2006 19:30
Opinion and Analysis
Last month everyone was talking about MySpace. This month, no one can say enough of the online phenomenon that is known as YouTube. And from a brief perusal of the site which is basically a vast repository of video clips, it's easy to see why.
I just viewed a less than 2 minute video clip of an unknown Russian
guitarist displaying the most dazzling jazz-rock fusion technique I
have ever seen. All you see are his fingers weaving their magic on the
guitar fretboard. This clip just happened to be near the top of the
home page and has been viewed almost 100 thousand times.
If you
think that's a lot of exposure, just below that clip is a one minute
clip posted three days ago by a nice looking blonde girl (sounds like
an Australian) doing a clever rap in a put-on American accent. That one
has been viewed nearly 630,000 times!
There is a veritable
smorgasbord of thousands upon thousands short and longer videos that
home users have made and posted to the site. Users get to give clips
ranking of one to five stars. Those that get the highest rankings tend
to get put into the most prominent positions and get viewed the most
times.
YouTube gets 16 million visitors a day! Along with social
networking sites like MySpace and news aggregators like Digg, YouTube
is the new media paradigm. The public provide their own content. They
decide what's good and what's not. They choose what they want to watch
and when they want to watch it.
Instead of channel surfing in
front of a TV set, many young people and some older people now sit in
front of their computer screen and seek out and watch some of the best
original content being made by ordinary and extraordinary people around
the world. They can also participate and post their own content if they
wish. All they need is a web cam and a microphone.
The TV
industry is watching what is happening on YouTube with no small measure
of interest. However, early indications are that big TV understands the
potential that a site like YouTube can provide as a marketing medium to
reach the audiences the TV networks want to reach.
The question is how long will it be before full length TV shows come to YouTube. And how will they be funded.