What site do you use when you watch videos online? Tumblr? Facebook? There is one online community that gets over one hundred million views daily. Can you guess it? The answer is YouTube. Let’s find out more about it!
Happy Birthday to YouTube!
YouTube was born on February 14th, 2005 at 9:13 P.M. through the work of three PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The first video on YouTube was uploaded on April 23rd, 2005, and was titled “Me at the Zoo,” showing co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. Right now, YouTube is a big company, so it is common to think that YouTube was established in an office building. However, it was actually established in a garage and did not do well at first. Nevertheless, because of its free service and easy cellphone uploading, YouTube grew rapidly, and Google bought the site in 2006. Now, YouTube is one of the top video portals in the world. 300 hours’ worth of videos are uploaded every minute, and YouTube is serviced in 73 countries in 61 languages.
Why Do You Use YouTube? It’s Charming!
As seen from the popularity of YouTube, YouTube has a lot of good functions. First, YouTube is one of the few sites that allow sharing and watching videos for free. People can upload any video at anytime and from anywhere as long as they go along with the regulations of YouTube. Second, there is lots of content to watch. However, if tons of content flows in by the minute, people might wonder, “How can I find the specific content that I need?” The answer is using tags. When people upload videos, they put tags on the videos to help people search for them. So tags help find what users want instead of wading helplessly in the pool of irrelevant information. Third, YouTube can be used as a two-way communication tool. Contrary to regular videos that are a form of one-way communication, videos on YouTube make it easier for interaction between producers and viewers. Fourth are embedded tags. Embedded tags allow spreading YouTube videos by showing a Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) video tag. Therefore, advertising and sharing videos are easy because of this function. Fifth, there are fewer ads. Video portal sites earn money for posting ads on the sites. For this reason, they show ads at the start of every video or on every blank space on the website. In addition, to get the revenue they need, they make viewers see the whole ad mandatorily. However, some videos on YouTube do not have ads and you can skip the ads if you want. Lastly, YouTube strives to protect copyright. YouTube deletes videos that infringe on copyright rules. However, if it is for educational services, it goes under the fair use domain and is left untouched.
How Does YouTube Earn Money?
YouTube earns its main revenue from posting ads on its site. To be more specific, there are two ways YouTube uses to earn money: making viewers pay a monthly fee not to see any ads or by showing the ads to viewers. If users pay a fee of about 10 dollars monthly, they can enjoy YouTube without ads. Also, there is some special content which are made especially for paying viewers like “never-before-seen scenes.” However, not many people use this method, so most of the revenue comes from the second method: showing ads.
YouTube does not earn money by just having a lot of views. Instead, there are two ways that YouTube uses: CPC and CPV. CPC stands for “Cost Per Click” which means that YouTube gets paid when viewers “Click” the ad. In this way, companies that post their ads pay YouTube for promoting the real potential customers who would buy their products. CPV, on the other hand, stands for “Cost Per View” which means that YouTube gets paid when the viewers see the ad for 30 seconds or see over half of the whole ad. Through CPC and CPV, ad companies and YouTube can come to a logical understanding about payment because they get what they want, revenue for YouTube and potential customers for ad companies.
How Much Do You Know About YouTube? 
Do you know what the hottest video on YouTube is? Until the first half of 2015, only two videos had a billion views. However, now more than 20 videos have a billion views. Interestingly, Korean singer PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is YouTube’s most watched video of all time, having more than two billion views. Meanwhile, “Hello,” which was sung by British singer Adele, also has an incredible record in that almost a billion people watched her video in just 88 days. Considering that Psy’s video or other billion-view videos took at least five months to have so many viewers, it is easy to guess how powerful her video was. This is the latest list of most-watched video on YouTube. How many videos have you watched?
Your Tube Is More than Tube!
YouTube can make a new job! “Digital nomad” means literally a person who works freely like a nomad, using mobile devices and without an office room. They work relatively freely compared to other workers. These days, digital nomad is becoming a common job. YouTubers or YouTube creators are one representative group of digital nomads. They create various kinds of video content about cooking, beauty, games, humor, and so on. Creating content, they not only communicate with worldwide viewers but show their personality.
YouTube can be used for commercial purposes! On YouTube, a girl of only ten years is a famous singer. For this reason, ad agencies make the best use of YouTube. Using subtitles and visual stimuli, advertisers can promote their products to people who live in different countries. Ad agencies ask YouTubers to expose their goods naturally, and this makes consumers feel more trust than through existing Product Placement (PPL) because YouTubers promote certain products with their real natural reviews. There are even new companies who mediate ad agencies and YouTubers whose images are proper to the companies. In this way, YouTube Marketing is as influential as TV commercials.
YouTube spreads culture! Have you ever seen “Free Hugs”? “Free hugs” is a social campaign that gives hugs to anyone who wants them. Juan Mann, who lives in Australia started this campaign. When he arrived in his country, he was lonely and felt like a tourist in his hometown. He wanted someone to be waiting for him. So he got some cardboard with the words “Free Hugs.” After his free hugs video spread through YouTube, this made enormous response around the world and many people joined the free hugs campaign. Furthermore, YouTube also created many world celebrities. Psy, for example, was a popular singer only in Korea. However, in 2012, he uploaded his new song “Gangnam Style” as a video on YouTube and it spread quickly to the world, to eventually become the first-ranked video which has the most viewers. People were so enthusiastic about his funny video and song that many people imitated it again and again. Moreover, many music shows like MTV Music Awards cast him and even Yale University selected PSY’s song lyric “Oppa Gangnam Style” as 2012’s ninth word. As you can see, even though it is just a video, on YouTube, it can make a new part of culture!
Did you check whether your YouTube is legal? When people upload videos or watch videos on YouTube, they don’t need to list information in detail. Simply with a name and e-mail address, they can enjoy various content on YouTube. However, this convenience sometimes infringes on copyright and hinders YouTubers’ activities. For instances, certain TV programs’ video clips are searched for on YouTube, and people watch them illegally. Furthermore, even children can watch obscene or violent materials so easily on YouTube. Some broadcasting stations have strived to solve those problems, but still, protecting copyright remains a matter of great concern on YouTube.
To encourage creators, YouTube has conducted interesting programs against copyright infringement. YouTube gives three strict warnings to users who violate copyright, and if they break the regulation once more, they cannot use YouTube. In addition, YouTube established a “Copyright School” and educates criminals, giving tests about copyright. After finishing this school, they make a vow not to infringe on copyright.
Tips for YouTube Beginners
- Edit: This tab provides various video filters, blurring effects, slow motion, and other special effects.
- Subtitles, C&C: YouTube provides an automatic translation function for worldwide users and the disabled. In addition, using this tab, people can add subtitles their video.
- Trending: This helps people find out what the most famous video is now.
- Subscription: If people want to watch a creator’s content constantly, after subscribing to special creators, viewers can get a notice whenever those creators upload new videos.
“YouTube” is a compound word of “you” and “tube,” which means making your own channel. YouTube enabled people to make their dreams come true and became a stronger platform than other web sites, leading people to interact with each other. If you have used YouTube only for watching funny videos, now how about trying to broadcast yourself?