Is there anyone who hasn’t heard of YouTube? Is there anyone who hasn’t used YouTube? It all started in February 2005 with three former PayPal employees, and it has now been around for 11 years, imagine that. Since November 2006 it’s a part of Google and therefore part of Alphabet.
It makes use of a variety of technology like WebM, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video to display an even larger variety of videos made by users or big companies. In July 2016, YouTube was ranked the second most popular website by Alexa Internet—a web traffic analysis company. It doesn’t stop growing and their user count is still increasing every day.
You can find everything on YouTube, and I mean… everything. Movies, music, shows, tutorials, and celebrities. Everyone knows you can make money out of YouTube so everyone is giving it a shot! You can find gaming channels, beauty, and fashion, life hack channels, YouTubers playing simple games (like The 7 Second Challenge), song cover channels, and even kids unwrapping toys.
It’s gone insane. But don’t worry about those inappropriate content, YouTube has a system and a team that disables the monetization or completely removes the video from the site. You, as a user can flag a video for YouTube to review and remove. They even made a separate app called YouTube Kids that only unlocks the content suitable for the little ones.
YouTube started out as a little baby and is now a grown person. It has gone from simple video technology to 3D. There are even 360° videos that you can drag around. Guess what? It doesn’t end there. Google invests heavily in VR viewing R&D and is not only offering the Cardboard viewing device but even more sophisticated devices such as the Daydream View.
As if YouTube isn’t successful enough, they now make their own series and movies that you have to pay for. It’s called YouTube Red and each episode of a series has to be paid before you can watch it. If you’re into gaming, you need to check out their Twitch contending space YouTube Gaming.
Were you there to see the whole transformation of YouTube from the start? There is so much undiscovered talent starting out on YouTube. Can you help me find some of them? Try out YouTube for yourself and maybe you’ll be the next greatest YouTuber!
Photo credit: Evilyn Guedes / Michele Ferrario / Ted Mielczarek
