|
|
Tubular
The biggest moving-image phenomenon of the
moment starts with 'You' and ends with $1.65bn. Niall Kitson
follows YouTube's progress and presents the story so far…
the short version.
On 10th October, 2006, Google
announced its 16th acquisition of the year by forking out
$1.65 billion for a loss-making start-up with a two-word mission
statement: Broadcast Yourself. At a mere 18 months old, the
videoblogging service YouTube
has gone from being a novelty site for geeks and exhibitionists
to one of the top 10 most recognised brands on the web. Providing
a platform for people everywhere to share their 'talents'
to a global audience, the website has not only taken off as
a point of contact in the virtual world, but also thrown a
spanner in the works of television networks vying for web/TV
convergence on their own terms. With traffic of 65,000 videos
uploaded, 100 million clips viewed daily and a monthly tally
of 20 million unique visitors, YouTube has given birth to
a compulsive 'clip culture' of bitesize user-generated content
ranging from Eamonn Dunphy's rantings to William Shatner's
unique interpretation of Rocket Man to some thugs looking
to happy slap the wrong guy. Despite numerous scrapes with
copyright infringement, neoconservative groups and disgruntled
artists' bodies, YouTube remains poised to become one of the
most important online cultural conduits. Here's how it happened…
the short version.
Run from an office above a pizzeria in San Mateo, the biggest
internet phenomenon of the broadband era started as a novel
solution to the lack of outlets to service the rise of videoblogging
(vlogging), and provide some measure of exposure for broadcasters
in search of an audience. While traditional viral videos were
doing well through the likes of Atom and iFilm, with their
varied content of short film, remixed trailers and relentlessly
forwarded novelties, increased availability of the means of
production showed that users were as interested in making
their own fun as enjoying other peoples'. With more cameras
and editing suites in more homes, the problem arose of where
to put all this material without having to host it yourself,
send it to viral purgatory or – worse – post it
on iTunes alongside the likes of Frederator or Rocketboom.
On top of that come formatting issues: with Quicktime, Real
Player and Media Player all jockeying for position, content
could vary in quality and availability across platforms and
browsers. Windows Media Player (the dominant format in the
PC market) remained the standard on most sites despite its
mediocre quality and being inaccessible to many. These issues
of availability and format became fundamental stumbling blocks
for budding broadcasters to overcome.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland
113.
|
