YouTube

About

YouTube^[1] is a video hosting and sharing website created in February 2005. With eight hundred million unique visitors a month, it is one of the most trafficked websites on the internet along with Facebook and Google.

History

Although YouTube is often considered one of the early trendsetters in the social media game, other video-hosting platforms like Metacafe and Vimeo had been in existence prior to the launch of YouTube in 2005. According to one of the co-founders Jawed Karim, YouTube was originally envisioned as the video version of the beauty rating site Hot or Not, which has been also credited as the source of inspiration for the social networking service Facebook.

The site was founded by three former employees of PayPal, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim on February 14th, 2005 and the first YouTube video titled “Me at the zoo” was uploaded on April 23rd, which featured one of the co-founders Jawed Karim in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. The beta version of the site became publicly available in May of that year, followed by its official launch in November 2005.

The registered userbase continued to grow rapidly in the following months. By July 2006, the company revealed an impressive record of 65,000 new uploads and 100 million video views per day. In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock; the deal was finalized in mid-November.

Redesigns

On March 31st, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site.

In November 2011, the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+ interface (shown below, left). In December 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface (shown below, right), with the video channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of social networking sites.

On June 5th, 2013, Google rolled out the new “One Channel” interface for YouTube, enabling all users to customize their channels with a cover photograph and an introductory video. According to Google’s official blog post, the “One Channel” could lead to an increase in getting new subscribers and channel visits.

YouTube Music Awards

On October 1st, 2013, Google announced its plan to host the first YouTube Music Awards, a live-stream ceremony event to recognize and highlight the most influential musicians of the year. The event, which is to be held at Pier 36 in New York City on November 3rd, will be co-hosted by actor-musicians Jason Schwartzman and Reggie Watts and feature live performances by Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire and Eminem, as well as five music events that will be simulcast from Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, London and Rio de Janeiro. On October 22nd, YouTube unveiled the list of nominees in six categories for the inaugural event, along with an introductory video in which the co-host Reggie Watts asks the viewers to vote for the winning acts (shown below).

Video of The Year

Epic Rap Battles of History – “Obama vs Romney”
Demi Lovato – “Heart Attack”
Girls’ Generation – “I Got a Boy”
Justin Bieber (ft. Nicki Minaj) – “Beauty and a Beat”
Lady Gaga– “Applause”
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – “Same Love”
Miley Cyrus – “We Can’t Stop”
One Direction – “Best Song Ever”
PSY– “Gentleman”
Selena Gomez – “Come & Get It”

Artist of the Year

Eminem
Epic Rap Battles Of History 
Justin Bieber
Katy Perry
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Nicki Minaj
One Direction
PSY
Rihanna
Taylor Swift

Response of the Year

Boyce Avenue (feat. Fifth Harmony) – “Mirrors”
Jayesslee – “Gangnam Style”
Lindsey Stirling and Pentatonix – “Radioactive”
ThePianoGuys – “Titanium / Pavane”
Walk Off the Earth (feat. KRNFX) – “I Knew You Were Trouble”

YouTube Phenomenon

YouTube Breakthrough

Kendrick Lamar
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Naughty Boy
Passenger
Rudimental

Innovation of the Year

Anamanguchi -- “Endless Fantasy”
Atoms For Peace – “Ingenue”
Bat For Lashes – “Lilies”
DeStorm – “See Me Standing”
Toro Y Moi – “Say That”

Google+ Comments Update

On September 24th, 2013, the YouTube Official Blog^[28] announced the beta launch of an improved commenting system that is more closely integrated with the Google+ social networking service, which was subsequently implemented across-the-board on November 6th. Upon its release, YouTube’s new commenting system was instantly met by criticisms and backlash from the community, mainly for requiring a Google+ account to comment on any video and prioritizing the visibility of comments made by friends on Google+ without having established a significant user base.

On November 7th, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim posted his asking why the Google social networking service was required for commenting.

Throughout the day, a number of video bloggers uploaded their own response videos to address the intergration issues in the new commenting system, most notably YouTubers Cr1TiK (shown below, top, left), somegreybloke (shown below, top, right), Jon (shown below, bottom, left) and Gopher (shown below, bottom, right).

Meanwhile, some YouTubers created short animations to vent their frustration with YouTube’s Google+ commenting system (shown below).

Features

The basic features of YouTube consists of uploading videos, watching videos uploaded by other users and interacting with other users via comments and response videos. Unregistered visitors can watch videos without ever signing up for an account, but the registration is required for uploading videos and commenting on other uploads. YouTube initially allowed users to upload long-format videos, but later implemented a ten-minute length limit on all uploads in March 2006 after learning that the majority of videos exceeding the ten minute mark were unauthorized or copyright-infringing materials such as TV show episodes and films.

Playback

In addition to the basic functions of a video-streaming platform, YouTube offers a variety of optional tools to improve the viewing experience, such as closed captioning services, automatic speech recognition, in-video annotations and 3D anaglyphic playback.

Embeddable Videos

The near-ubiquitous presence of YouTube videos on the Internet can be credited to its easy video embedding feature, which allows users to copy and paste the video player object into almost any blog or website that supports HTML.

Interactions

Registered users (sometimes referred to as YouTubers) of the site can interact with others through a number of different channels, from private messaging and wall posts on the channel page to comments in the video pages and response videos that can be linked to the referenced video. Users can also rank a video or a video comment through an upvoting / downvoting system.

Shows & Rentals

YouTube also runs a section called “Shows,” which allows major U.S. entertainment studios and distributors to upload full-length films and TV episodes to the site with advertisement options. In January 2010, YouTube introduced an online film rentals service offering more than 6,000 films, which is available only to users in the US, Canada and the UK as of July 2012.

Easter Eggs

Snake Game: In July 2010, YouTube released an easter egg feature with its new video player which enables users to launch an impromptu game of Snake by holding down the left and up arrow keys during pause and playback. This feature only works on YouTube video pages without any annotations or advertisements.

Snowflake Animation: In December 2011, YouTube added a snowflake button as a holiday special easter egg on its video player. Upon clicking, the feature would trigger animated snowflakes to fall from the top of the video.

500 Error Message: In 2010, YouTube began displaying a 500 Internal Server Error message that read “500 Internal Server Error: Sorry, something went wrong. A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation. If you see them, show them this information” followd by a random code.

Nyan Cat Progress Bar: In June 2011, YouTube temporarily enabled a custom flash player for the original Nyan Cat video page, which displayed an animated miniature Nyan Cat flying across the progress bar with a rainbow trail during playback.

The Wadsworth Parameter: In October 2011, YouTube employee and Redditor newtuber enabled the new video URL parameter “&wadsworth=1,” which can be suffixed to any YouTube video URL to load the video at 30% of the total length in reference to The Wadsworth Constant.

Self-Subscription: In 2012, YouTube began displaying a mouseover error message that read “No need to subscribe to yourself!” when a user attempted to subscribe to one’s own channel.

Psy Character Sprite: In December 2012, YouTube added an animated character sprite of Psy doing the horse dance on the Gangnam Style video page to commemorate the unprecedented milestone of passing 1 billion views on the site.

Harlem Shake Search Results: In March 2013, YouTube introduced an easter egg for the search option in which typing in “do the harlem shake” would trigger various components of the search results page to wobble in the style of Harlem Shake dancers.

VHS Tape Mode: In April 2013, YouTube enabled a VHS tape emulator button on a limited selection of videos in homage to the 57th anniversary of the first commercially available videocassette recorder (VCR). Upon clicking, the video quality would be downgraded to match the aesthetics of VHS image resolution, such as white static lines, fuzzy grains, occasional vertical holds and even distortion of images when in pause mode.

Premium Channels

On January 29th, 2013, the advertising industry news blog AdAge^[21] published an article reporting that YouTube has a plan to launch paid subscriptions for a select few channels in April. The article included a quote from a Google spokesperson, who stated that the company believed certain types of content require alternative payment models. On the following day, YouTuber PrettyMuchIt uploaded a video in support of the idea, asserting that paid subscriptions could provide users with more options and better content (shown below, left). Also on January 30th, YouTuber Lamarr Wilson uploaded a video in which he criticized the paid subscription model (shown below, right), arguing that no one should have to pay for content on the video-sharing site.

On May 9th, YouTube launched the pilot program for its paid subscription service,^[15] offering its users free trial access to premium content published by more than 50 channels for the first two weeks, after which a monthly fee ranging from $0.99 to $7.99 would be charged per subscription.^[16] In the coming days, the new service was reported on by Yahoo,^[17]CNN,^[20] The Wall Street Journal^[19] and CNET^[18] among many others. As of May 10th, there are 54 paid channels available, including Sesame Street, National Geographic, Rap Battle Network, Recipe.TV and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Impact

Since its launch and subsequent rise to prominence, YouTube has played an essential role in the creative process of internet memes in a multitude if ways, foremostly as the ground zero site of countless viral videos and spawning pool of user-generated videos, and secondly as the primary exchange ground for social commentaries and discussions on topical events. The site’s strong affinity with both amateur videobloggers and mainstream media outlets also gave rise to an uncharted era of citizen journalism, public discourse and internet stardom, thus establishing itself as a hubsite of user-generated content.

2013 YouTube Study

In June 2013, undergraduate media students at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois released a 175-page report^[22] on YouTube’s most popular content creators and their contributing factors. Conducted over the course of the Spring semester in 2013, the study analyzed the statistical data of YouTube’s 241 most viewed channels to deduce a number of commonly observed practices that may contribute to their online popularity. Among its key findings^[23]^[24] were:

All but one of YouTube’s top channels focus on producing non-serial, episodic videos, with MachinimaPrime being the sole exception that serializes its content with a consistent storyline.

The 58 percent majority of YouTube’s top channels do not use introductory clips or credit rolls in their videos. The median frequency of jump cuts is at around 9 cuts per minute, the median pace of narrative speech is 150 spoken words per minute, while the median word count in video description stands at around 56.5 words per video. All of these findings suggest the importance of brevity and search engine optimization.

Approximately 34 percent of the analyzed videos feature at least one other collaborator in the description; comedians have the higher rate of peer collaboration with 43 percent of videos being co-hosted or co-produced, while gamers rarely team up with only two percent of gaming videos produced as a result of collaboration.

The median video length for YouTube’s top channels is 4 minutes and 19 seconds (4:19); comedy videos have the shortest median video lengths at 3 minutes and 25 seconds (3:25), while fashion/beauty, news commentary and gaming videos have the longest median video lengths at 7 minutes, 44 seconds (7:44), 8 minutes and 55 seconds (8:55) and 9 minutes and 36 seconds (9:36) respectively.

The median number of subscribers for YouTube’s top channels is measured at around 1.23 million subscribers and the majority of the top ten channels are run by independent video-bloggers.

The median frequency of new release is at 1.25 videos per week, while the average number of videos uploaded in a week period is just short of three videos per week. Among the top content creators, gaming-related channels have the highest number of 8.31 videos uploaded per week, while comedy channels have the lowest cout of 1.23 videos uploaded per week.

Twitter is the primary means of distributing new video content for YouTube’s top channels. On average, YouTubers tweet 7.11 times a day and garner around 4.28 mentions per day.

Related Memes

Largely due to the broad range of content hosted on the site and its virtual monopoly over video hosting services, the scope of this section is limited to internet memes that have emerged as a result of interacting with other users or using a specific feature on the site. For more comprehensive listings of viral videos and catchphrases that have originated from YouTube, check out KYM Tag – Origin:YouTube. For an index of notable YouTube video bloggers and celebrities, browse KYM Tag – Origin:YouTube Category:Person.

The 301 Phenomenon

One of the longest enduring mysteries of YouTube features has been the seemingly arbitrary view counter that gets stuck at 301 or 302, which soon became regarded as a positive sign that the video is undergoing a significant lift in viewership. The number 301 displayed under a video can be read as the minimum threshold of view-counts required to initiate a new counting method or “a statistical verification process” designed to filter out any counterfeit or invalid view counts from being taken into account.

YouTube Automatic Caption Fails

YouTube Automatic Caption Fails are the humorous, incorrect captions produced by Google’s automatic speech recognition technology for videos on YouTube. Both real and fake screenshots of particularly absurd automatic transcriptions are often posted on various sites.

Operation YouTube

Operation YouTube (also known as “YouTube Porn Day”) is a series of porn spamming raids launched by Anonymous which took place on the video sharing site in early June 2009.

I’m 12 Years Old and What is This?

“I’m 12 Years Old and What is This?”, also known as “I’m 12 and what is this?”, is a catchphrase typically used to react to something that is considered vulgar or outlandish, such as x-rated media. The comment was posted in a video titled “Jonas Brother Live On Stage” during Operation YouTube in May 2009, when 4chan users flooded the site with x-rated clips under the guise of popular teen idols like Lazy Town, Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus.

The Wadsworth Constant

The Wadsworth Constant is an Internet axiom which states that the first 30% of any video can be skipped because it contains no worthwhile or interesting information. This observation was named after Redditor Wadsworth, who defined the term in a discussion thread about how to properly fold a bed sheet.

X People Missed the Like Button

X People Missed the Like Button is a type of comment usually found on YouTube, in which the “x” represents the number of dislikes the video has accumulated at the time of the commenter’s viewing. The phrase can also be modified to take on a biased tone as to criticize the viewers who chose to dislike the video.

Am I Ugly?

“Am I Ugly?” is a YouTube trend in which adolescents upload videos of themselves asking for commenters to rate their physical attractiveness. In February of 2012, the phenomenon rose in visibility after news media began criticizing the trend as an unhealthy means of seeking approval.

Reply Girls

Reply Girls, often spelled “reply girl”, is an Internet slang term used to identify female YouTubers who mainly upload videos as a “reply” to an already popular or trending video in an attempt to capitalize on the high view counts. They typically use sexually suggestive thumbnails, often with prominently exposed cleavage, to gain views. Reply Girls seek to gain YouTube partnerships through high view counts, and then make/steal money for every video they produce.

Traffic

As of January 2012, YouTube has a Quantcast^[2] US score of 3, Alexa^[3] Global and US rank of 3, and Compete^[4] rank of 4. On January 23rd, 2012, YouTube announced^[5] that it was receiving an average of more than four billion views a day on both computers and mobile web, as well as an hourlong worth of footage uploaded per second. To better illustrate the vast numbers and statistics associated with YouTube videos, YouTube launched the site One Hour Per Second^[6] in December 2011.

Search Interest

Search queries for YouTube began to increase visibly in February 2006 and the total volume of online interest has been steadily on the rise ever since.