YouTube: Difference between revisions
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==Mark Pesce on the impact of You Tube's hyperdistribution on the mass media== | |||
Mark Pesce: | |||
"It's not that YouTube is competing with you for dollars - it isn't, at least not yet - but rather, it is competing for attention. Attention is the limiting factor for the audience; we are cashed up but time-poor. Yet, even as we've become so time-poor, the number of options for how we can spend that time entertaining ourselves has grown so grotesquely large as to be almost unfathomable. This is the real lesson of YouTube, the one I want you to consider in your deliberations today. In just the past three years we have gone from an essential scarcity of filmic media - presented through limited and highly regulated distribution channels - to a hyperabundance of viewing options. | |||
This hyperabundance of choices, it was supposed until recently, would lead to a sort of "decision paralysis," whereby the viewer would be so overwhelmed by the number of choices on offer that they would simply run back, terrified, to the highly regularized offerings of the old-school distribution channels. This has not happened; in fact, the opposite has occured: the audience is fragmenting, breaking up into ever-smaller "microaudiences". It is these microaudiences that YouTube speaks directly to. The language of microaudiences is YouTube's native tongue. | |||
In order to illustrate the transformation that has completely overtaken us, let's consider a hypothetical fifteen year-old boy, home after a day at school. He is multi-tasking: texting his friends, posting messages on [http://www.bebo.com/ Bebo], chatting away on IM, surfing the web, doing a bit of homework, and probably taking in some entertainment. That might be coming from a television, somewhere in the background, or it might be coming from the Web browser right in front of him. (Actually, it's probably both simultaneously.) This teenager has a limited suite of selections available on the telly - even with satellite or cable, there won't be more than a few hundred choices on offer, and he's probably settled for something that, while not incredibly satisfying, is good enough to play in the background. | |||
Meanwhile, on his laptop, he's viewing a whole series of YouTube videos that he's received from his friends; they've found these videos in their own wanderings, and immediately forwarded them along, knowing that he'll enjoy them. He views them, and laughs, he forwards them along to other friends, who will laugh, and forward them along to other friends, and so on. Sharing is an essential quality of all of the media this fifteen year-old has ever known. In his eyes, if it can't be shared, a piece of media loses most of its value. If it can't be forwarded along, it's broken. | |||
For this fifteen year-old, the concept of a broadcast network no longer exists. Television programmes might be watched as they're broadcast over the airwaves, but more likely they're spooled off of a digital video recorder, or downloaded from the torrent and watched where and when he chooses. The broadcast network has been replaced by the social network of his friends, all of whom are constantly sharing the newest, coolest things with one another. The current hot item might be something that was created at great expense for a mass audience, but the relationship between a hot piece of media and its meaningfulness for a microaudience is purely coincidental. All the marketing dollars in the world can foster some brand awareness, but no amount of money will inspire that fifteen year old to forward something along - because his social standing hangs in the balance. If he passes along something lame, he'll lose social standing with his peers. This factors into every decision he makes, from the brand of runners he wears, to the television series he chooses to watch. Because of the hyperabundance of media - something he takes as a given, not as an incredibly recent development - all of his media decisions are weighed against the values and tastes of his social network, rather than against a scarcity of choices." | |||
(http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=42) | |||
=More Information= | =More Information= | ||
Revision as of 07:58, 4 February 2008
YouTube is one of the most popular video-sharing sites
URL = http://www.youtube.com/
Description
"Watch : Instantly find and watch 1000's of fast streaming videos. Upload : Quickly upload and tag videos in almost any video format. Share : Easily share your videos with family, friends, or co-workers.
You can embed YouTube videos in any website by a little code snippet."
Some Data
September 2006 stats:
- In a single month the number of videos on the site grew 20% to 6.1 million
- YouTube has some 45 terabytes of videos
- Video views reached 1.73 billion
- 70% of YouTube's registered users are American, roughly 50% are under 20
- The total time people spent watching YouTube since it started last year is 9,305 years
( from the WSJ at [1])
Discussion
The Culture Role of YouTube
Some comments about the role of YouTube, the massively used videosharing site that was purchased by Google, plays in our culture, by Henry Jenkins:
"1. YouTube functions as a meeting place for different subcultures, fan communities, and other forms of participatory culture, enabling the crosspollination of formal practices, themes, and ideas. I see this crosspollination as likely to accelerate the speed with which cultural innovations get picked up and deployed at other social sites.
2. YouTube participants are monitoring mass media and rescuing content that deserves greater attention than it has received -- see here the circulation of Jon Stewart's Crossfire appearance, Stephen Colbert's Washington Press Club talk, or some of Keith Oberman's commentary on the Bush administration and the war, all of which were seen by many more people on YouTube than on television.
3. Grassroots content circulating on YouTube is being pushed upward through a combination of old and new media into greater and greater public visibility -- the movement from blogs to A List blogs (Boing Boing) to major web publications (Salon, Slate) to niche television (Daily Show, Letterman) to mainstream television (The Early Show) to advertising. This is such a powerful illustration of how convergence culture works.
4. YouTube is forcing major media companies to opt in or out of participatory culture -- with companies like MTV Networks enabling certain content to circulate through this channel or several major Japanese media companies deciding to yank their anime-related content off last week." (http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/googtube_tv_20_or_bubble_20.html)
Mark Pesce on the impact of You Tube's hyperdistribution on the mass media
Mark Pesce:
"It's not that YouTube is competing with you for dollars - it isn't, at least not yet - but rather, it is competing for attention. Attention is the limiting factor for the audience; we are cashed up but time-poor. Yet, even as we've become so time-poor, the number of options for how we can spend that time entertaining ourselves has grown so grotesquely large as to be almost unfathomable. This is the real lesson of YouTube, the one I want you to consider in your deliberations today. In just the past three years we have gone from an essential scarcity of filmic media - presented through limited and highly regulated distribution channels - to a hyperabundance of viewing options.
This hyperabundance of choices, it was supposed until recently, would lead to a sort of "decision paralysis," whereby the viewer would be so overwhelmed by the number of choices on offer that they would simply run back, terrified, to the highly regularized offerings of the old-school distribution channels. This has not happened; in fact, the opposite has occured: the audience is fragmenting, breaking up into ever-smaller "microaudiences". It is these microaudiences that YouTube speaks directly to. The language of microaudiences is YouTube's native tongue.
In order to illustrate the transformation that has completely overtaken us, let's consider a hypothetical fifteen year-old boy, home after a day at school. He is multi-tasking: texting his friends, posting messages on Bebo, chatting away on IM, surfing the web, doing a bit of homework, and probably taking in some entertainment. That might be coming from a television, somewhere in the background, or it might be coming from the Web browser right in front of him. (Actually, it's probably both simultaneously.) This teenager has a limited suite of selections available on the telly - even with satellite or cable, there won't be more than a few hundred choices on offer, and he's probably settled for something that, while not incredibly satisfying, is good enough to play in the background.
Meanwhile, on his laptop, he's viewing a whole series of YouTube videos that he's received from his friends; they've found these videos in their own wanderings, and immediately forwarded them along, knowing that he'll enjoy them. He views them, and laughs, he forwards them along to other friends, who will laugh, and forward them along to other friends, and so on. Sharing is an essential quality of all of the media this fifteen year-old has ever known. In his eyes, if it can't be shared, a piece of media loses most of its value. If it can't be forwarded along, it's broken.
For this fifteen year-old, the concept of a broadcast network no longer exists. Television programmes might be watched as they're broadcast over the airwaves, but more likely they're spooled off of a digital video recorder, or downloaded from the torrent and watched where and when he chooses. The broadcast network has been replaced by the social network of his friends, all of whom are constantly sharing the newest, coolest things with one another. The current hot item might be something that was created at great expense for a mass audience, but the relationship between a hot piece of media and its meaningfulness for a microaudience is purely coincidental. All the marketing dollars in the world can foster some brand awareness, but no amount of money will inspire that fifteen year old to forward something along - because his social standing hangs in the balance. If he passes along something lame, he'll lose social standing with his peers. This factors into every decision he makes, from the brand of runners he wears, to the television series he chooses to watch. Because of the hyperabundance of media - something he takes as a given, not as an incredibly recent development - all of his media decisions are weighed against the values and tastes of his social network, rather than against a scarcity of choices." (http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=42)
More Information
(27.07.06) What goes on the Net stays on the Net (About YouTube: "They could refuse to take down your video... ...charge YOU for your own video. ...insert ads in the video..." - www.pbs.org)
Analysis for Flow magazine by John MacMurria at http://jot.communication.utexas.edu/flow/?jot=view&id=1995
Henry Jenkins on YouTube at http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/11/googtube_tv_20_or_bubble_20.html