Key Company Case Study

YouTube is a vide - sharing website, created in February 2005 by threes (former) PayPal employees; Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Steve Chen.YouTube has been owned by Google since November 2006, when bough for $1.65 billion. The purpose of YouTube is for consumers to create and upload videos which they then become prosumers (creating the content for the website). The company is based in San Bruno, California and uses  Adobe flash video, HTML5 technology in order to display a variety of user-generated video content, including music videos, television clips and also 'grassroots media' (blogging from individuals).

Content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals, although media corporations; BBC, Vevo, CBS, Hulu and other organisations offer material through the website, (YouTube partnership programme).

Company History: 

• July 2006 - more than 65,000 new videos uploaded every day and the site was receiving 100 million views per day.
• YouTube is the dominant provider for online videos, with a more than 14 billion views on May 2010 and has a market share of a 43%.
• 60 hours of videos uploaded every minute.
• Third most visited website, behind Google and Facebook.
• June 2008, Forbes magazine projected revenue at $200 million in advertising alone.
• January 2012, consumers spend on average 15 minutes a day on the website.
• June 2006, YouTube entered into advertising and marketing partnership with NGB.
• YouTube launched a new design in March 2010, with the aim to simplifying the interface in order to increase time users spent on the website.
• May 2010, YouTube was serving more than two billion videos a day, (double prime - time audience of all three major US television networks combined.
• May 2011, YouTube received more than three billion views a day.
• The Google+ social networking site integrated directly with Chrome web browser, and YouTube which allowed YouTube videos to be viewed the Google+ interface, in November 2011.
• May 2011, YouTube launched a pilot  programme which offered some content providers that ability to charge $0.99 per month for certain channels, (majority of channels still remaining free).

Content accessibility:

YouTube offers the chance to view videos outside their website. This can be done because each YouTube video is accompanied by a HTML code than can embed on any page. This function is often used on social networking sites and blogs.

Usually YouTube does not offer a download link for videos as it intends for them to be viewed through the websites interface, only a small number of videos can be downloaded as an MP4. However, plug-ins and third party websites allow users to download YouTube videos. When uploading a video to YouTube, it will retain a copyright on the video for the uploader, but in July 2012 it's been possible to select a creative commons license as the default, allowing other users to reuse and remix the material if it is free of copyright.

Platforms:

Through the technical convergence of mobile phone, they are capable of accessing You Tube videos, (depending on the data plan). Since June 2007, YouTube has been available for viewing on a range of Apple products  which required YouTube's content to get transcoded into Apple's preferred video standard. Products YouTube can be viewed on; Apple TV, iPod Touch, and the iPhone. In 2010 the app became available on Android due to the app avoiding the use of Adobe Flash Player.

In January 2009, YouTube launched 'YouTube for TV' a version of the website catered for set-top boxes and TV -based media. This allowed YouTube to be accessed on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox Live.

In June 2009, YouTube XL was introduced which was a simplified interface designed for viewing on standard television screens.

According to Global Web Index, YouTube was used by 35% of smartphones between April and June 2013, (third most used app).

Music Industry:

YouTube launched its own weekly chart in 2011, 'the YouTube 100' where the main aim was to track popularity of music videos on the website. This is significant because in 2013, the Billboard charts began including online streams in the top 100 lists, which means that YouTube videos now had an influence of positions in the charts.

 

Overall:

YouTube is such a significant company because of how far I has come in 8 years. It's possible that YouTube may one day be the one source for all content. YouTube has had a huge impact on the music industry as video views on the site count towards the Billboard charts. In addition, how certain distribution websites, Vevo, etc. uses YouTube to make profits through advertising. YouTube is the main source of 'grassroots media' whereby individuals can express their own creativity. This view links to the Tapscott and Williams theory 'Wikinomics' of how collaboration has lead to prosumers producing content which consumers are responding too. This suggests that traditional ways of consuming media may cease to exist as 'grassroots media' is like a perfect storm, the advancements in technology will continuously occur and so will more prosumers producing content. YouTube is a key factor in this because this website is the source for consumers to create their own channels and to gain their own audience. Furthermore this links to possible predications of Web 3.0, will YouTube replace traditional sources of media used today.