Youtube

YouTube .Com , a Web site that allows browsers to upload , view and share short videos , was launched in February 2005 . It has had extensive media mileage from being named Time Magazine 's "Invention of the Year " in 2006 to Google 's purchase of the company . In 2006 , YouTube .Com boasted a monthly user base of 100 million . These users upload 65 ,000 videos daily (Newkirk and Forker , 1

In its a little more than three years in existence , YouTube has become such a powerful force that it has transcended boundaries . Mainstream newscasts

now often include footages from YouTube , and have increasingly looked at the site as a source of news . YouTube has been thoroughly assimilated in popular culture that it has become an everyday word , and has even crept up in lyrics of a lot of songs , the most notable of which is Mariah Carey 's "Touch My Body , while the band Weezer has come out with a video featuring YouTube stars - people who became famous because of their videos on YouTube . This delves into YouTube 's beneficial effects on today 's culture

YouTube 's Popularity

A group of Kansas University researchers headed by Michael Wesch gives us a clearer picture of where YouTube .Com is at present . The latest data show that there are about 78 .3 million videos on YouTube as of March 17 , 2008 , representing a daily upload rate of around 150 ,000 to well over 200 ,000 videos . Music , entertainment , comedy and personal videos categorized under people and blogs remain to be the top content on the site , with more than 66 .4 of videos being categorized under these categories . Sports , education , autos , films , how-to guides , news pets , science and travel make up the remaining . The researchers also found that the average uploader is around 26 to 27 years old (Wesch online

A majority of the videos on YouTube .Com were amateur videos at 80 .3 while 14 .7 made up professionally made videos . Only 4 .7 of the videos had commercial content . However , the researchers estimate that around 12 of all videos are in probable violation of copyright laws (Wesch online

With an average video length of a little less than 3 minutes , it would take 412 .3 years to for one person to watch all the videos on youtube .com at present (Wesch , online

A check of Alexa 's top sites showed that YouTube is the third most popular site on the Web today , losing out only to Google and Yahoo , and overtaking such sites as MSN .Com , Windows Live , MySpace , Wikipedia FaceBook , Blogger .Com and Yahoo 's Japan search engine (Alexa , online

History

YouTube was the idea of Steve Chen , Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim , who registered the domain name YouTube .Com in February 2005 . Development of the site followed in the subsequent months , and soon the first video Me at the Zoo ' was posted in April that year

YouTube was formally beta launched in May 2005 . The beta site showed a...