Social media comes in all forms. The first ever website that allowed people to communicate with one another was a site called Six Degrees which began in 1997. It allowed people to create their own profile and connect with other users around the world, until it finally shut down in 2001 (Hendricks, “Complete History of Social Media: Then and Now”). Also in the early 21st century, photo sharing platforms began to rise, such Photobcuket and Flickr which do still exist today, but have been left behind in the dust by a more popular site, Instagram. Since the launch of Facebook in 2004, there is now over 1.86 billion monthly active users, with five new profiles being created every second of the day (“The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics – Updated April 2017”). Since the launch of Twitter back in 2006, it has grown to the rate where 6,000 tweets are sent out per second, 350,000 in an hour, 500 million in a day, 200 billion in a year (“Twitter usage Statistics”). The fact that none of this existed more than 20 years ago goes to show how much technology has progressed over the years. There is one other social media platform that hasn’t been mentioned yet that has grown at an even faster rate than any of the other sites since launch, and that is YouTube. For those who don’t know what YouTube is, it is an American video-sharing website. It may sound simple, but don’t be fooled, there’s a lot more to it than that. According to YouTube’s own statistics, the site has generated over a billion users since its launch in 2005. Every day, hundreds of millions of hours are watched on videos, generating billions of views. Now, how does a website like this come to be? It all starts with three former PayPal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.
Steven Chen immigrated over to the United States with his family from Taipei, Taiwan at the age of 15. After graduating from high school in Arlington Heights, Illinois, Chen would continue his studies over at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he would go on to major in computer science in 2002. The second creator, Chad Hurley was born in Reading, Pennsylvania where originally, he showed interest in the arts, but would later go on to pursue a different interest in computer science. After high school, Hurley would go on to earn his bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999. The last founder, Jawed Karim also immigrated to the U.S at a young age, but instead coming from Germany with his family. Like Chen, Karim would also pursue computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but would drop out early in his academic career in order to take on a job at PayPal. Now that the trio were all working on PayPal, slowly over time an idea began to be conceptualized, and it wasn’t YouTube. Before YouTube, there was “Tune In, Hook Up”, a site where people would post short videos of themselves, and other users would decide whether or not they would hook up with them. Think of it as Tinder, but with videos instead of photos of one’s self. To no surprise, the concept was quickly buried after realizing that no one would be willing to partake in such an activity (“The history of YouTube”). At that point, it seemed like the collaboration would no longer happen, at least not until after the 2004 Superbowl Halftime show.
Many may remember the 2004 Superbowl Halftime show for its controversy, in which Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed by Justin Timberlake accidentally in front of 143.6 million viewers across the world. In that same year, the Indian Ocean Tsunami tragedy took place, however, neither of these events were able to found online at all. That’s when the three founders developed a new idea, shifting from a dating service to an online video sharing site for people to upload and view. They renamed their brand, this time to something less provocative, and that is YouTube. In 2005, American venture capital firm Sequoia Capital would invest 11.5 million dollars into the three’s site. Headquartered above a pizzeria in San Mateo, California, the first video to ever be put up on the new website would come from Karim (Ace X, “The History of YouTube”). Titled “Me at the zoo”, this 19-second video showcases Karim’s minimal knowledge about elephants, commentating on their trunk size. The video still exists today on the site 11 years later, currently holding 37.4 million views, 660,000 likes, and over 200,000 comments. However, the first video to reach a million views came in late 2005 in a Nike advertisement featuring pro soccer player Ronaldinho. The site officially launched to the public on December 15, 2005, earning over 8 million views daily right from the start (“YouTube: a history”). Less than a year later, Google would acquire YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars and from there, the site would begin to grow exponentially. By 2007, the site used more bandwidth than in 2000 across the entire internet. Slowly, the site began to earn sponsorships and reach deals with several large companies, including TV stations such as NBC and CBS, music labels such as Sony BMG, Warner and Universal, a sports deal with NHL, and several more all within the site’s first 24 months (“YouTube: a history”). This allowed for live events to be televised on the platform, often times exclusively entirely free for internet users, from hockey and cricket games, to presidential debates, live news, etc. YouTube launched mobile integration early on as well, which more than half of what people use to watch videos on the site today. As technology began to progress over the course of the decade, this allowed YouTube to utilize even more features to enhance what they already have. For example, when the site launched in 2005, the max video quality that could be achieved on the platform was 360p. However, over time quality started improving, moving to 480p, 720p, 1080p, and even more recently, 4k. High definition viewing is the standard now for all things video, allowing for a better experience as well as immersion. With the introduction of virtual reality and recent years and its growth, videos are now also capable of being presented entirely in 3D. By 2010, it was revealed by Hurley that the website was now pulling in an average of over one billion views per day (“YouTube: a history”). As of this month, YouTube now currently has 1.3 billion users, has over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute, and nearly 5 billion videos are watched every day (“YouTube Statistics – 2017”).
Why do hundreds of millions of people flock to YouTube every day? It’s for a variety of reasons. What started out as a platform for amateur video makers to post their contents has now transformed into a place for professional content. You can find almost anything on there, from cooking recipes to highlights of last night’s game, to vlogs and gameplay and even montages of cute animals; it accommodates everyone. In 2007, YouTube officially launched its Partner Program, allowing content creators to earn revenue off of their videos through views and advertisement. By doing this, it has allowed the possibility for people to earn themselves a celebrity-like status over the internet, and for some, millionaires. Take, for example, Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg. You’ve probably never heard of him before, but I am certain you’ve heard of his YouTube channel, PewDiePie. Felix first started uploading to the site in 2011 videos of himself playing popular games such as Minecraft and Call of Duty while commentating over them. He was one of the first people on the site to combine humor and video games together, and was one of the first to really make a name for himself among the millions of other filmmakers. Fast forward six years later, PewDiePie now currently has over 54.6 million subscribers and over 15 billion views across hundreds of his videos. According to Forbes, Felix made over 15 million dollars just from revenue, and over 124 million since 2010, not too bad for someone who is only 26 years old (Dong, “PewDiePie Net Worth 2017: How Much is PewDiePie Worth Right Now?”). And he isn’t the only one whose been this successful. Roman Atwood, who currently has over 22 million subscribers combined, earned an estimated eight million dollars for his popular prank videos in 2016. Sketch artist and comedian Lilly Singh made over 7.5 million dollars at the end of the year for her video, followed by the channel “Smosh” comprised of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla made about 7 million for their slapstick comedy videos (McAlone, “Meet the YouTube Millionaires: These are the highest-paid YouTube stars of 2016”).
While it may seem like YouTube is this juggernaut of a social media platform, it turns out they have dealt with a lot of controversies and scandals over the years. For instance, in 2013, users were annoyed to find out that they were suddenly forced to create an account on Google’s own social networking platform, Google+ in order to keep their YouTube account. Remember, Google did buy out YouTube in early 2006, but the question was why force people into signing up for something they may not want to be a part of in the first place? It turns out that this was YouTube’s way of taming the comment sections of videos, which is “an infamous troll-ridden Wild West of abuse, ignorance and spam.” (Dredge, “YouTube aims to tame the trolls with changes to its comments section”). The site believed by doing this would make it easier for people to moderate what they can and can’t see in the comments, however, people soon found way to bypass this. Another controversy that was a big deal in the YouTube community came in 2016 when the site began taking down videos without notice for “copyright infringement”, and implementing a new system called “Content ID”. What this system did was detect any video being uploaded by people on the site, and determine whether or not any of it uses material that isn’t original, removing it. While from afar it may seem like a good system to introduce to prevent people from ripping off other people’s content, the argument fell under the “fair use” policy. The “fair use” policy states: “any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and ‘transformative’ purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyright work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.” (Stim, “What Is Fair Use?”). What that means is the use of someone else’s content for your own use is permissible, as long as you are using it for educational purposes, or in other cases, for parody. However, YouTube wasn’t putting that into consideration at first which angered a good amount of the content creators, especially those whose videos were centered around using other material. Over time, YouTube has lessened its control and strict hold on copyright, however, the Content ID system is still in place. In the same year, even more content creators faced issues with YouTube when they discovered that several of their videos were being demonetized by the company without any warning, including people such as PewDiePie and Roman Atwood, the site’s two biggest creators for producing content “not advertiser-friendly”. This was never a problem earlier, so why did YouTube go on a mass spree of demonetizing videos? In a blog post, the site posted the following: “Content that is considered ‘not advertiser-friendly’ includes, but is not limited to: 1. Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor. 2. Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism. 3. Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language. 4. Promotion of drugs… 5. Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.” (“Advertiser-friendly content guidelines”). While some of the guidelines here make sense as to why it’d be taboo, such as promoting drugs and displaying nudity, some of the other stuff seems a little too harsh. A majority of the site’s most popular content creators have gained their popularity through their sketches and commentary, which often times use vulgar language and profanity. Some have been doing this for seven or eight years now, so why is it now all of a sudden forbidden to use inappropriate language? Some people make a living through the revenue earned on their videos, so by implementing this strict policy, it was possible that people would be forced to quit what they are doing. Sure, they could change up the kind of content they put out, but isn’t the point of YouTube to have fun, be creative and not be restricted to what you can say and do (to an extent)? Many have argued that this was a violation of the first amendment, which is Freedom of Speech? Currently, the policy is still in place, however, it seems like YouTube has become less strict on the case, seeing as many of the more popular content creators continue to cuss, talk about politics, and other things deemed “not advertiser-friendly”.
How has YouTube affected the way we live? There are hundreds of reasons. The site has given people a platform to get discovered for their talents, whether it be music, acting, writing, anything that can be shown off. Justin Bieber, who is undoubtedly one of the most recognized artists on the planet, got his start on YouTube, after a video of him singing and playing guitar got recognized worldwide, launching him instantly to a life of fame. The site has raised awareness, promoted non-profit organizations, set up fundraisers and informed people of what was going on in the world around them, broadening people’s perspectives. The most infamous example is “KONY 2012”, something that everyone has heard about at some point in their life. The video, which currently has over 100 million views was huge when it came out back in 2012, which opened people’s eyes to some of the social atrocities that were going in Uganda. Granted, the project was met with a lot of controversy following the video, but it still proved what the site is capable of. Something else YouTube has changed is the way we view entertainment. Instead of going outside, reading a book, going to the movies, people can instead lay in bed and spend countless hours watching unlimited content. You can listen to music, watch full episodes of old television shows, watch “how-to” videos, watch Vine compilations, learn a new language… the possibilities are limitless. People may look at it as a something that has promoted unhealthy living habits, it’s still revolutionary (O’Neill, “5 Ways YouTube Has Changed The World Forever”). It has promoted creativity, especially in the younger generation who have grown up with YouTube as their primary form of entertainment. It teaches people to be innovative, think outside the box and put yourself out there, which is a wonderful and healthy idea to teach and live by. What’s next for YouTube? Your guess is as good as mines. Recently, the site has been going down the route of producing its own full-length movies and television series, like that of other popular streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Video. 360° videos are beginning to grow more and more common on the site, especially among the music industry with artists creating immersive music videos for fans
For “The YouTube Generation” to work as an effective documentary, it needs a lot of interviews. When talking about the history of how YouTube came to be, it would be ideal to get quotes from all three of the founders, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and have them explain it themselves. Talk about how they met each other, what their mindset was during development, about their failed first idea, and their reactions as the site began to grow rapidly. It would also be best to get them to talk about their thoughts and idea on some of the controversies that have come up over the years, such as the “Content ID” ordeal and the demonization scandal. When it comes to discussing the impact of YouTube on people’s lives, the best way to develop this idea would be to interview the entire demographic. Talk to kids as well as adults about what they watch, who their favorite content creators are, how it affected them, etc. Maybe there are parents who are against their child’s excessive use of the site, and you can ask them why. Finally, the last group of people who would be interviewed is the content creators themselves, such as that of PewDiePie, along with other people from a variety of genres. Have them talk about their rise to fame, what they thought of YouTube, their views on some of the controversies and what they think of the future.
Although this documentary would be straightforward, problems of truth can still come up during production. Each person is going to have their own bias when it comes to a subject. For example, the founders of YouTube are obviously going to have a certain bias when talking about their website, especially when it comes to the subject of controversies. While they may paint it out to be something positive and spin it in a certain way, you won’t know whether or not to trust their perspective or that of the content creators. Sticking with these creators, a bias would most like exist among these filmmakers as well, considering they are in a way, “employees” in the YouTube community. After all, they wouldn’t be where they are today without the website, so there is a possibility that they may also focus more on the positives and downplay the negatives. Despite that, “The YouTube Generation” is intended to be more of a factual documentary that focuses on the history of the website and examine its growth over the years, and less about something that would stir up a debate.