YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in 2005 and was purchased by Google just 1 year later. YouTube is primarily known for being a free video-sharing platform where users can upload videos as well as like, share, comment, follow and make their own channel. YouTube has been around for a while and has served many different purposes for society since its birth.  YouTube has grown beyond the “search for a music video” or “quick how-to video” times, as there is more content than ever before, and the platform now sees about 2.3 billion users per month. It is needleless to say that YouTube has a huge following and brand awareness that is almost unmatched, they are a juggernaut in the social media space and capture a great part of the market, very much outperforming their competition. Statisa.com says that YouTube recorded 28.8 billion dollars in revenue as of the end of 2021, and by looking at their history, revenue and daily user numbers have been growing exponentially year by year. Additionally, despite all the functions that YouTube is classically known for, it is also known for being the second most visited website and the second largest search engine in the world behind Google. My blog is all about YouTube: the updates, the good, the bad, and the ugly. YouTube predominantly targets ages 18-34, but still serves a wide audience of people across the platform with videos and content for users of all ages and interest groups. YouTube has sports videos, music videos, how-to (tutorial) videos, car videos, product reviews, podcasts, reaction videos, and many other options. Although these videos are of great benefit to their audiences, they are becoming increasingly beneficial to their individual creators by becoming a source of income.

            Over the past 10 years or so, YouTube and this “social media age” has birthed new careers in “YouTubers” and “influencers”. At this point in time, most users now make YouTube content for monetization purposes. In addition, there has been a huge increase of users on this platform that refer to creating content as a career, dedicate all their time to it, and depend on YouTube as their primary source of income. YouTube continues to be a hub for content creators because Youtube has implemented the best framework where the creators get paid for their work over any other platform. Examples of these “YouTubers” such as, Mr. Beast who made $54 million in 2021, Jake Paul who made $45 million, Dude Perfect who made $20 million, and many others. Because these videos have become increasingly monetized and popular, YouTube has come up with creative new ways to share content rather than classic videos.

Check out this video fro 101 cool facst about YouTube!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFEqU4VeURE

            YOUTUBE SHORTS! These are all the craze and the newest YouTube implementation that has proven to be a huge hit with YouTube’s audience. YouTube got their short content inspiration from Tik Tok which is another social media platform that has been taking over the internet in the past few years. Countless studies have shown that shorter content is more beneficial in terms of fan engagement. It is a lot easier to keep someone’s attention for 45 seconds than it is to retain someone’s attention for a 10-minute duration. This logic has been proving true in today’s market with the explosion of short content across many different platforms at this point and YouTube continues to benefit. Users have adopted the new implementation with open arms; it has been noted that over 75% of YouTube’s monthly users are watching YouTube shorts. These numbers are great for YouTube and are sure to continue to increase page visits. With the success of YouTube Shorts, YouTube has decided to branch to the opposite of the spectrum: YouTube TV.

            YouTube TV was launched in 2017 as another implementation of the YouTube team to participate in the streaming market. This has proved to be a huge success for the brand as the world went into quarantine in early 2020. Though not as hot as it once was, YouTube TV weathered the COVID-19 push and has kept up the success ever since.  YouTube TV now has more than 5 million users; pushing them ahead of Hulu who is a huge competitor in that “cord cutting” space which is a huge accomplishment to a platform who is a primary search engine.  Obviously, YouTube has been making great strides to facilitate its own success, but it has also proven to help other business in a huge way.

YouTube is almost known as the new way of advertising; the brands see a number of possible exposures when they see the monthly user numbers, and it is a great opportunity to spread their brands positioning or their brand message. Companies navigate this process by seeking out YouTubers or Channels that get big numbers of views on their videos, this way the company feels like they can maximize the reach of their message and possibly get as many ad exposures as views on the video. In exchange for showing that company’s ad in their video, the company pays that Youtuber or Channel a certain rate based on the views the ad generated. In order to help the purpose and relevance of these ads, YouTube has algorithms that show certain company ads to possible users in that market based on their video viewing choices. YouTube has been a Godsend to these companies, helping them spread their word without breaking the bank paying for tv space. Another way that Brands benefit from YouTube is thanks to “product reviewers”, this group of YouTubers are known for getting a new product in, unboxing the item on video, showing the audience the item, giving them a quick tutorial on how the product works and its purposes, and then finally giving an overall review of the product, judge if it’s worth the money and how it stacks up against competitors. Brands have noticed how big of a pull these product review pages have on consumers, so they send a product out to a reviewer for free hoping the reviewer will like the product and suggest it to his or her thousands of viewers.

• This concludes my first blog! Hope you enjoy