The Taylor Site

We are all familiar with YouTube, the video sharing website that hit the worldwide web by storm since its introduction in 2005. But who invented it and why is it such a success?

We owe it all to Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who were early employees of PayPal, the e-commerce business. Who would think a group of Paypal employees would come up with such a phenomenal website? It was said that this idea was developed by its founders out of their difficulty in sharing videos that was shot from a dinner party they attended. That’s how simple it begun and the rest was history.

YouTube allows you to find many benefits and you could get pretty hooked to it. As for me, this website allows access to videos that may be unavailable anywhere else. And since it’s powered by Google, it’s like any type of information is readily available. As a matter of fact, a recent study undertaken among the behavior of US internet users noted that roughly a third of the users have uploaded something homemade on the internet including video clips. This adds to the great diversity of information you can find on the website.

What I like most is that I could always catch up on YouTube some episodes I missed on American Idol, Survivor or Grey’s Anatomy or better yet review the most celebrated on the Academy Awards. There are even a full compilation of the episodes so you don’t really have to worry if you miss the TV series’ schedule for days months or years.

YouTube is not only a place for entertainment. It also makes for a good learning gizmo. The University of California (UC) for instance has become the first university to transfer its entire course module and lectures on YouTube. The videos include lectures from Bioengineering and peace and conflict studies. Special events of the university are also broadcasted on YouTube. Now, there are a lot of learning institutions following UC’s move.

I’ve even seen a three-year old watch YouTube fondly everyday for alphabet songs and nursery rhymes. His parents have indeed noted significant improvement on the child’s learning development. I also know of a man, who is in his late 60s, constantly watch out for new video releases on YouTube. He has shared to me what a phenomenon Susan Boyle is and pointed out how thankful he is for YouTube broadcasting his favorite songs which were big hits in the 70s. Talk about retro!

Now if you have an online business, regardless whether it is a start-up site or already existing, online video file sharing proves to reap a lot of benefits. Having your site integrated with YouTube will serve as a value-added service for your visitors. It will also make YouTube a good marketing tool which will enable you to place ads along with the videos. This in turn will generate more dollars for you. There’s just great potential revenue from placing ads alongside the videos.