Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from half stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here at how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works and I love technology, and today we're going to
Speaker 1: cover the final part of our three part episode on YouTube,
Speaker 1: the YouTube Story. There's a ton of stuff has happened
Speaker 1: over the relatively short number a short time that YouTube
Speaker 1: has been around, but it's important to talk about because
Speaker 1: YouTube has had such a huge impact on multiple aspects
Speaker 1: of culture in general and online culture in particular. Now,
Speaker 1: when we left off in the last episode, it was
Speaker 1: the beginning of twelve and YouTube had announced the launch
Speaker 1: of premium channels. In this episode, we're gonna follow up
Speaker 1: on that and catch up onto what YouTube has been
Speaker 1: up in recent years. So let's first jump right back
Speaker 1: into the CEO. Salacamonga had announced a push toward the
Speaker 1: lean back viewing experience. Now, this is a concept that
Speaker 1: was carried over from television. The idea is to create
Speaker 1: a slate of programming that encourages a viewer to stick
Speaker 1: with the experience and continue watching once your selected video ends.
Speaker 1: The television example of this would be something like the
Speaker 1: must See TV strategy for YouTube and meant tweaking algorithms
Speaker 1: so that viewers would be prompted to watch a related
Speaker 1: video to the one they just finished, one that would
Speaker 1: presumably meet their preferences and encourage them to stay with
Speaker 1: the platform. One thing YouTube tried to do to encourage
Speaker 1: more binging activity was to change up how it determined
Speaker 1: which videos it should recommend to users in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: in the past, the videos that got lots of clicks,
Speaker 1: those viral hits of yesteryear, were given extra love. They
Speaker 1: were put in a prominent place on YouTube landing page
Speaker 1: so that you were more likely to click on them. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you shot a video and it
Speaker 1: got a lot of attention early on, you were rewarded.
Speaker 1: You've got more prominent placement on YouTube's landing pages. Thus
Speaker 1: you got even more opportunities together views, and it could
Speaker 1: just skyrocket from there. On the surface, that seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty solid idea, because people are clearly already drawn
Speaker 1: to watching that popular video, so giving it a better
Speaker 1: position would drive even more traffic, right, But the folks
Speaker 1: at YouTube saw how this could be a problem, and
Speaker 1: it's a problem that stretches well beyond YouTube itself, because
Speaker 1: focusing on that metric made it really hard to convert
Speaker 1: people from watching one video to watching more than one video.
Speaker 1: And what's worse, you couldn't guarantee that all those views
Speaker 1: meant someone watched a video all the way through. So
Speaker 1: if I click on a video and decide within the
Speaker 1: first ten seconds it's not really a video for me,
Speaker 1: and I click away, my view still counts, but it
Speaker 1: may not mean that that video is particularly good. It
Speaker 1: may mean that the title or the thumbnail was really
Speaker 1: interesting or really enticing, and that's why I got me
Speaker 1: to click. And once I saw that what I thought
Speaker 1: I was getting was not what I actually got, I
Speaker 1: clicked out. Well, you don't want to reward that because
Speaker 1: it's not a great user experience. So YouTube decided that
Speaker 1: the best way to convert people into watching multiple videos
Speaker 1: was to look at watch time on videos, as in,
Speaker 1: how much overall time did people spend watching that video.
Speaker 1: So if you uploaded a twenty minute video and people
Speaker 1: were only watching the first thirty seconds, chances are that
Speaker 1: video would just sink to the bottom of YouTube's vast
Speaker 1: library under this new regime. But if you uploaded a
Speaker 1: twenty minute video and people were on average watching at
Speaker 1: least nineteen minutes of it. That suggested the video you
Speaker 1: uploaded had real value to it. So YouTube began to
Speaker 1: shift and promote videos that had longer engagement times rather
Speaker 1: than just a lot of hits. And as I said,
Speaker 1: websites across the Internet we're struggling with this same problem.
Speaker 1: If you run a site, let's even use how Stuff
Speaker 1: works as an example. Your ideal situation is that someone
Speaker 1: comes to your site to learn something cool. They read
Speaker 1: a specific article, then they noticed that there's all this
Speaker 1: other cool stuff on the website, and they spend a
Speaker 1: good amount of time exploring. People who have gone to
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and said, oh yeah, I went down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I started clicking on links and learning about thing after
Speaker 1: thing after thing. That's what we're talking about. That level
Speaker 1: of engagement. While you don't want to see is someone
Speaker 1: coming to your site and then they bounce after they
Speaker 1: read one article, or worse, they read part of an
Speaker 1: article and then they bounce. They don't even click all
Speaker 1: the way through. So YouTube's change in policy opened up
Speaker 1: the door to a new type of YouTube celebrity, being
Speaker 1: the gamer. Now, don't get me wrong, people had been
Speaker 1: uploading video game footage with or without commentary for years,
Speaker 1: and only a few YouTubers had really gathered a large
Speaker 1: following through the process. But with this change in policy
Speaker 1: came an unexpected consequence. Video game related videos began to
Speaker 1: rise in the ranks, and that's because of a few
Speaker 1: different reasons that relate to video games and video game audiences.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the audiences were wanting to watch a
Speaker 1: complete video of their favorite personalities or their favorite games.
Speaker 1: Then audiences of other videos were so if you have
Speaker 1: a video where there's a particularly charismatic gamer or there's
Speaker 1: a really cool game on their people were more likely
Speaker 1: to watch it all the way through. It became a
Speaker 1: real career path for some people to create video game
Speaker 1: related content and uploaded to YouTube, because if you could
Speaker 1: find an audience of a decent size and the stuff
Speaker 1: you uploaded was entertaining enough, you can see your videos
Speaker 1: receive a lot more love because again, your videos tended
Speaker 1: to be longer. Let's play, video in a video game
Speaker 1: might be fifteen minutes or forty five minutes or an
Speaker 1: hour or even longer than that, and if people are
Speaker 1: watching all the way through. Because of YouTube's new ranking system,
Speaker 1: you would be given preferential treatment because you had a
Speaker 1: greater amount of watch time for your video. So we
Speaker 1: started seeing these let's play videos, which would follow a
Speaker 1: gamer's experiences as he or she played through a game
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, and those videos had a built
Speaker 1: in story progression. In fact, I had a double layer
Speaker 1: story progression because you had the story within the game
Speaker 1: itself what is actually happening as the game unfolds, and
Speaker 1: you had the story of the gamer's journey. What is
Speaker 1: happening to the gamer? Is he or she controls a
Speaker 1: character or other element within this game. Now, we humans
Speaker 1: love a good story, and we hate it when a
Speaker 1: story gets left off right as you're getting to an
Speaker 1: interesting moment. And if we were a little further into
Speaker 1: this episode, I'd be a smart alec and I would
Speaker 1: put an ad break right here. But we're not there yet,
Speaker 1: so I'll just keep going. So let's play videos encouraged
Speaker 1: viewers to watch the whole video, and they inspired binge watching,
Speaker 1: as viewers wanted to see an entire story from beginning
Speaker 1: to end. So let's say you start an episodic game
Speaker 1: or a game that has a very long play through
Speaker 1: one episode might be an hour, and it might represent
Speaker 1: only a fraction of the entire game, and your next
Speaker 1: episode is the next hour of that game play. Well,
Speaker 1: if someone discovers your videos and they like you, they
Speaker 1: might start binging from beginning to end. They want to
Speaker 1: see the whole thing, and they're eagerly awaiting the next chapter.
Speaker 1: So those pretty long videos would end up getting massive
Speaker 1: rankings in YouTube results. You would land on the landing
Speaker 1: page and see them at the very top. The combination
Speaker 1: of features meant that the metrics of the YouTube algorithm
Speaker 1: were all being pinned by let's play videos, and they
Speaker 1: began to take over all of YouTube, including the homepage.
Speaker 1: In fact, at some points, fIF or more of the
Speaker 1: videos featured on the homepage where game being related videos.
Speaker 1: And out of all of those games there was one
Speaker 1: that was really dominating, and that one was Minecraft. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point, I have to give a shout out
Speaker 1: to a YouTube channel called The Game Theorists. It's a
Speaker 1: really good YouTube channel. The guy does an excellent job
Speaker 1: breaking down elements of games and game culture, and he
Speaker 1: did a great episode about this very topic. He really
Speaker 1: dives into the change of the YouTube algorithm and the
Speaker 1: effects it had on the platform in general, as well
Speaker 1: as the launch of a brand new industry in video
Speaker 1: game videos that really didn't have a lot of traction
Speaker 1: up to that point. He has an episode titled game Theory,
Speaker 1: How Minecraft Broke YouTube, and it was extremely helpful and
Speaker 1: it's also entertaining, so you should check it out. As
Speaker 1: the game theorist points out, YouTube's change in its algorithm
Speaker 1: would lead to game dominating that homepage for a few years,
Speaker 1: until YouTube executives made a conscious decision to course correct
Speaker 1: in mid two thousand fifteen and filter all those gaming
Speaker 1: videos out of those home pages. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that a little bit later. Now. There were some other
Speaker 1: unintended consequences of this change in policy. For one thing,
Speaker 1: shorter videos had a harder time getting discovered because you
Speaker 1: had a system that was rewarding videos for the amount
Speaker 1: of time that was spent watching those videos. A one
Speaker 1: minute animated short couldn't compete with a fifteen minute Minecraft video,
Speaker 1: And the same was true for artists who uploaded cover
Speaker 1: songs or short performances. Anything that was less than ten
Speaker 1: minutes was going to have a harder time showing up
Speaker 1: as a recommended video. Simply because it was not as
Speaker 1: long as those longer pieces that had really good engagement.
Speaker 1: So that was another argument against this. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: that video game footage and video game content was taking
Speaker 1: over YouTube. It was that suddenly things that were legitimately
Speaker 1: well made and entertaining we're not surfacing because the length
Speaker 1: was a detriment. The algorithm was punishing these videos in
Speaker 1: effect because they were too too short, and that was
Speaker 1: a problem. YouTube also updated its YouTube TV feature to
Speaker 1: create a more user friendly experience for people watching YouTube
Speaker 1: on their television screens, which was good because more devices
Speaker 1: and even televisions were starting to support YouTube content. But
Speaker 1: navigating a user interface on a television is a different
Speaker 1: experience than on a mobile device or a PC. You
Speaker 1: typically don't have a mouse and keyboard, so finding the
Speaker 1: right way to navigate the app so that you encourage
Speaker 1: people to use it rather than frustrate them is pretty challenging,
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to do it so that each
Speaker 1: instance of the app is optimized for the specific viewing
Speaker 1: experience of the user adds even more difficulty. Two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve was also an Olympics year, and YouTube partnered with
Speaker 1: NBC for the London Olympics to provide live streaming of events.
Speaker 1: This was a departure from the way Olympics coverage had
Speaker 1: worked in the past. It used to be back in
Speaker 1: the day that the way you'd watched the Olympics is
Speaker 1: you'd have to wait for a localized broadcast of Olympics
Speaker 1: coverage well after the actual events had happened. But in
Speaker 1: the era of Twitter and Facebook and the Internet in general,
Speaker 1: it became impossible to avoid spoilers. With this time delay approach.
Speaker 1: You would find out that people had one or lost
Speaker 1: in their respective Olympic events, and you'd still have to
Speaker 1: wait hours before you could actually watch it, which didn't
Speaker 1: really give you an incentive to tune in. TV networks
Speaker 1: had experimented with some streaming services in the past, but
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve marked the first time that YouTube was
Speaker 1: being used as a primary outlet for Olympics coverage. This
Speaker 1: was a tall order because at times there were up
Speaker 1: to a hundred different feeds populating YouTube, providing live footage
Speaker 1: of different events, and that wasn't the only live event
Speaker 1: YouTube covered in two thousand twelve. It also served as
Speaker 1: a platform for more presidential debates and eight million people
Speaker 1: watched YouTube live to witness Felix baum Gartner's space jump
Speaker 1: that happened on October two thou twelve. That event set
Speaker 1: the record for the largest number of concurrent viewers for
Speaker 1: a single YouTube live event. Now the top videos of
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, apart from gandam Style, which I've already mentioned,
Speaker 1: including Walked Off the Earth's cover of Somebody that I
Speaker 1: Used to Know by Got You walk Off the Earth.
Speaker 1: There's a group that makes creative music videos and finds
Speaker 1: complicated ways to play songs, so in that example, it
Speaker 1: involved five people playing the song on a single guitar.
Speaker 1: It's a fun video and it's also a fun band
Speaker 1: that writes original music, so you should check them out
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard of them. There are other big
Speaker 1: videos that came out that year. Call Me Maybe by
Speaker 1: Carl ray Jepson was another popular video that complimented the
Speaker 1: earworm of a song. Epic Rap Battles posted a win
Speaker 1: with their Battle of Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney episode,
Speaker 1: and not all popular videos were for pure entertainment. One
Speaker 1: that ended up getting a lot of views was a
Speaker 1: documentary titled Coney two thousand twelve. This was a documentary
Speaker 1: that detailed the effort to capture Joseph Coney, a Ugandan
Speaker 1: military leader who had been indicted for war crimes. Now,
Speaker 1: the documentary sparked a heated debate not just about the
Speaker 1: particulars of the case, but about online activism. Some critics
Speaker 1: said that the documentary bordered on slacktivism, which is when
Speaker 1: you take an action that ultimately has no real impact
Speaker 1: on the outcome of a situation, but it gives you
Speaker 1: the satisfaction of feeling as if you've accomplished something. So
Speaker 1: selactivism is a real problem. Many movements online don't really
Speaker 1: amount to anything more than just that simple feeling that
Speaker 1: you've supported a cause you believe in, but you haven't
Speaker 1: actually done anything. But there are others who argued that
Speaker 1: the video helped bring attention to a real crisis in
Speaker 1: Uganda and wasn't sla activism at all. As for Coney himself,
Speaker 1: he is still at large in Uganda, although his support
Speaker 1: has reportedly diminished significantly. At the hight of his influence,
Speaker 1: he commanded thousands of guerilla soldiers. Today it's supposedly closer
Speaker 1: to a hundred. Now let's segue into but you know
Speaker 1: what before I jump into that, how would I take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor? All right, now
Speaker 1: we're in and YouTube I mentioned earlier had sort of
Speaker 1: launched an award show, but they had quietly shuffled it off.
Speaker 1: It was called the YouTube Awards, and after two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight they really didn't talk about it anymore. They
Speaker 1: didn't really bother to do them again, but in the
Speaker 1: company launched a new awards show called the YouTube Music
Speaker 1: Awards or y t m A. Nominees were announced on
Speaker 1: October two thirteen. They included a lot of different people,
Speaker 1: but some of the nominees were Demi Lavado, Lady Gaga,
Speaker 1: Justin Bieber, and Epic Rap Battles of History, among others.
Speaker 1: The winner for Video of the Year was I Got
Speaker 1: a Boy by a group called Girls Generation, which I
Speaker 1: had never heard of. Do you hear about them? Ramsey?
Speaker 1: Ramsey shaking his head, no, he also has not heard
Speaker 1: of them. Well, it just shows that our K pop
Speaker 1: knowledge is severely lacking. It's a Korean band, so I've
Speaker 1: heard some K pop, but I did not know about
Speaker 1: this group. So I apologize for my ignorance. But apparently,
Speaker 1: UH pretty good group at least, it got a lot
Speaker 1: of traction and won the award that year. YouTube tried
Speaker 1: to get into paid subscription services in two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: with the launch of about thirty paid premium channels. These
Speaker 1: channels included everything from Sesame Street to UFC events, hopefully
Speaker 1: without any crossover, although that would be amazing. It covers
Speaker 1: a pretty broad spectrum. Obviously, on the low end of
Speaker 1: the scale, some of these channels were asking for ninety
Speaker 1: nine cents for a monthly subscription. According to Variety, the
Speaker 1: average was closer to two dollars cents a month now.
Speaker 1: A lot of those channels focused on family friendly content,
Speaker 1: much of it specifically aimed at younger kids. The initiative
Speaker 1: didn't really catch on with customers, however. Variety followed up
Speaker 1: the launch with a story in July two thous thirteen
Speaker 1: that stated many of those premium channels hadn't seen very
Speaker 1: much subscriber activity at all. National Geographic VP of Global
Speaker 1: Strategy Adam Sutherland summed up as company's perspective with the quote,
Speaker 1: we had hoped to set the world on fire. We
Speaker 1: are not setting the world on fire right now. End quote.
Speaker 1: Mark Cuban gave a similar response with regards to a
Speaker 1: YouTube premium channel called hd net, saying it was quote working, okay,
Speaker 1: not amazing end quote. YouTube had hoped that these subscription
Speaker 1: model channels would provide another source of revenue on top
Speaker 1: of ad money and rentals, but viewers were not flocking
Speaker 1: to this new alaca cart service, and eventually all the
Speaker 1: way up in the seventeen so just last year, YouTube
Speaker 1: would find a phase out this experiment entirely. By then,
Speaker 1: the company had introduced a different subscription service called YouTube Bread.
Speaker 1: But while chat about that more when we get there,
Speaker 1: another failed experiment in two thousand thirteen really backfired on
Speaker 1: YouTube and Google. It was in that Google made the
Speaker 1: decision to unite YouTube with Google Plus. Now in part,
Speaker 1: this was an effort to cut down on trolling and
Speaker 1: abuse by requiring YouTube users to register with the service
Speaker 1: using their real names. To have a Google Plus account,
Speaker 1: you had to use your actual name, at least initially,
Speaker 1: and so thought YouTube executives. YouTube commenters would have all
Speaker 1: their comments tied to their actual identities. This, they thought
Speaker 1: would cut down on extreme cases of abuse and trolling,
Speaker 1: because anything you said would be linked to you as
Speaker 1: a person and not just a handle that may or
Speaker 1: may not belong to you. Now, I haven't really touched
Speaker 1: on it in these episodes, but YouTube comments have long
Speaker 1: been seen as one of the pits of user engagement online.
Speaker 1: YouTube comments are often the ones held up as saying
Speaker 1: this is an example of a bad experience for a
Speaker 1: content creator. That's not to say that all content creators
Speaker 1: get terrible comments from YouTube users, but it does happen
Speaker 1: frequently enough that the phrase never read the comments has
Speaker 1: become pretty common common parlance in the online world now.
Speaker 1: The response to this particular move of YouTube and Google
Speaker 1: Plus logins being merged was extremely negative among a large
Speaker 1: population for different reasons. Some people were angry that their handles,
Speaker 1: which they had possessed for ages, were going to be
Speaker 1: stripped away. They had built a lot of time and
Speaker 1: effort into developing a persona that was represented by a handle.
Speaker 1: Some were arguing that the anonymity offered by YouTube's previous
Speaker 1: policy allowed people to more honestly communicate with the outside world,
Speaker 1: and even offered up protection up from potentially oppressive regimes
Speaker 1: that could punish someone for speaking out against them online. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if you force someone to tie their
Speaker 1: actual identity to their YouTube profile and they upload a
Speaker 1: video that is somewhat critical of an oppressive regime, they
Speaker 1: could end up getting targeted by that regime. That was
Speaker 1: a real concern. Others were worried about an online brand
Speaker 1: they had established through years of work and content creation.
Speaker 1: So let's say that it's a person who is known
Speaker 1: by a particular nickname. Put pie is a good example.
Speaker 1: They said, well, that's where all my value is. Don't
Speaker 1: make me give that up. And many accused Google of
Speaker 1: trying to artificially boost the popularity of Google Plus by
Speaker 1: requiring YouTube users to create a profile on this languishing
Speaker 1: social networking site. I mean, and to be that last
Speaker 1: accusation holds the ring of truth because I remember when
Speaker 1: Google Plus was in beta, the only people who were
Speaker 1: on it were entrepreneurs and tech journalists. So I was
Speaker 1: one of those people, and initially it was great. I
Speaker 1: loved using it because it felt like I knew everyone,
Speaker 1: or at least knew of everyone who was on the platform.
Speaker 1: When Google Plus opened up to everyone, there was an
Speaker 1: initial flood of new users. Everyone was eager to be
Speaker 1: part of this new thing, and that was a big
Speaker 1: problem for a lot of those early adopters. Now, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just that there was an element of exclusivity with
Speaker 1: Google Plus in those early days, although that was definitely
Speaker 1: part of the appeal. It was that this small population
Speaker 1: made it much easier to connect with people in a
Speaker 1: relatively narrow niche. So I could network with lots of
Speaker 1: people in tech journalism pretty effectively because we were the
Speaker 1: only ones on Google Plus. But as the new people
Speaker 1: found out, and as most of us already had figured out,
Speaker 1: Google Plus did not have enough to differentiate it from
Speaker 1: other social platforms like Facebook. So the question became, why
Speaker 1: would you move from Facebook, where nearly everyone you knew
Speaker 1: already had a profile to go to Google Plus. It
Speaker 1: didn't set itself apart enough to really have its own
Speaker 1: strong appeal, and so once those floodgates open, the limited
Speaker 1: use case of a social networking platform for tech journalist
Speaker 1: nerds like myself was eradicated. So Google found itself with
Speaker 1: a big social network platform with a lack of users
Speaker 1: and a lack of engagement. Thus, requiring YouTubers to join
Speaker 1: Google Plus might have been seen as a hail Mary
Speaker 1: pass to try and get something going on the social
Speaker 1: network site. The man that move was met with major resistance.
Speaker 1: People hated it, and it wasn't just the commenters, but
Speaker 1: also the creators. Eventually, in Google would officially back down
Speaker 1: from this policy and no longer require YouTubers to have
Speaker 1: a Google Plus account. Bradley Horowitz, who was the vice
Speaker 1: president of Streams, Photos and Sharing, would create an official
Speaker 1: Google blog post stating that users wouldn't need a Google
Speaker 1: Plus pro file to access Google services anymore, and that
Speaker 1: YouTube would be the first platform that would see rollouts
Speaker 1: of those changes now. The videos that were really popular
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen included the infamous music video what
Speaker 1: does the Fox Say? By TV nor Man. We really
Speaker 1: love our novelty songs on YouTube. Also, do you remember
Speaker 1: the Harlem Shake I Do? That was a meme that
Speaker 1: lasted for about a month and then kept on going
Speaker 1: for a month too long. Harlem Shake videos first really
Speaker 1: got their their go in Uh. There was a comedic
Speaker 1: video about how animals eat their food, which is absolutely ludicrous,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit I think it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: There was a video featuring Steve Cardinal who was doing
Speaker 1: a parody of Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball on the The
Speaker 1: anonymous and Random chat service chat Roulette, so people would
Speaker 1: connect with him and then suddenly a naked Steve Cardinal
Speaker 1: would swing in on a Wrecking Ball to Miley Cyrus's
Speaker 1: songs that got a lot of a lot of views.
Speaker 1: There was a prank and a coffee shop in which
Speaker 1: patrons thought they were witnessing a demonstration of telekinesis, and
Speaker 1: a terrifying kind of horror movie way just a little entertaining.
Speaker 1: One of bad lip reading videos went big. There was
Speaker 1: a bad lip reading video of the NFL, so another
Speaker 1: channel that ended up getting very popular around that time.
Speaker 1: There was the Mozart versus Scrilics video from Epic Rap
Speaker 1: Battles of History. So Epic Rap Battles that Can continued
Speaker 1: to do quite well in that year, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other music videos that were really popular,
Speaker 1: including Wrecking Ball. Blurred Lines was a big one, I think,
Speaker 1: but through the lens of twenty eighteen, we can all
Speaker 1: agree that Blurred Lines is a problematic song at best,
Speaker 1: and Katie Perry's Roar was another big one in now
Speaker 1: moving into other big big changes were starting to hit YouTube,
Speaker 1: and in February the company got a new CEO, Susan
Speaker 1: Wajiski took the helm of the company. Now, previously, Wajiski
Speaker 1: was the woman who owned the garage in which Larry
Speaker 1: Page and Sarah gey Brenn had set up the earliest
Speaker 1: Google Servers servers in Menlo Park. So Google, like a
Speaker 1: lot of big companies in the tech world, got its
Speaker 1: start in a garage. In this case, it was Susan
Speaker 1: Wajiski's garage. Now, she wasn't a executive just because she
Speaker 1: happened to own a garage. That would be ridiculous. She
Speaker 1: actually came to Google from the world of marketing. She
Speaker 1: had been a uh She had worked in marketing for
Speaker 1: Intel and then in came over as the marketing manager
Speaker 1: for Google. At Google, she oversaw a project called Google
Speaker 1: Video Service, which was a competitor to YouTube in the
Speaker 1: early days. In fact, it was this service that had
Speaker 1: engineers scratching their heads back in the early two thousands saying, well,
Speaker 1: why is anyone bothering with YouTube? I mean, why would
Speaker 1: they go there because they're gonna watch videos that are
Speaker 1: at really low resolution when they could go to Google
Speaker 1: Video Service and see them in much better clarity. But
Speaker 1: rather than dwell on that seemingly paradoxical situation, which honestly
Speaker 1: really wasn't that surprising. YouTube's service was taking on the
Speaker 1: burden of transcoding all the videos off the user. What
Speaker 1: Jski decided that the right thing to do was to
Speaker 1: make Google acquire YouTube to make that move, So she
Speaker 1: was an advocate in the early days, and in fact,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what Google did, So she was incredibly
Speaker 1: influential from the early days of YouTube, even when she
Speaker 1: wasn't working there. Specifically, what Jsky's experience and advertise it
Speaker 1: was seen as a potentially transformative asset for the future
Speaker 1: of YouTube. She had also presided over the company during
Speaker 1: a period in which more women were joining the ranks
Speaker 1: of the company. She even wrote a piece for The Hive,
Speaker 1: which is a publication under Vanity Fair, and in that
Speaker 1: she detailed how YouTube had gone from a company that
Speaker 1: had women making up of its workforce to one that
Speaker 1: then boasted of its workforce with an intent to do
Speaker 1: even better in the future. Now, her tenure has not
Speaker 1: been free from scandal, as we'll see, but she has
Speaker 1: also been an outspoken voice for women in technology, in
Speaker 1: a movement that has been gaining momentum over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. We've seen that in numerous realms, but
Speaker 1: YouTube is one of those that we've seen it prominently displayed.
Speaker 1: Some of the top videos from included the Mutant Giant
Speaker 1: Spider Dog, which was a friendly dog wearing a spider
Speaker 1: costume used to prank people in various public locations. They
Speaker 1: would encounter what appeared to be enormous webs with weird
Speaker 1: fossilized stuff hanging in in lots of webbing, and then
Speaker 1: this friendly little dog wearing a terrifying tarantula costume would
Speaker 1: come running down whatever the street the sidewalk and scare
Speaker 1: the pants off of people. Uh. I mostly felt sad
Speaker 1: for the dog who just wanted to make friends. There
Speaker 1: was a short film from a filmmaker named Tatia Paliva
Speaker 1: who created a movie called First Kiss. It was a
Speaker 1: short film of like three and a half minutes long
Speaker 1: which showed twenty strangers meeting and then kissing for the
Speaker 1: first time, and it was both awkward and sweet and surprising.
Speaker 1: I guess both is the wrong word to use because
Speaker 1: that was more than two things. But an interesting video.
Speaker 1: Epic Rap Battles again got a video within that top ten,
Speaker 1: and this one was a rap battle between Goku and Superman,
Speaker 1: which again shows me that I'm very much disconnected from
Speaker 1: the pop culture of today, as I had to look
Speaker 1: up who Go Coup was. Please don't judge me, to
Speaker 1: be fair. I love epic rap battles of history, and
Speaker 1: I know what a lot of them are, just not
Speaker 1: didn't know that one. Music videos that were big that
Speaker 1: year included Shaken Off by Taylor Swift, All About That
Speaker 1: Base by Megan Trainer, dark Horse by Katy Perry, and
Speaker 1: Bailondo by Andricue Iglesias. So music videos tend to get
Speaker 1: broken out in a different category from most watched videos.
Speaker 1: YouTube does a retrospect every year where they talk about
Speaker 1: the videos that got the most traffic throughout the year,
Speaker 1: but they differentiate music videos from everything else in We
Speaker 1: saw in February that year, YouTube launch a new mobile
Speaker 1: app called YouTube Kids, and boy, howdy has that gone
Speaker 1: crazy now? It was meant to be a simplified YouTube
Speaker 1: app that would serve up age appropriate material for children,
Speaker 1: and kids tend to be crazy binge watchers of content.
Speaker 1: They will watch video after video after video, so it
Speaker 1: was a great thing for YouTube. It was an arguably
Speaker 1: great thing for parents. Who needed to give their kids
Speaker 1: something to entertain themselves with. UM. It also featured special
Speaker 1: parental controls that were supposed to keep any inappropriate material
Speaker 1: away from kids. That being said, it has not been
Speaker 1: immune from controversy, particularly in I'll touch on that when
Speaker 1: we get there, but it's bonkers, y'all. In August of
Speaker 1: YouTube launched YouTube Gaming. This was Google's attempt to transition
Speaker 1: gaming from that homepage where it was dominating month after month,
Speaker 1: onto its own home so that way, the homepage would
Speaker 1: feature videos that were mostly unrelated to gaming, and as
Speaker 1: the game theorist postulated, this could have been a way
Speaker 1: to present to the average viewer videos that had a
Speaker 1: more mainstream appeal to them. May have been an effort
Speaker 1: to avoid having YouTube thought of as a gaming video platform,
Speaker 1: which could turn off anyone who wasn't into gaming. So
Speaker 1: let's say you tell your buddy, hey, you know you
Speaker 1: should check out videos on YouTube. They go to the
Speaker 1: YouTube landing page, they see that half the videos on
Speaker 1: that landing page are are gaming related, and they think, well,
Speaker 1: that I don't really have an interest in this. That
Speaker 1: was what YouTube's fear was. They wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that they had as much opportunity to hook people as
Speaker 1: soon as possible, to get them watching and get those
Speaker 1: AD dollars generated. Man YouTube gaming was also seen as
Speaker 1: a way to compete with Amazon's Twitch TV service. Users
Speaker 1: would be able to subscribe to YouTubers for a fee
Speaker 1: and get special privileges and features in return, like various
Speaker 1: things in chat and it's very similar to the way
Speaker 1: that Twitch does things. So that was an effort to
Speaker 1: create a new subscription model as well, and in October,
Speaker 1: YouTube introduced a new service called YouTube Bread, yet another
Speaker 1: subscription service, but this one was platform wide as opposed
Speaker 1: to channel specific, so for ten dollars a month, users
Speaker 1: get an ad free experience, and it also includes the
Speaker 1: option to download videos for offline viewing, which comes in
Speaker 1: kind of handy if you want to watch something on
Speaker 1: a flight, for example. The company also started to produce
Speaker 1: original content gathered under the apt lead titled category YouTube Originals.
Speaker 1: Those originals included material from celebrities and YouTubers, including the
Speaker 1: series Scare Beauty Pie would eventually be canceled in the
Speaker 1: wake of some of pdpies more offensive behaviors. YouTube also
Speaker 1: acted as a movie studio and helped sponsor Rooster Teeth's
Speaker 1: film laser team. The company also announced a new music
Speaker 1: app called YouTube Music that was intended to help users
Speaker 1: discover new music they might like. So you could create
Speaker 1: a station for yourself. It would have a customized playlist
Speaker 1: of music just for you. You You can also recommend music
Speaker 1: to friends using this app. Unlike Google Play Music, which
Speaker 1: the company also has that would allow you to at
Speaker 1: your own playlist, you could not create your own playlist
Speaker 1: under YouTube Music. YouTube Music would generate the playlist for
Speaker 1: you based on your preferences. Later on, in sen YouTube's
Speaker 1: head of music stated that Google Play Music and YouTube
Speaker 1: Bread would merge to create a new music streaming service.
Speaker 1: No telling if YouTube Music will be part of that.
Speaker 1: This really demonstrates one of the big problems I have
Speaker 1: with Google in general, which is that there's so many
Speaker 1: different products that all seem to be offering the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing that it's very confusing. Even as someone
Speaker 1: who follows this as part of my job, it's confusing.
Speaker 1: So someone came up to me the other you know,
Speaker 1: let's say, two days ago, and said, can you tell
Speaker 1: me what the difference between YouTube Bread, YouTube Music, and
Speaker 1: Google play Music is. It would be complicated because, as
Speaker 1: it turned out, if you subscribe to YouTube Bread, then
Speaker 1: you would have additional features in YouTube Music as well
Speaker 1: as Google Play Music. So it's not something that's easy
Speaker 1: to explain because it's all muddled, and hopefully Google will
Speaker 1: be able to streamline. That was also when Google restructured
Speaker 1: itself and created an umbrella company. That umbrella company called Alphabet.
Speaker 1: That's the one that presides over all of Google's properties,
Speaker 1: and some divisions within Google would spin off and become
Speaker 1: separate companies under Alphabet, but YouTube would not. It would
Speaker 1: remain a subsidiary to Google itself. Some of the big
Speaker 1: videos of Salento watched Me by ten King was incredibly popular,
Speaker 1: and we saw a whip in Nena appear pretty much
Speaker 1: everywhere after that. One Roman at Wood posted a video
Speaker 1: called Crazy Plastic Ball Prank, in which he filled his
Speaker 1: home with hundreds of thousands of plastic balls as a surprise,
Speaker 1: which was greeted with disbelief and then delight. That actually
Speaker 1: makes it the type of prank I love because no
Speaker 1: one's unnecessarily horrified or traumatized or injured by it. And
Speaker 1: I know I'm a softie, and thus prank videos are
Speaker 1: probably not me, but this one I thought was good.
Speaker 1: It was cheerful and positive overall, as opposed to making
Speaker 1: people feel badly about themselves. Mainstream media really began making
Speaker 1: an impact in on YouTube, lots of videos from sources
Speaker 1: like The Tonight Show and The Late Late Show We're
Speaker 1: appearing on the list of most watched videos for that year.
Speaker 1: James Gordon's car pool Karaoke was beginning to take off,
Speaker 1: and the one with Justin Bieber, who you'll remember got
Speaker 1: his start on YouTube, was one of the most viewed
Speaker 1: clips of that year. And one of the original works
Speaker 1: out there that was not part of mainstream media that
Speaker 1: got on the list of most watched videos of was
Speaker 1: the SloMo Guys. They got forty million views with their
Speaker 1: six foot Man and a Giant six foot water balloon video.
Speaker 1: The SloMo Guys in general, I love their videos. They're
Speaker 1: really entertaining, the technology they use is great, the shots
Speaker 1: they get are great, and I highly recommend them. If
Speaker 1: you have not seen any of their videos, go check
Speaker 1: them out, because, uh, seeing stuff in ultra SloMo is
Speaker 1: really fascinating. Sometimes, like seeing something that happens way too
Speaker 1: fast for the human eye to detect being broken down
Speaker 1: frame by frame when you're shooting tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: frames per second is really neat. So that brings us
Speaker 1: up to sixteen. So we're getting into the home stretch now.
Speaker 1: Before I jump into that, I want to take one
Speaker 1: more break to thank our sponsor in YouTube joined the
Speaker 1: ranks of Google, Twitter, and Facebook in uh not great category.
Speaker 1: They were targeted for misinformation during the US presidential election cycle.
Speaker 1: The Verge reported in October that back during the campaign
Speaker 1: system our cycle rather a Kremlin linked group spent about
Speaker 1: four thousand, seven hundred dollars on advertising to affect the
Speaker 1: outcome of the election and to spread misinformation, which is
Speaker 1: kind of terrified to think that's such a relatively small
Speaker 1: investment could have a potentially huge impact. Although I have
Speaker 1: to rush into say it's impossible for us to know
Speaker 1: how much sway that advertising actually had on people. We
Speaker 1: can't just assume that the ads move the needle, to
Speaker 1: be honest, we don't have that that evidence. But it
Speaker 1: has become part of a larger conversation revolving around finding
Speaker 1: ways to prevent foreign parties from influencing the political processes
Speaker 1: of other nations, particularly using online sources like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Starting enabled to sixteen, YouTube changed
Speaker 1: this policy so that videos that were in dispute could
Speaker 1: still monetize during the dispute process, So whichever party would
Speaker 1: win the dispute would ultimately be awarded the money that
Speaker 1: was generated during that monetization period. So that way, if
Speaker 1: a creator was judged to have made lawful use of
Speaker 1: copyrighted material or not have infringed on copyright at all,
Speaker 1: he or she wouldn't be denied the revenue they would
Speaker 1: have made during the arbitration process. Up to that point,
Speaker 1: everything was put on hold. So if you think about it,
Speaker 1: videos tend to have a sweet spot when they are
Speaker 1: going to be discovered and viewed and shared the most frequently.
Speaker 1: And if during that sweet spot your video was tagged
Speaker 1: as being in violation of some copyright, and then you
Speaker 1: successfully were to defend your video, you would miss out
Speaker 1: on all of that traffic and thus all of that revenue.
Speaker 1: This was YouTube's attempt to counteract that. To change that policy,
Speaker 1: the company rolled out a new advertising policy in two sixteen,
Speaker 1: or rather, according to YouTube, they began to enforce an
Speaker 1: existing policy, which became known as the Advertiser Friendly Content Policy. Now, basically,
Speaker 1: here's the problem. Some advertisers were seeing their ads pop
Speaker 1: up against videos that were a controversial or not in
Speaker 1: alignment with that company's values. This in itself is pretty
Speaker 1: easy to understand. So let's say you own a company
Speaker 1: that makes let's say, microwave ovens, and you see that
Speaker 1: an ad for your company pops up on an offensive video.
Speaker 1: You probably wouldn't be very happy about that. You don't
Speaker 1: want your product associated with someone who is espousing offensive
Speaker 1: beliefs or remarks, or otherwise depicting something objectionable, whether it
Speaker 1: was a video that included hate speech or a violent
Speaker 1: video or sexually suggestive video. Advertisers were beginning to express
Speaker 1: concerns to YouTube, and some of them were starting to
Speaker 1: pull their money from the service, and this would continue
Speaker 1: on into TV and so in response, YouTube said it
Speaker 1: would crack down on videos that contained offensive material. Now,
Speaker 1: at a casual glance, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 1: You can understand the point of view of the advertisers,
Speaker 1: and you don't necessarily want to reward people who are
Speaker 1: being hateful online. If someone is making videos that is that,
Speaker 1: you know they're they're attacking a vulnerable group like a
Speaker 1: marginalized group and there heaping hate upon that group. You
Speaker 1: don't want to see that kind of behavior rewarded monetarily.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, someone has to define what
Speaker 1: offensive actually means, and that's very tricky. Sometimes that means
Speaker 1: grouping in content that might be controversial but isn't in
Speaker 1: any way hateful or harmful. So that could include videos
Speaker 1: in which people have frank discussions about sensitive topics. The
Speaker 1: videos may have real value and they might add conversation
Speaker 1: around those subjects. But some creators were seeing their videos
Speaker 1: demonetized because an algorithm had seemingly arbitrarily decided that their
Speaker 1: videos were inappropriate, sometimes maybe just based upon the description
Speaker 1: or title of the video alone, not the content. Now,
Speaker 1: in general, creators began seeing advertisers pulled back from YouTube.
Speaker 1: Some creators who had banged on YouTube as their source
Speaker 1: of revenue began to suffer as a result. A few
Speaker 1: even called on what Ski to resign in response to this.
Speaker 1: They called it a controversy really, and the ad shakedown
Speaker 1: would continue throughout and into seen as more problematic videos
Speaker 1: convinced advertisers to pull up stakes in to jump ahead
Speaker 1: just a bit, YouTube announced that it would change its
Speaker 1: practices and require all channels applying to the Partner program
Speaker 1: to undergo a policy compliance review. In addition, channels would
Speaker 1: have to accumulate at least ten thousand lifetime views to
Speaker 1: qualify for the Partner Program. And this particular story continues
Speaker 1: to unfold at the time of this recording, so there's
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about it. Some of the
Speaker 1: videos in sixteen that were really popular included in another
Speaker 1: prank video called Brothers Convinced Little Sister of Zombie Apocalypse,
Speaker 1: which I feel badly about thinking is funny. In the video,
Speaker 1: some brothers have their sister has just been to the
Speaker 1: dentist to have her wisdom teeth removed, and so she
Speaker 1: is still under the influence of some anesthetic and it's
Speaker 1: thus a little foggy mentally, which I can completely sympathize with,
Speaker 1: as I have infamously gone on long, meaningless rants, even
Speaker 1: more so than the podcasts you have listened to while
Speaker 1: under the influence of various an aesthetics when getting oral surgery.
Speaker 1: So this was a pretty mean, but a meddally kind
Speaker 1: of funny prank where they tried to convince her that
Speaker 1: there was some sort of zombie outbreak and they were
Speaker 1: trying to respond to it in real time. I feel
Speaker 1: like a bad person for liking it, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to reflect on that for a while after this episodes over.
Speaker 1: Other big videos that had more mainstream media representation that
Speaker 1: year would include clips from car Pool Karaoke. Adele's appearance
Speaker 1: topped the list as being the most watched video of
Speaker 1: that year. A clip from John Oliver about Donald Trump
Speaker 1: made the top ten list. A clip from lip Sync
Speaker 1: Battle featuring Channing Tatum dressed up as Beyonce and lip
Speaker 1: singing to Run the World, Run the World was another
Speaker 1: big one. A video from America's Got Talent featuring Grace Vanderwald,
Speaker 1: who plays the world's greatest instrument and by that I
Speaker 1: mean the ukulele, also made the list. Um. We also
Speaker 1: got another non ctistical video in pen Pineapple Apple Pen.
Speaker 1: I found out about that long after the video had
Speaker 1: spiked in popularity. I still don't get it. If you
Speaker 1: get pen Pineapple Apple Pen, please let me know. I
Speaker 1: just I'm old and don't get it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: what about last year? So you remember that YouTube kids
Speaker 1: mobile app I talked about. This was the year when
Speaker 1: that app kind of captured mainstream media attention for going
Speaker 1: totally crazy. So the problem was lots of weird videos
Speaker 1: were showing up on the YouTube Kids app. Some of
Speaker 1: them seemed just surreal and absurd and kind of disturbing
Speaker 1: because they were so unreal. Some of them were just
Speaker 1: so random that they were really unsettling. In that case,
Speaker 1: some of them were clearly made by trolls who were
Speaker 1: apparently trying to create upsetting content on purpose. But as
Speaker 1: various people began to look into it, one thing that
Speaker 1: seemed to be happening was that a lot of those
Speaker 1: videos were being created by using algorithms to filter through
Speaker 1: the data on YouTube Kids. You see, there were ways
Speaker 1: of finding out which words were being searched for the
Speaker 1: most on the app, and if you found a collection
Speaker 1: of words that we're getting a lot of traffic, then
Speaker 1: you wanted to create a video to capitalize on that traffic.
Speaker 1: And this stuff changes pretty quickly, so you also want
Speaker 1: to streamline your video creation process. You want to automate
Speaker 1: as much of that as possible, so that way, if
Speaker 1: there's a trend to search for certain terms like spider
Speaker 1: Man and frozen and uh sesame street, that you're able
Speaker 1: to create a video that is in some way capitalizing
Speaker 1: on all of that. Now, not only does this go
Speaker 1: into weird areas of intellectual property issues from trademark to
Speaker 1: copyright problems, it also would create these weird videos that
Speaker 1: seem nightmarish. You would watch them and think this is
Speaker 1: a fever dream made into a video. And there were
Speaker 1: a lot of very disturbing ones, and it caused a
Speaker 1: lot of parents to complain to YouTube. Again, a lot
Speaker 1: of articles in about this issue about these odd and
Speaker 1: sometimes very upsetting videos for an app specifically meant for kids.
Speaker 1: YouTube's response was, this really does concern us. YouTube Kids
Speaker 1: is an app that's made by parents who very much
Speaker 1: want to create an app that will appeal to children
Speaker 1: and not harm them in any way. So it's an
Speaker 1: ongoing situation as of the recording of this podcast. To me,
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating to see this very cynical and automated
Speaker 1: approach to creating ideal content in in terms of a search, right,
Speaker 1: it's not ideal content for the experience of the user,
Speaker 1: but rather you're banking on certain things kids like repetition.
Speaker 1: Kids will watch the same videos over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, and it doesn't have to make sense. Kids
Speaker 1: don't mind it if you've got a song that's super
Speaker 1: simple that kind of appeals to them. Actually, so if
Speaker 1: you have a very simple song that's just got a
Speaker 1: lot of repetition to it, and you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of colorful characters that the kids identify easily, then it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that the video is not saying anything important
Speaker 1: or doing anything interesting. Uh And and kids are actually
Speaker 1: pretty hardy as well. They can handle some weird, screwed
Speaker 1: up stuff better than adults can at some points. But
Speaker 1: still you don't necessarily want your children having unrestricted use
Speaker 1: of that. And the parental controls on YouTube kids weren't
Speaker 1: always able to filter are out the more bizarre elements
Speaker 1: that were showing up in the app. So that's continuing
Speaker 1: to go on as we're talking now. Something else that
Speaker 1: happened in Seen was that Google decided to put an
Speaker 1: end to those paid channels I mentioned earlier and switched
Speaker 1: specifically to the subscription service, which really, to me, is
Speaker 1: is not that different. It's kind of just semantics at
Speaker 1: that point. But it was a shift in YouTube's approach
Speaker 1: to trying to generate revenue in a way that wasn't
Speaker 1: related to rentals or to add revenues. Some of the
Speaker 1: videos that were big in ten included The Shape of
Speaker 1: You with the Kyle Hanna Hanna Gami choreography. Uh, the
Speaker 1: Ping Pong Trick Shots three video by Dude Perfect, which
Speaker 1: is pretty much what it sounds like, this guy doing
Speaker 1: some amazing trick shots using ping pong balls. It makes
Speaker 1: me wonder how many takes were required to get some
Speaker 1: of them, because they are pretty phenomenal. Ed Sharon's appearance
Speaker 1: on Carpool Karaoke was one of the top videos of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show was another one. Uh.
Speaker 1: I thought that was an amazing halftime show. I remember
Speaker 1: watching that when it happened. Children interrupt BBC News Interview
Speaker 1: was a top video of twenty seventeen and is possibly
Speaker 1: one of the best videos to have ever been uploaded
Speaker 1: to the Internet ever. Uh. There's a particular moment where
Speaker 1: you see a child walking in a super exaggerated strut,
Speaker 1: and I just want to walk that way all the
Speaker 1: time always at this point, the video that got the
Speaker 1: most views of all of ten not only got the
Speaker 1: most views, but became the most watched video of all
Speaker 1: times so far on YouTube, that would be desposito, which
Speaker 1: it felt like it was impossible to avoid in seventeen
Speaker 1: especially if you work out in my gym and has
Speaker 1: received more than four billion views so far. So it
Speaker 1: is a phenomenon. We're probably gonna see a lot more changes.
Speaker 1: I got an email just recently from YouTube saying that
Speaker 1: my discussion tab on my personal channel will soon be
Speaker 1: replaced by a community tab where all the comments left
Speaker 1: in the discussion tab will be deleted within thirty days now.
Speaker 1: As of right now, when I last checked, my channel
Speaker 1: still has a discussion tab, but I'm told that the
Speaker 1: community tab will take place will take its place soon.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of interesting, and there's so much
Speaker 1: more we could talk about. I mean, there's four hundred
Speaker 1: hours of content being added to YouTube every single minute.
Speaker 1: That number is just getting bigger and bigger. I'm very
Speaker 1: curious to hear how many computers are dedicated specifically to
Speaker 1: holding all that content. It's got to be an astronomical number.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind that for the purposes of delivering these views,
Speaker 1: Google has to build in redundant just the meaning every
Speaker 1: video is probably on at least two or three different computers.
Speaker 1: That way, if one computer housing the video goes down,
Speaker 1: another one can still serve it up every time someone
Speaker 1: wants to watch Lady Gaga super Bowl halftime show. It's
Speaker 1: a truly phenomenal amount of data and bandwidth and and
Speaker 1: just content that's going up. It's so hard to get
Speaker 1: discovered today. It's not impossible, but it is really challenging.
Speaker 1: But there's still the possibility that just the average person
Speaker 1: can go out there with a camera, shoot a video,
Speaker 1: upload the YouTube, and become the next YouTube superstar. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a long shot. It's not gonna be easy.
Speaker 1: It's it's becoming more and more like the competitive world
Speaker 1: of of established films and television. But it's still a possibility,
Speaker 1: and it's still a platform where the average person can
Speaker 1: create a video and share it with the outside world.
Speaker 1: Whether or not the outside world which is it is
Speaker 1: another matter. It's a pretty phenomenal website. Uh, phenomenal doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean great, because they the people behind YouTube have
Speaker 1: made some really questionable decisions in my mind, over the
Speaker 1: course of its history. Some of them they've corrected over time.
Speaker 1: Some of them they've tweaked to the point where I
Speaker 1: can see why the decision was made and still might
Speaker 1: not be my ideal implementation. But then I'm not put
Speaker 1: in charge of a multibillion dollar company, and for that
Speaker 1: we can all breathe a sigh of relief. That wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion of YouTube three full episodes to talk
Speaker 1: about the impact of this phenomenal website. Again, if you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a website you want me to talk about, or
Speaker 1: a specific technology. Maybe there's a person in tech I
Speaker 1: should do a full uh episode about, or multiple episodes about.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a company you want me to talk about.
Speaker 1: Let me know. Send me an email the address tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for both of those is tech stuff hs W. Remember
Speaker 1: you can go to twitch dot tv slash tech stuff
Speaker 1: and watch me record these episodes live. You can join
Speaker 1: the chat room and you can harass me throughout the
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