Speaker 1: Text with technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I am an executive producer here at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works and I love technology. And if you listened
Speaker 1: in our last episode, I talked about the founding of
Speaker 1: YouTube back in two thousand five and really only got
Speaker 1: up as far as two thousand seven. It really didn't
Speaker 1: take long for me to get through a full episodes
Speaker 1: worth of material, although to be fair, I did backtrack
Speaker 1: a bit to talk about the early days over at PayPal,
Speaker 1: because the founders of YouTube started at PayPal. But those
Speaker 1: first two years of YouTube, we're incredibly important. Around that
Speaker 1: same time YouTube emerged from beta, there were dozens of
Speaker 1: other sites that were trying to become the home for
Speaker 1: web streaming video. But YouTube's conversion tools made it really
Speaker 1: easy to upload files, meaning that the site can handle
Speaker 1: several different file formats, and it took all the work
Speaker 1: of converting those into the format that YouTube was using
Speaker 1: to display them on the web all on its own,
Speaker 1: so users didn't have to worry about having their video
Speaker 1: forms files in a specific format. YouTube could accept just
Speaker 1: about anything, or at least several of the major ones
Speaker 1: in that time. So YouTube became a big player in
Speaker 1: the space, ultimately becoming big enough for Google to swoop
Speaker 1: in and buy the company for the princely some of
Speaker 1: one point six five billion dollars. Well by two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Google owned the company and fun tidbit. The deal to
Speaker 1: purchase YouTube was apparently done in the parking lot of
Speaker 1: a Denny's. That's according to Gideon You, who had worked
Speaker 1: at Yahoo before moving over to become YouTube's first chief
Speaker 1: financial officer. Yeahoo had also been one of the early
Speaker 1: suitors for YouTube, so imagine how different things would have
Speaker 1: been if that deal had gone through. Now, one of
Speaker 1: YouTube's three founders, Joe Ed Kareem, had left the company
Speaker 1: by the time Google was acquiring it, the remaining to
Speaker 1: Steve Chen and Chad Hurley stayed on with YouTube. In fact,
Speaker 1: Chad Hurley was the CEO of the company and remained
Speaker 1: so until Steve Chen was YouTube's chief technology officer, and
Speaker 1: both founders would stay with YouTube till now. One thing
Speaker 1: I left out of the last episode was that time
Speaker 1: Magazine had used YouTube's user interface design in its Person
Speaker 1: of the Year issue. Now you might remember this. That
Speaker 1: was the year when you were named Person of the
Speaker 1: Year and and no, not not you specifically, but the
Speaker 1: you in the general sense. I think what the magazine
Speaker 1: was getting at was that user generated content was becoming
Speaker 1: a powerful force in the online world. Suddenly you had
Speaker 1: platforms like YouTube that were able to give average people
Speaker 1: the opportunity to make their voices heard to the war
Speaker 1: at large, and it suddenly seemed possible for a young
Speaker 1: storyteller to bypass the traditional pitfall filled path of finding
Speaker 1: success with a direct conduit to an audience. Of course,
Speaker 1: this was also in a time before hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: of content joined YouTube's platform every single minute, which made
Speaker 1: it increasingly difficult for any one piece of content to
Speaker 1: be discovered on the platform. But we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more later. In March two thousand seven, YouTube announced it
Speaker 1: would honor the best user created videos on its site
Speaker 1: with a special awards ceremony, and they launched the YouTube
Speaker 1: Video Awards, with nominees curated by YouTube itself. Users had
Speaker 1: the opportunity to vote on their favorites, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: just nominate anything. They could only vote on the ones
Speaker 1: that the company nominated. Categories included most Creative, most Inspirational,
Speaker 1: Best Series, Best Comedy, Musician of the Year, Best Commentary,
Speaker 1: and Most Adorable Video Ever. Winners of those first awards
Speaker 1: included Aska Ninja for Best Series and Okay Goes Video
Speaker 1: for Here It Goes Again for most creative That's the
Speaker 1: video with all the treadmills. YouTube would hold a similar
Speaker 1: awards event the following year, and then it just sort
Speaker 1: of quietly vanished after two thousand eight. YouTube would later
Speaker 1: launch an award show specifically for music videos, and they
Speaker 1: held that event in but mostly the company sat back
Speaker 1: and let numerous other organizations step in to take over
Speaker 1: the awards game. See also the Webbies, the stream E's,
Speaker 1: the Online Video Awards, and more. YouTube helped legitimize user
Speaker 1: created content, and they turned it into an industry. Not
Speaker 1: everything was worth putting money behind, but there were more
Speaker 1: than a few creators who stuck struck a chord with
Speaker 1: their respective audiences, and they got tons of views as
Speaker 1: a result and actually began to make a living once
Speaker 1: YouTube allowed them to monetize those videos. Because in the
Speaker 1: early days, just because you had a video that was
Speaker 1: getting lots of traction didn't mean you were making any money.
Speaker 1: You couldn't serve up and add against it for a
Speaker 1: while until until YouTube started to create the partners program.
Speaker 1: Early on, YouTube was working with larger outlets like established
Speaker 1: media outlets, and gradually they began to also partner with
Speaker 1: individuals and made two thousand seven, something truly historic happened.
Speaker 1: Prankster's on four Chan, which some have described as the
Speaker 1: Internet equivalent of moss Eisley. In other words, it's a
Speaker 1: hive of scum and villainy, began a meme that occasionally
Speaker 1: still pops up today, more than a decade later, although
Speaker 1: it's not as frequent as it was and it's heyday.
Speaker 1: That meme was to drop a link to a specific
Speaker 1: YouTube video, but you would claim it was showing something
Speaker 1: that would get a lot of point folks to to
Speaker 1: click on the video. You you would make up something.
Speaker 1: Maybe you would say it was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: trailer to an anticipated video game. So, for example, in
Speaker 1: the early days, one of the claims was, oh, this
Speaker 1: link will take you to a trailer for Grand Theft
Speaker 1: Auto four, Or you might say that it was a
Speaker 1: video of a famous person in a compromising situation, but
Speaker 1: what the link actually sent you to was someone who
Speaker 1: was there to let you know he's never gonna give
Speaker 1: you up. He's never gonna let you down, He's never
Speaker 1: going to run around and hurt you. Yep. Made two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, just two years after YouTube had even entered
Speaker 1: into beta, we got the first rick roll. That's how
Speaker 1: old that joke is. YouTube branched out beyond the United States.
Speaker 1: In two thousand seven, the company launched its service in
Speaker 1: nine countries, including the United Kingdom, and the company also
Speaker 1: formed a partnership with E M I, which used to
Speaker 1: be a thing. In fact, it used to be a
Speaker 1: really big thing. E M I was a conglomerate, so
Speaker 1: it's a group of various record labels and collectively it
Speaker 1: was the fourth largest record company in the world. E
Speaker 1: M I was a powerful traditional media company back in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, and just a few years later it
Speaker 1: would find itself billions of dollars in debt, and ultimately
Speaker 1: it was sold off in various chunks to other companies
Speaker 1: like City Group, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, and as well
Speaker 1: as a business owned by Sony and a TV. But
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, this was a really big partnership.
Speaker 1: In July two thousand seven, YouTube gained even more mainstream
Speaker 1: attention when it partnered with CNN to host a presidential debate.
Speaker 1: Citizens in the United States were invited to submit video
Speaker 1: questions for the debate, and the July debate was for
Speaker 1: nominees in the US Democratic Party, so it was the
Speaker 1: Democratic hopefuls for the candidacy of president. The Republican presidential
Speaker 1: debate also aired on YouTube, but that happened later in November.
Speaker 1: The following year, two thousand eight, seven of the sixteen
Speaker 1: presidential hopefuls had created videos for YouTube announcing their campaigns,
Speaker 1: so it was the beginning of the politically savvy recognizing
Speaker 1: YouTube as a way of reaching out to their potential constituents.
Speaker 1: According to The Telegraph, YouTube began receiving ten hours worth
Speaker 1: of video every minute. Today that number is more like
Speaker 1: four hundred hours uploaded every minute. It's literally impossible to
Speaker 1: watch everything on YouTube because by the time you finished
Speaker 1: watching even a short video, hundreds or even thousands of
Speaker 1: other videos have joined the platform. Now, I mostly say
Speaker 1: this to get it out of the way, since otherwise
Speaker 1: this episode and the next one would have every other
Speaker 1: fact be a boost in the number of hours uploaded
Speaker 1: every minute. I'd say, well, by now it was forty
Speaker 1: hours every minute or eighty hours every minute, and that
Speaker 1: just gets tedious. I'll in some episodes with some other
Speaker 1: interesting statistics about YouTube usage, but for now, let's get
Speaker 1: back to the history of the company. Before are we
Speaker 1: say goodbye to two thousand seven. I thought it might
Speaker 1: be fun to mention some of the videos that got
Speaker 1: the most traction that year, and I'll do this for
Speaker 1: the following years as well. At the tail end of
Speaker 1: the year, the first episode of Drunk History went up
Speaker 1: on YouTube, and if you're not familiar with the concept,
Speaker 1: inebriated people, typically comedians, tried to relate some moment of
Speaker 1: historical significance to the host of the show, and their
Speaker 1: stories are inner cut with re enactments of that historical event,
Speaker 1: with characters lips sinking to the voiceover to comedic effect.
Speaker 1: It's actually a pretty funny series. One infamous video that
Speaker 1: went up that year was the Leave Brittany Alone video clip,
Speaker 1: in which Chris Crocker tearfully admonished the press for hounding
Speaker 1: his beloved Brittney Spears. Numerous parodies of his video would follow.
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell got a lot of views with a sketch
Speaker 1: that went up on YouTube the Landlord Sketch, in which
Speaker 1: he faced off against a very young, very tiny landlord
Speaker 1: who took no crap. This was also the year that
Speaker 1: Andrew Meyer gave us the phrase don't taze me bro oh.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand seven, we also learned about a
Speaker 1: particular type of precipitation a k a. Chocolate rain thanks
Speaker 1: to Mr tezon Day. The video from that year which
Speaker 1: has received the most views over time is I'm a
Speaker 1: Gummy Bear, which I had never heard of before, and
Speaker 1: yet it is the most viewed video from two thousand
Speaker 1: seven over time, not necessarily just within that year. It's
Speaker 1: a novelty song. Uh. It's received more than one billion
Speaker 1: views at this point, although it took a long time
Speaker 1: for it to accrue that many. Oh. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, before I finish, one other thing happened, a
Speaker 1: baby named Charlie bit a kid's finger. In two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: YouTube formed partnerships with big media companies like CBS, MGM,
Speaker 1: and lions Gate in an effort to become more of
Speaker 1: a competitor in branded entertainment. YouTube was trying to compete
Speaker 1: against a rising star in branded media online called Hulu.
Speaker 1: Later on it would be Hulu and Netflix, and then
Speaker 1: later still Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Video. The agreement allowed
Speaker 1: these various studios to upload full length films or television
Speaker 1: shows onto YouTube. They could serve the videos up alongside advertisements,
Speaker 1: and the videos appeared in a category called shows that
Speaker 1: would appear on the homepage, so you could just click
Speaker 1: on the show's tab and see the things that were
Speaker 1: up for offer. This feature was originally only available in
Speaker 1: the United States. And when I say it was served
Speaker 1: up against ads, a lot of those were static ads
Speaker 1: that were actually on the page on YouTube. They weren't
Speaker 1: video ads incorporated into the video the way they are today.
Speaker 1: And this was really an attempt for YouTube to make
Speaker 1: more revenue from its service. The company had found it
Speaker 1: challenging to serve up ads against short videos, and it
Speaker 1: found fuel to renatives to generating revenue. In fact, according
Speaker 1: to many sources, the cost of bandwidth and storing all
Speaker 1: those videos in the first place was much more than
Speaker 1: the revenue generated by the company. It was a money
Speaker 1: losing proposition. Some people even say that some of that
Speaker 1: was hidden from Google during the acquisition process in order
Speaker 1: to try and sweeten the deal as much as possible,
Speaker 1: although I've not seen anything to really back up those
Speaker 1: claims with facts. Also in two thousand eight, YouTube was
Speaker 1: awarded a Peabody Now the Peabody Awards, named after philanthropist
Speaker 1: George Peabody, are meant to honor powerful and enlightening stories
Speaker 1: in media like television and radio. YouTube received a Peabody
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight because the site's design allowed users
Speaker 1: around the world to upload video directly to the platform
Speaker 1: bypassing other hurdles, and thus the Peabody Awards said that
Speaker 1: YouTube was promoting democracy by giving voices to the voiceless.
Speaker 1: Over the summer of two thousand eight, hardware manufacturers began
Speaker 1: to incorporate YouTube directly into their products. The Sony Bravia
Speaker 1: television set released in June two thousand eight, had a
Speaker 1: YouTube feature incorporated into it, giving Bravia owners the option
Speaker 1: to watch YouTube videos directly on their television sets. In July,
Speaker 1: Tvo followed suit and built YouTube functionality into its digital
Speaker 1: video recorders. In December two thousand eight, YouTube launched a
Speaker 1: new landing page for high definition video. The company had
Speaker 1: been rolling out HD video capabilities over the course of
Speaker 1: about a month, and went live with this new landing
Speaker 1: page in mid December. This change also meant that the
Speaker 1: video players appearance was a little different. It was now
Speaker 1: in widescreen format. Of course, streaming video and HD means
Speaker 1: sending more data over the Internet, which also means more
Speaker 1: expensive bandwidth bills. The earliest implementation saw HD at seven
Speaker 1: twenty resolution. Later on the following year, in two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: YouTube would bump that up to ten a DP resolution.
Speaker 1: So which videos were people watching in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: While there was Star Wars? According to a three year old,
Speaker 1: that was a popular video in which an unspeakably adorable
Speaker 1: little girl attempted to explain what Star Wars is all
Speaker 1: about and pretty much gets it right as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, people started watching a video channel featuring a
Speaker 1: character called Fred Figglehorn, a high pitched, manic, little child
Speaker 1: character played by not a little child person. His frantic
Speaker 1: video struck a chord, and in the following year his
Speaker 1: channel would become the first to hit one million subscribers
Speaker 1: on YouTube. I didn't really get the appeal because I
Speaker 1: found it a little too manic and high pitched and crazy,
Speaker 1: and I'm old. A video in which two people froze
Speaker 1: in place at New York City's Grand Central Station, got
Speaker 1: a ton of views, and it also helped push the
Speaker 1: concept of flash mobs into the public consciousness, So you
Speaker 1: have that to blame partially. Thankfully, we've mostly moved on
Speaker 1: from that idea at this point, and those were the
Speaker 1: big ones for two thousand and eight. Now I've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to say about these middle years of YouTube,
Speaker 1: but before I jump into the next section, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. In early two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, US President Barack Obama launched a YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, the Pope launched one. YouTube was
Speaker 1: quickly becoming an outlet for leaders, celebrities, and others to
Speaker 1: speak to a potentially large global audience, and it was
Speaker 1: a way to become related relatable to the average person,
Speaker 1: or at least the average person who was using YouTube.
Speaker 1: In April two thousand nine, YouTube signed an agreement with
Speaker 1: Vivendi to create a music videos service called Vivo. Vivo
Speaker 1: would distribute official music videos on YouTube in an effort
Speaker 1: to sidestep the piracy issues companies had encountered over the
Speaker 1: last few years. So you can actually watch official music
Speaker 1: videos in instead of seeing someone who had shot a
Speaker 1: video off of their television or otherwise pirated the content
Speaker 1: and uploaded it under their own channel, and it gave
Speaker 1: people an authorized source for that kind of content. According
Speaker 1: to Fast Company, YouTube was serving up more than one
Speaker 1: billion video views per day by October two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: but also according to various sources, at this point, YouTube
Speaker 1: still had yet to turn a profit. Fast Company sites
Speaker 1: analysts who estimated YouTube and earned about two hundred forty
Speaker 1: million dollars from ad revenue in two thousand nine, which
Speaker 1: is a healthy chunk of change, no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: But those same analysts said that YouTube's expenses in storing
Speaker 1: and streaming that video were probably closer to seven hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars, So spending seven hundred million to make two
Speaker 1: hundred forty million yikes. But don't worry, there's always money
Speaker 1: in the banana stand. Also in October two nine, the
Speaker 1: British broadcast channel Channel four not part of the BBC,
Speaker 1: but Channel four, signed a deal with YouTube that had
Speaker 1: the streaming service offering up full length episodes of Channel
Speaker 1: four shows shortly after they aired on television. The deal
Speaker 1: involved an undisclosed ad revenue sharing deal. And was set
Speaker 1: to last for three years. YouTube said it was the
Speaker 1: first deal that saw a broadcaster engage in a comprehensive
Speaker 1: catch up TV strategy on the platform, and the first
Speaker 1: episodes found their way onto YouTube in early so catch
Speaker 1: up TV. The concept is that you can see the
Speaker 1: episodes that you would have missed otherwise, maybe you were
Speaker 1: out of the house, you didn't have a DVR. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty simple concept, but it was a big deal
Speaker 1: for this to happen back in two thousand nine. It
Speaker 1: actually set the stage for that happening on a grander
Speaker 1: scale later on. Also included shows like Peep Show, which
Speaker 1: stars Mitchell and Webb, two of my favorite comedians from England.
Speaker 1: All right, so, some of the videos they got a
Speaker 1: lot of us in two thousand nine included Okay goes here,
Speaker 1: Here he goes again. Treadmill video. That one got a
Speaker 1: lot of us in two thousand nine, even though it
Speaker 1: previously had had a debuted, but it was one that
Speaker 1: really struck a chord. It was one of those that
Speaker 1: kind of it was almost like a sleeper video that
Speaker 1: took off a while after it had hit YouTube, and
Speaker 1: it really set a bar for the band that they
Speaker 1: have surpassed a few times. Since then, they've become known
Speaker 1: for their very creative and sometimes heads scratching, lee complicated
Speaker 1: music videos. Another popular one from two thousand nine was
Speaker 1: Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent. You might remember her
Speaker 1: singing a song from Laby Zarabla that brought the house down.
Speaker 1: We also got to enjoy the effects of anesthetic on
Speaker 1: a young kid in the video David after dentist. That
Speaker 1: kid by this point as a teenager, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if he still gets plagued by people saying how many
Speaker 1: fingers do you have? They Avid? Another popular video featured
Speaker 1: a couple named Jill and Kevin, and they danced down
Speaker 1: the wedding aisle with their entire wedding party in a
Speaker 1: choreographed number. They ended up inspiring tons of other videos
Speaker 1: and an episode of the Office. So, I mean, who
Speaker 1: can ask for more? You get married and do the
Speaker 1: way you take the aisle ends up becoming a plot
Speaker 1: point for a hit sitcom. That's pretty impressive, So let's
Speaker 1: move on up to two thousand ten. In January of
Speaker 1: that year, YouTube first began to offer up movies for
Speaker 1: rent on its service. This put it into more direct
Speaker 1: competition with services like Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes. YouTube began
Speaker 1: with movies that were getting buzz at the Sundance Film Festival,
Speaker 1: opening up the chance for people to see movies that
Speaker 1: they might not otherwise get a chance to see if
Speaker 1: they didn't get a wide theatrical release. The service would
Speaker 1: gradually grow to include more mainstream films, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you can still do this today. You can rent films
Speaker 1: on YouTube, although I find that a lot of people
Speaker 1: aren't aware of that. They just didn't even realize that
Speaker 1: that was a service that was available on YouTube. YouTube
Speaker 1: implemented a site redesign in March, the first of several.
Speaker 1: Really their goal was to try and keep visitors on
Speaker 1: the YouTube platform longer, because if you stay longer, you
Speaker 1: watch more videos. Watching more videos meant generating more AD revenue.
Speaker 1: The redesign removed some clutter from the homepage, reducing the
Speaker 1: number of links visible on the screen by half. There
Speaker 1: were new playlist tools that were designed to help users
Speaker 1: binge videos and hop around more easily, so they'd have
Speaker 1: fewer reasons to just bounce after watching a video, and
Speaker 1: YouTube also simplified the way you would rank videos so
Speaker 1: you might not remember this, but back in the old
Speaker 1: days at YouTube, you can actually give a video a
Speaker 1: rank between one and five stars. But starting with that
Speaker 1: red design, that was reduced to a simple like or dislike,
Speaker 1: thumbs up or thumbs down. And YouTube's response, you know
Speaker 1: why did they do this? They said that the vast
Speaker 1: majority of ranks on YouTube videos were either five stars
Speaker 1: or one star. People either said this is the best
Speaker 1: thing that's ever been uploaded to the Internet, or this
Speaker 1: is a garbage fire of the video clip and no
Speaker 1: one should ever watch it. There were very few in between,
Speaker 1: and so Google said, well, everyone saying it's either five
Speaker 1: or one, let's just do thumbs up or thumbs down.
Speaker 1: Make this simple. So that's what they did. That same
Speaker 1: year saw Dan Savage launch a campaign to help teens
Speaker 1: in the l g t b Q community deal with
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression, offering up advice and counsel for those
Speaker 1: being bullied because of who they are. That was called
Speaker 1: the It Gets Better campaign and marked one of the
Speaker 1: more visible and shared online campaigns up to that point.
Speaker 1: YouTube would also play a part in a larger online
Speaker 1: phenomenon tied to a real world conflict. This was the
Speaker 1: Arab Spring, which technically began at the very end of
Speaker 1: Most of the events of the Arab Spring would take
Speaker 1: place throughout two thousand eleven uh from to two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: These events were unfolding, with most of them again being
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, but there were various protests and demonstrations
Speaker 1: in Arabic nations in the Middle East and North Africa
Speaker 1: that we're all part of this Arab Spring. It began
Speaker 1: in Tunisia and spread from there as people throughout the
Speaker 1: region began to resist what they saw as oppressive regimes.
Speaker 1: Online platforms like YouTube served as an outlet for people
Speaker 1: in those countries to tell their stories to the larger world.
Speaker 1: Others included Twitter and Facebook, which were really instrumental for
Speaker 1: that purpose. An event that shook things up at YouTube
Speaker 1: was Chad Hurley stepping down as CEO. The co founder
Speaker 1: of the site had been in a leadership position since
Speaker 1: before the Google acquisition. Hurley moved to a more supporting
Speaker 1: advisory role and Solar Commander stepped in to become the
Speaker 1: new CEO of the company. Now, Commander came from Google.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was employee number nine over at Google.
Speaker 1: He had graduated from Stanford university, and he had a
Speaker 1: degree in biological sciences, which I admit is not exactly
Speaker 1: the field i'd expect for a tech company executive to possess.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure. I'd love to hear more about
Speaker 1: his story to find out how he was pulled into
Speaker 1: Google and what his contributions were. I mean, I assume
Speaker 1: he also had a lot of education in other sciences
Speaker 1: to make him a very valuable addition to Google's team,
Speaker 1: especially to become employee number nine. The biological sciences doesn't
Speaker 1: really jump to mind when I think of Google the
Speaker 1: search engine. He would remain CEO of YouTube for a
Speaker 1: few years. He would step down to take more of
Speaker 1: a senior vice president role with YouTube and Google in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, but we'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: our next episode. Hurley co founded a clothing company called Halasca,
Speaker 1: but stuck with YouTube for a while. Longer, and by
Speaker 1: a while, I mean less than a year, and I'll
Speaker 1: get to that in just a second. Toward the end
Speaker 1: of twenty ten, YouTube began to lift a restriction that
Speaker 1: had been in place for several years, and that restriction
Speaker 1: was a time limit on video clips. You may not
Speaker 1: remember this but originally users were limited to uploading clips
Speaker 1: there were ten minutes long or shorter. In July, YouTube
Speaker 1: bump that up to fifteen minutes, but by the end
Speaker 1: of twenty ten, the company announced that, starting with a
Speaker 1: selection of users, those time limits would be phased out gradually.
Speaker 1: It became clear that if you were a user in
Speaker 1: good standing, if you had not had a history of
Speaker 1: uploading copyrighted material to YouTube, that you would have those
Speaker 1: restrictions lifted and you would be able to post videos
Speaker 1: of any length to YouTube. I remember, back in the
Speaker 1: original days, you were seeing this because YouTube wanted to
Speaker 1: prevent people from uploading entire television series or movies to
Speaker 1: the service. They wanted to limit the length of video
Speaker 1: clips specifically to protect copyrighted material. And you may have
Speaker 1: encountered older videos that slipped under that intellectual property radar,
Speaker 1: in which a show or a film was cut up
Speaker 1: into ten minute chunks, so you'd see something like Back
Speaker 1: to the Future, Part one of ten, Part two of ten, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's not an ideal viewing experience. By the end of
Speaker 1: twenty ten, YouTube's algorithms were getting pretty good at detecting
Speaker 1: pirated material and content creators had a larger array of
Speaker 1: tools at their disposal to remove or essentially create uh
Speaker 1: disincentives for unauthorized copies of their work. I could probably
Speaker 1: do a full episode about that content I D system
Speaker 1: on YouTube and how it works, but I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you a quick overview here to kind of explain it. First,
Speaker 1: content creators would provide Google or YouTube really with files
Speaker 1: of the content they wanted to search against on the platform.
Speaker 1: So let's make this simple with an example. Let's say
Speaker 1: it's a music label searching for instances of people uploading
Speaker 1: the latest song from a band like The Struts. So
Speaker 1: you've got this song from the Struts. You want to
Speaker 1: make sure that there are no unauthorized instances of that
Speaker 1: song up on YouTube. You provide the file to YouTube
Speaker 1: and say I want to search your database against all
Speaker 1: videos and see if there are any hits. The file
Speaker 1: that you give YouTube is called a reference file. Google
Speaker 1: puts all the reference files into a massive database filled
Speaker 1: with other reference files. Those files might be full length
Speaker 1: pieces of content or snippets of longer pieces. And when
Speaker 1: ever a user uploads a new file to YouTube, part
Speaker 1: of that uploading process involves comparing that content against the
Speaker 1: database of reference files. So Google looks for matches between
Speaker 1: audio and video elements in the uploaded pieces with anything
Speaker 1: in the reference database. They have these algorithms that look
Speaker 1: for matches between audio files in the reference section and
Speaker 1: what you've just uploaded, or even just elements of video
Speaker 1: that are common between the two. It's pretty phenomenal when
Speaker 1: you think of it as machine recognition of content. It
Speaker 1: also looks for partial matches clips that could represent a
Speaker 1: hit but are not a one to one match and
Speaker 1: might require further UH investigation to make sure that in fact,
Speaker 1: does represent a violation of copyright. So what happens then?
Speaker 1: What happens when Google finds a match between a user
Speaker 1: uploaded file and something that's in the reference database, Well,
Speaker 1: that depends upon the copyright holder for the original reference file.
Speaker 1: Copyright Holders have a few different options open to them.
Speaker 1: They can choose a setting that prompts you to to
Speaker 1: block access to the uploaded video entirely and automatically. So
Speaker 1: let's say that I upload that Struts song. UH. It
Speaker 1: could be that the music label that represents the Struts
Speaker 1: has set this so that anytime someone does that, it
Speaker 1: just automatically delists the video. No one can see it.
Speaker 1: It's as if I didn't upload anything at all. Or
Speaker 1: they might choose to redirect monetization or enable monetization to
Speaker 1: go to the copyright holder rather than to the user
Speaker 1: who uploaded the file. So again, if I uploaded it
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, I want to be able to
Speaker 1: monetize this file or this this video, maybe they would say, okay,
Speaker 1: you can monetize the video. It's just that all the
Speaker 1: revenue is going to come to us, not to you,
Speaker 1: because it's our content, not your content. Or they could
Speaker 1: even choose to do nothing at all and allow the
Speaker 1: video to stand as is. Some content creators see this
Speaker 1: sort of sharing community as a way of promoting material,
Speaker 1: and they don't see it as competing against their own content,
Speaker 1: so they don't worry about whether or not someone owns
Speaker 1: it when they upload it. And in any case, you
Speaker 1: can even have it set so that you just get
Speaker 1: a notification whenever there is a match, and then you
Speaker 1: decided on a case by case basis. You don't have
Speaker 1: to set your decision in advance and just walk away. Now,
Speaker 1: many people, including myself, have criticized the system for favoring
Speaker 1: copyright holders too much over individual users. There are times
Speaker 1: when it is perfectly legitimate to include someone else's content
Speaker 1: in a piece you are uploading to YouTube. For example,
Speaker 1: if you want to create a video the critiques a
Speaker 1: particular television show or film, and you're using clips to
Speaker 1: illustrate your points, you could argue that that falls under
Speaker 1: the umbrella of fair use. You are commenting upon someone
Speaker 1: else's work and effectively creating new work as a result,
Speaker 1: so it's not that you are just presenting some and
Speaker 1: else's copywritten material. You're using that as an example to
Speaker 1: make a point. But fair use isn't a magic make
Speaker 1: your video untouchable for free card. It's a legal protection,
Speaker 1: and it only comes into play if you actually have
Speaker 1: to defend your use of content in a court of law.
Speaker 1: Even then, the court decides whether or not your use
Speaker 1: of original content counts as fair use, and there's not
Speaker 1: really any hard and fast rules to do that. It's
Speaker 1: all subjective. So you might find one of your videos
Speaker 1: taken down or demonetized, and at that point you can
Speaker 1: appeal the decision, and then it goes into a somewhat
Speaker 1: mysterious arbitration process where someone has to decide whether or
Speaker 1: not your video has its own merit, or if it
Speaker 1: derives all its value from containing someone else's work in it,
Speaker 1: It's kind of messy and it doesn't always come out
Speaker 1: in a way that you would expect now to be
Speaker 1: fair to YouTube. This process helps keep the company in business.
Speaker 1: If Google did not make a show that it is
Speaker 1: proactive and removing infringing material, the company could be held
Speaker 1: responsible for allowing people to pirate content that could lead
Speaker 1: to expensive and lengthy court cases, such as the one
Speaker 1: that was finally settled in two thousand and fourteen with
Speaker 1: YouTube versus Viacom. So I do see all sides of
Speaker 1: this issue. It's just a tough call when there are
Speaker 1: many cases of videos that seemed to have legitimate fair
Speaker 1: use arguments getting pulled down, and there have been more
Speaker 1: than a few cases of overzealous copyright holders taking down
Speaker 1: videos that either they put up themselves so they're taking
Speaker 1: down their own stuff, or their videos that didn't contain
Speaker 1: any copyrighted protective material in them. So you might get
Speaker 1: a takedown notice from company and say, there's the thing
Speaker 1: in this video that infringes on any copyrights they own
Speaker 1: because it's all original, it has nothing to do with them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that does happen, so it's far from perfect. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the history of YouTube and the
Speaker 1: videos that were really popular in One of those would
Speaker 1: be a video that helped launch a career into the
Speaker 1: stratosphere and create a phenomenon. That would be Justin Bieber's
Speaker 1: Baby video. Now, Bieber had been uploading covers of various
Speaker 1: songs to YouTube for a couple of years, at least
Speaker 1: since two thousand and eight, and had sort of been
Speaker 1: discovered by accident by a producer who signed Biber to
Speaker 1: a record deal. In January, Bieber's video for Baby off
Speaker 1: his first album, hit YouTube and became an instant viral hit.
Speaker 1: It would go on to hit one billion views, although
Speaker 1: it still was not the first video to hit a
Speaker 1: billion views. It would just do that over time. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first video to reach one billion views wouldn't come
Speaker 1: out for another two years. But I'm not going to
Speaker 1: talk about that yet. After Baby success, the world was
Speaker 1: plunged into a terrible plague called biber Fever. I appear
Speaker 1: to be one of the ones immune to it. I
Speaker 1: promise I'll carry on for all of you. Other big
Speaker 1: videos that year included the infamous Bed Intruders song Hidja Kids,
Speaker 1: Hidja Wife. The video saw Antoine Dodson's interview on a
Speaker 1: local news station auto tuned into a song, which inspired
Speaker 1: a string of various auto tuned videos, including entire channels
Speaker 1: dedicated to editing videos and putting auto tuning behind them.
Speaker 1: It would also inspire the theme song for the Netflix
Speaker 1: show The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Later on, Old Spice launched
Speaker 1: an advertising campaign in twenty ten that reveled in masculine
Speaker 1: absurdity and started another trend of tongue in cheek advertising
Speaker 1: that spread to other companies like Duskies and Dollar Shave Club.
Speaker 1: We got the double Rainbow video in two and we
Speaker 1: still really don't know what that means. Okay Go did
Speaker 1: another music video that was really intricate and had some
Speaker 1: mind blowing nature to it. It was a Rube Goldberg
Speaker 1: device and it was to the tune of this Too
Speaker 1: Shall Pass. They also did a second music video for
Speaker 1: that song featuring a marching band and Gilli suits. So
Speaker 1: they just were really in a creative spirit at that time.
Speaker 1: I think still are, to be honest, they still come
Speaker 1: out with crazy videos. Was also when a Swedish YouTuber
Speaker 1: called Beauty Pie launched his YouTube channel. He uploaded video
Speaker 1: footage of various video games while providing odd commentary to them,
Speaker 1: and over time became insanely popular, eventually becoming the highest
Speaker 1: paid YouTuber on the platform and the YouTuber with the
Speaker 1: most subscriptions. Later, he would run into serious trouble with
Speaker 1: sponsors and partnerships after posting videos containing everything from racial
Speaker 1: slurs to Nazi imagery. Well, I've got a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk about with YouTube until we get to the
Speaker 1: next breaking point for the next episode. Before I jump
Speaker 1: into this final segment, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. In two thousand and eleven, YouTube introduced
Speaker 1: its live feature, allowing users to broadcast live videos from
Speaker 1: a web camera or smartphone. Smartphones were well on their
Speaker 1: way to transforming the online experience. More people were relying
Speaker 1: on their mobile devices to access the web and certain
Speaker 1: types of content like video. We're more conducive to that,
Speaker 1: though it took a little while for cellular networks to
Speaker 1: get fast enough to really make it a good experience.
Speaker 1: These days, I think se of all traffic to YouTube
Speaker 1: comes from mobile devices, so obviously transformative as far as
Speaker 1: the way we consume content off the Internet. The live
Speaker 1: feature not only gave people the chance to broadcast any
Speaker 1: mundane thought they might have to the world at large Twitter,
Speaker 1: but also opened up the doors to user generated news coverage.
Speaker 1: Anyone with a YouTube account and a compatible device could
Speaker 1: stream video to the platform, giving the world a first
Speaker 1: and glimpse into events anywhere. Forget a surveillance state. Now
Speaker 1: we live in a world where in many places practically
Speaker 1: everybody has quick access to a camera and a live
Speaker 1: feed to the world at large. That year, YouTube also
Speaker 1: launched its own original channels. The company acquired the Next
Speaker 1: New Networks, a programming distributor and aggregator. Next New Networks
Speaker 1: was a company that partnered with content creators to give
Speaker 1: them more visibility and give videos a better chance of
Speaker 1: hooking and audience. YouTube was getting more serious about developing
Speaker 1: programming channels and platform specific networks. This was a push
Speaker 1: to move away from one off successful viral videos and
Speaker 1: to build more sustainable channels that could earn views across
Speaker 1: a channel's worth of videos, not just depend upon lightning
Speaker 1: in a bottle. The company continued to redesign its home
Speaker 1: page and interface in an effort to encourage even more
Speaker 1: time spent on the site. By the end of more
Speaker 1: than three billion videos were being watched every day, and
Speaker 1: while the site had started up in the good old
Speaker 1: US of A, by two thousand eleven, more than seventy
Speaker 1: of all traffic came from outside the United States. They
Speaker 1: were closing in on one billion active users, and they
Speaker 1: would hit that goal before too much longer. The site
Speaker 1: had also created localized versions for twenty five different countries
Speaker 1: in forty three different languages. It was a juggernaut and
Speaker 1: it was only going to get bigger. In the spring
Speaker 1: of two thousand eleven, YouTube software engineer James Zearn gave
Speaker 1: a peek behind the curtain and explained that the vast
Speaker 1: majority of YouTube's traffic focused on a relatively small number
Speaker 1: of videos. Specifically, he said thirty percent of the videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube demanded most of the traffic, with the remaining
Speaker 1: seventy remaining relatively unseen. Now that brought up some other questions,
Speaker 1: such as how could YouTube turn a profit with such
Speaker 1: a business model, because if your company resources are earmarked
Speaker 1: to transcode and store videos, and sev of the videos
Speaker 1: you are using that effort on are never really being
Speaker 1: watched only a really getting any traffic? How could you
Speaker 1: make money off of advertising? One other thing that happened
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven was the launch of Google Plus,
Speaker 1: Google's attempt to create a social platform again to Facebook. Eventually,
Speaker 1: that platform would have a really big impact on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and it was not a positive one. But we'll learn
Speaker 1: more about what happened in the following episode. Two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven was also the year that the two remaining co
Speaker 1: founders at the company, Chad Hurley and Steve chen would
Speaker 1: leave YouTube. Keep in mind that co founder number three,
Speaker 1: Joed Kareem, had left just after the Google acquisition. Right
Speaker 1: around that time, the two of them founded a new
Speaker 1: company called AVOs Systems a v O s. It was
Speaker 1: a startup incubator. In other words, they created a company
Speaker 1: that could help other tiny startup companies get some momentum
Speaker 1: and grow. They would work together at AVOs until two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, and at that point AVOs kind of
Speaker 1: shed its incubator status and transformed into one of the
Speaker 1: companies it had been developing, specifically a company called mixed Bit.
Speaker 1: This was a mobile video platform and it was Chad
Speaker 1: Hurley's passion. Hurley became the head of Mixed Bit and
Speaker 1: Chen would depart. He would go on to join Google
Speaker 1: Ventures as an entrepreneur in residence. Sounds like a pretty
Speaker 1: sweet title in my mind. That marked the end of
Speaker 1: fifteen years of those two friends working together on the
Speaker 1: same projects. So it was the end of an era.
Speaker 1: But I know what you're asking, What were the really
Speaker 1: big videos of two thousand eleven? Right, Well, the most
Speaker 1: viewed video of that year was a bit of a
Speaker 1: vanity projects, a music video of an original song featuring
Speaker 1: a young woman named Rebecca Black. And if that name
Speaker 1: doesn't ring a bell, then you may not be down
Speaker 1: with Friday. Two thousand eleven was when the song Friday
Speaker 1: hit YouTube and became a huge viral sensation. People loved
Speaker 1: making fun of it, including Stephen Colbert, who performed a
Speaker 1: moving rendition of the song on television. Personally, while I
Speaker 1: think the song is pretty much vapid and silly, and
Speaker 1: the video also very silly, it was a birthday present.
Speaker 1: If my parents had had the money to give me
Speaker 1: that kind of a gift when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: you better believe I would have asked for it. I
Speaker 1: just lived in a or grew up in a in
Speaker 1: an era where you didn't have to worry about your
Speaker 1: goofy birthday wishes being broadcast to the world at large
Speaker 1: and then being held up as a thing of ridicule.
Speaker 1: Uh that being said, it is it is remarkably bad.
Speaker 1: Other videos that were popular in this time included one
Speaker 1: in which a a dog was being teased about food
Speaker 1: like a sandwich. The video included a voice over to
Speaker 1: give us the dog's reactions, which mostly involved being really
Speaker 1: sad that the dog's owner claimed to not only have
Speaker 1: either thrown away or eaten a lot of food, but
Speaker 1: even gone so far as to give a sandwich to
Speaker 1: the cat. There's a cute video of twin babies having
Speaker 1: a babbling conversation with one another gets pretty intense. The
Speaker 1: nan Cat debuted in two thousand eleven and infected our
Speaker 1: brains with an Naan song along with rainbows and pop tarts.
Speaker 1: There was a Volkswagen commercial featuring a kid using the
Speaker 1: Force Star Wars style that got a lot of views.
Speaker 1: And this brings me to the point where I mentioned
Speaker 1: that YouTube is kind of remarkable because it's the place
Speaker 1: where people will go and seek out commercials, whereas in
Speaker 1: nearly every other venue. You can imagine people go out
Speaker 1: of their way to try and avoid watching commercials. It's
Speaker 1: an odd thing, but I guess it all is when
Speaker 1: you watch on your time versus when it's forced upon you.
Speaker 1: In two thousand twelve, YouTube was getting four billion views
Speaker 1: every day. Now you might wonder how that breaks down. Well,
Speaker 1: if you break it down, it means that there are
Speaker 1: forty six thousand, two hundred nine six views being generated
Speaker 1: every second. And that was also the year that first
Speaker 1: saw the first video to hit one billion views, though,
Speaker 1: as I've mentioned already, some videos that had been up
Speaker 1: on the site for a few years would eventually hit
Speaker 1: that milestone as well. The video was, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: most of you know, the music video for a Gongnam
Speaker 1: style by the artist's side. Now, this was a real sensation,
Speaker 1: with tons of references and parodies to follow, But the
Speaker 1: music video itself, it's just an incredibly absurd and surreal
Speaker 1: series of scenes set to infectious music. It's a video
Speaker 1: of excess and silliness, and it played right into YouTube
Speaker 1: sweet spot for videos that have wide share. Herbal appeal
Speaker 1: is the sort of thing people would watch and then
Speaker 1: immediately sent to their circle of friends. Who would then
Speaker 1: watch it again and then would send it to their
Speaker 1: circle of friends, and so on and so forth. Now,
Speaker 1: at the beginning of CEO, Salar Kamanda said that the
Speaker 1: third wave of mass media was breaking, and he identified
Speaker 1: the first two waves as the era of broadcast television
Speaker 1: and then the era of cable television. Now, he said,
Speaker 1: was the era of online video, in which more niche
Speaker 1: subjects would receive attention and promotion. So while we saw
Speaker 1: cable channels pop up around focused subjects like food or
Speaker 1: animals or science, these online videos could get even more
Speaker 1: granular than that. They could cater to a smaller but
Speaker 1: passionate viewer base. At least, that was the hope, and
Speaker 1: YouTube put some money behind that prediction quite a bit
Speaker 1: of an In fact, YouTube partnered with content created years
Speaker 1: and formed about one hundred premium content channels. The company
Speaker 1: poured around one hundred million dollars into that effort to
Speaker 1: both form and promote those channels, followed by another two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars later on in an investment in advertising
Speaker 1: and marketing courtesy of Google. Now, some of those channels
Speaker 1: featured celebrities, some featured YouTubers who had become popular through
Speaker 1: their own channels, and some were partnerships with existing companies.
Speaker 1: All of the channels received investment on some level from
Speaker 1: YouTube to produce their shows. A few famous ones included
Speaker 1: source fed, which was founded by Philip DeFranco and had
Speaker 1: a lot of notable folks work there for a while.
Speaker 1: Eventually that would get adopted or or acquired really by
Speaker 1: Discovery Communications. There was Geek and Sundry, which is a
Speaker 1: nerd culture channel helmed by actress Felicia Day and has
Speaker 1: other people like Huil Wheaton in it. Um there's another
Speaker 1: early launch. There were some nals that were part of
Speaker 1: the initial launch. They're still around and thriving. Geek and
Speaker 1: Sundry is one of those that was still around. Source
Speaker 1: Fed after it was acquired by Discovery Communications was eventually
Speaker 1: and effectively shut down and dissolved, kind of absorbed into
Speaker 1: the rest of Discovery Communications online digital efforts. Some of
Speaker 1: those premium channels just sort of faded away without much
Speaker 1: warning or lamentation. Now there's so much more to talk
Speaker 1: about with YouTube, but I feel this is a good
Speaker 1: place to end here. At sort of the beginning of twelve,
Speaker 1: when the premium channels were first announced, In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna explore how Google made the decision to unite
Speaker 1: YouTube and Google Plus log ins, how that move completely
Speaker 1: backfired on the company, how the YouTube Kids app went
Speaker 1: off the rails, and lots more weird stories about the
Speaker 1: third most popular website in the world. So I hope
Speaker 1: you joined me for that. If you guys have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you should write me. My email address for the show
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop a line on Facebook or Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle of both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: Let me know if there's a topic you want me
Speaker 1: to cover, or a guest you want me to have
Speaker 1: on the show, anything like that. Drop me a line
Speaker 1: and tell me. If you want to watch me record
Speaker 1: these shows live, go to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: You'll find a schedule there. You can go over and
Speaker 1: join and be part of the chat room and watch
Speaker 1: as I fumble my way through all of the history
Speaker 1: of technology from the dawn of time up until last Wednesday.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's pretty exciting stuff. I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing you there and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: about YouTube really soon. For more on this and fathoms
Speaker 1: of other topics, how staff works dot Com eight