Week 3 - The Power Of YouTube

The powerful website YouTube was first launched in 2005 by three former pay pal employees. After its rising success the huge conglomerate Google Inc. purchased it for 1.6 billion dollars. Through the video sharing website of YouTube audiences have been able to do great things such as video sharing, ratings, become recognised, express opinions and much more.

Some people may believe social networking sites such as YouTube have isolated us from “real human interaction in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.” This is pointed out by Sherry Turkle’s article in the Guardian which would disadvantage the reputation of YouTube. This is because people spend less time interacting in personas statistics shows that 57% of people spend most of their time online rather than face to face as they’ve become dependent on social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. So it could suggest that “technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human”.

On the other hand, social websites such as YouTube have allowed audiences to become recognised with their talents and lifestyles. For example, famously known Justin Bieber and Jessie J were once a part of the audience who were trying to take on the role of a producer. By using YouTube, they were able to create user generated content and release their footage over the world and attract a large fan based audience.

In addition, YouTube has also reduced cost for marketing companies as producers are able to upload adverts onto YouTube and promote themselves in a cost effective way. This new digital media has allowed producers to save thousands of pounds they can now promote themselves with tools such as YouTube to reach out to their audience. This also benefits the producers as they are able to go global through the social networking sites, this means that the producers can seek out to their audience in different countries and expand their target market.

Overall I think YouTube has definitely impacted how audiences consume media as there is a pluralistic model which has allowed there to be choice over if audiences are active or passive. For instance YouTube has put the audience in the position to share with the public and given the people more power this can also lead to crowdsourcing.