YouTube Video Watching & Sharing Is Fun

So, your the king, when it comes to loading your digital pictures to the internet for sharing with friends and family.  You've got pictures accounts on Picasa, Flickr, and more pictures on Facebook than even your best friends can stand to look at.  But did you know, that you can do the same thing with videos?  Of course you did . . . didn't you?  Well if you don't, and are one of the few people that haven't spent countless hours wasted on video sharing sites like YouTube, then your in for a treat.  Remember everyone, YouTube is not just for watching, you really need to participate.  Everyone including your Grandpa is doing it.  Don't worry, it's not hard, it's actually quite a lot of fun.

While YouTube may have started out with lots of amateur videos that's not entirely the case any longer.  While it's true, that everyone and their dog has a video on YouTube, there are also a lot of professional videos there as well. Big movie companies, television networks, and basically corporations with something to say, are doing it online with video.  Lots of movie trailers, and television show previews make it YouTube, as a way of getting stuff out to the masses.  There is even a culture of short movie and animation shorts makers that publish exclusively to the web, and YouTube specifically.

So, exactly what is YouTube.  It's a free service (unless you consider time to be money . . . and you will spend lots of that there) that allows for the sharing of all sorts of videos.  You can watch others videos, upload your own videos, discuss videos, vote on vides, and get great ideas for making your own videos.  Millions of people are doing it, and all you need to do to get actively involved, is to sign up for an account.

While to some, YouTube may be a fascinating piece of technology infrastructure, that's not all it is.  What it really is, and what as really allowed it to survive, thrive and continue to grow, is it's community of people.  As with most things in life, YouTube continues to grow, because people find it engaging.  It is a strong community.  Social networking at it's finest.

YouTube, is also what marketers like to call "viral".  Meaning, it's very easy to spread.  The original designers of YouTube, made it very easy to share their videos all over the internet.  Blogs, FaceBook, Myspace, and any other website can simple cut and paste a piece of code have YouTube videos on their website.  This of course gives viewers on other sites a reason, and a means to visit the main YouTube site.  It's one of the critical factors in their early success.

YouTube took some early lessons from other successful websites like Amazon, by showing people related videos to the one their watching.  Sort of like Amazon sending you an email that says, "Since you bought some StarWars movies from us, maybe now you like to buy the first season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD from us".  It's this sort of approach, that keeps people plugged into YouTube for hours, watching video after video, after video.

Many digital camera, and cellphone manufacturers are tapping into the popularity of YouTube video sharing, by providing software with their products that allows for easy 1-2-3 step loading of your newest videos to YouTube almost instantly after you've shot them. The Flip Video camera is one such device that was aimed directly at the YouTube demographic when it was released.  The video is not great, and can be relatively short, but that fits the online video sharing culture perfectly.

You do have some control over your video sharing as well if you want to.  While some people may not care if the whole world sees them do a back-flip of the diving board while wearing a speedo and a dunce cap, perhaps you only want to share that with a few close friends.  That is entirely possible by categorizing your video as "private" instead of "public".

So, if you haven't been on YouTube yet, what are you waiting for?  There's all kinds of cool stuff to watch, and the world is still waiting for your next great motion picture.