You YouTube Too.

YouTube really is engaging; like when a student is trying to research a column and ends up getting sucked in for an hour and a half watching the “don’t tase me, bro!” video (again) and a bunch of footage of Brand New’s recent tours (Jesse Lacey and Kevin Devine together is like Jesus handing you a huge, delightful cake frosted with glorious music and silly banter).

The site, whose tag line is “Broadcast Yourself,” is a video-sharing page where people can upload, view, and share different clips. Everything from commercials to tv and movie clips to documentaries to video-blogs to dubbed versions of the movie 300 with voice-over describing why “Steve” can’t come to the party (something the aforementioned student’s roommate made her watch).

The site does have time and content restrictions on what can be posted: potentially offensive materials, like pornography, are not allowed. However, there is the similar, tactfully named PornoTube. References to this before class will make you lots of friends and ensure you will always have someone to sit with. Allegedly.

Wikipedia offers a motherload of information about the site. Everything from basic background info (formed by three former PayPal employees, originally based out of a garage) to stats on users (20 million visitors a month- 44% female, 56% male; most commonly 12-17 age range) to how much it was acquired for by Google in November of last year ($1.65 billion in Google stock) to the copyright struggles endured (which were vastly prevalent and inspired the time limits).

Also, there is discussion of YouTube’s role in the worlds of both music and politics: its goal of offering every music video ever made while still remaining free (in 18 months from announcement in August 06), as well as the vast role it has in band promotion, as experienced by OK Go, who got an MTV Movie Awards performance out of their radio hit, “Here it Goes Again” (you’ve seen it, it’s the one with the treadmills).

As for politics, it’s really remarkable; the internet has such an incredible capacity to reach people, which aids to inform and involve them in matters of consequence. The power of the internet is really being taken advantage of in the political arena. Because it offers immediate accessibility to information and the ever-changing political forum, it is being used to do everything from give widespread access to campaign videos put out by both politicians and supporters, to engaging people, especially the youth, who are the least prevalent voters, by involving them in the political process. On July 23, CNN aired a debate among the Democratic candidates for president in which the questions fielded were picked from a pool submitted through YouTube. "Because of the use of technology to aggregate questions from a wide range of constituents, the forum has been referred to as the 'the most democratic Presidential Debate ever.'"

YouTube is one of the greatest things about the internet (Wikipedia, Facebook, and Moveon.org also falling in the category). It not only provides an outlet for social expression, but it is working to mobilize and inform the masses. It is taking advantage of the vast power of the interweb and, at its best, using it to bring about positive, tangible action and change. Or at least keeping us in the know with lonelygirl15.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube