Why Youtube Is So Popular
To those who have not heard about Youtube, it is a video sharing website where one could upload, share, and watch video clips – Youtube videos – for free. It is owned by Google.
Little had the three former PayPal employees – Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen – anticipated about the growth and fame Youtube would achieve in less than one year since its inception, when they first planned such a video sharing website. An out-of-the box idea, Youtube.com was launched as an unknown new website on February 15, 2005 with virtually no promotion. Sequoia invested $3.5 million initially in Youtube, the stake which they upped to $8 million few months later, realizing the vast potential Youtube.com has in the fast growing world of infotainment in the near future.
Another development that had immensely helped catapulting Youtube into the forefront of online entertainment industry came from rather unexpected quarters, in the form of new software tool – the Flash Player 8 by Macromedia – that enabled people to view Youtube videos directly from their web browsers without having to download it into their PCs and view it with the help of third party software programs such as Windows Media Player or RealOne Player. Had it not been for the new Flash Player, the Flash Player 8, it is unlikely that Youtube.com would have taken off this fast, in such a short span of time.
As of today, Youtube.com, under the umbrella of Google, is the fastest growing video website in the globe and the 10th most popular amongst all websites in the cyberspace, according to the latest Alexa ratings. Nearly 100 million video clips from Youtube are seen by netizens daily and around 65,000 new Youtube videos are added every day into the database. No wonder, Youtube.com is described not as a website, but as a phenomenon by market experts.