Youtube best invention of the year?

It is according to this

http://www.time.com/time/2006/techguide/bestinventions/

YouTube is just lucky.

They had a following, got bought, made lots of cash!

I don't believe they are all that innovative just on a wave of hype. It's not a site that is all that easy to find stuff as the search engine isn't that great, most videos aren't really that interesting or that funny. It's not like I can watch whole films or T.V. programs and as for LonelyGirl15 its obviously well produced that does take a lot of skill and good kit so it's professional ... so it is a soap then and nothing more ... I bet there is even a script writter.

It's just boring ... we'll all go onto raving about something else soon and this bubble will burst, thats the nature of hype. So make hay whilst the sun shines boys.

If you don't have a Video Camera then you wouldn't understand.
I've had mine for 4 years now. And been saying all along Video
is going to change everything.

I just downloaded my first video to YouTube.com
(Some TrapLine action from Yesterday)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoptaVI0Q8

The Geeks are no longer in control of Technology
and its about time.

YouTube may not be much of an invention, and they may have got lucky in terms of timing. So I'm not sure they're really a great invention.

But the model of making it easy to publish your video content to the web and have it simply distributed isn't going to go away any time soon. In fact I'm half-expecting to see an audio version appear soon (although mp3 is easy to publish and distribute anyway, but I can see a market for someone making it even easier.)

In fact, if you think of a digital medium you can expect to see a YouTube like service for it appearing in the next few years.

I'd say that there's two things 'wrong' here. First of all, it's a very broad definition of the word 'invention', and secondly, it's not just YouTube.

I'd say that user created content is the best 'invention' of 'the past year'. They've been around for ages, of course, but in the last year it really took off and went semi-mainstream, with YouTube, Wikipedia, YTMND, et cetera.

If memory serves, Microsoft adressed this in a 'future of gaming' presentation. I'm not sure now, but I figure it was part of the announcement of XNA. And in one of the XNA videos, Rory and Frank Savage even suggested a 'youtube for games' as a new Xbox live feature.

So I'd say that this semi-new method of providing content is the new 'invention' here. But because that's way too technical and descriptive for TIME, I guess they just settled on 'Youtube Best Invention of 2006'.

SpectateSwamp wrote:



The Geeks are no longer in control of Technology
and its about time.

Ok... so the geeks stop writing cool apps as well as smart web sites etc...

What happens then? The users just take over the world and write their own? Or they just post 100,000,000,000 videos on YouTube and no-one ever gets bored?

Lets be a little more realistic...

Pace wrote:



SpectateSwamp wrote:  The Geeks are no longer in control of Technology and its about time.

Ok... so the geeks stop writing cool apps as well as smart web sites etc...

What happens then? The users just take over the world and write their own? Or they just post 100,000,000,000 videos on YouTube and no-one ever gets bored?

Lets be a little more realistic...

Video is a very powerful tool and you don't need to be a Geek
to use it. I've read post like "Doing Videos" where geeks are
going to pitch it to their bosses. Empire building is what a lot
of techies do. Nobody else understands it, so they keep it that
way. 

Who could be worse at doing company video than someone
that sits in front of a terminal all day and talks jargon (NOBODY) 

littleguru wrote:

Yes. And it's older and I can't see why this is an invention. I mean what makes uploading videos an invention...

I second that

Shreyas Zare

I consider their purchase by Google to be the most idiotic purchase of the year.

Viacom, NBC, CBS, and Fox are teaming up to launch their own site, and that will make the 1.6 Billion US $ sale look very unwise.

It is the first sign of the Google bubble bursting; long overdue. Such a terribly overpriced stock. You'd think investors would have learned from the .com boom/bust era.

SpectateSwamp wrote:

If you don't have a Video Camera then you wouldn't understand.
I've had mine for 4 years now. And been saying all along Video
is going to change everything.

I just downloaded my first video to YouTube.com
(Some TrapLine action from Yesterday)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoptaVI0Q8

The Geeks are no longer in control of Technology
and its about time.

YouTube wasn't the first and isn't the easiest to use. Hey I wouldn't code to put my video's on the web either, I'm an Architect I've lost my coding powers.

I have a camera as well and I've been using other services such as 'DropShots' for ages.

YouTube got popular because it was rubbish at sorting out it's copyrighted content which attracted people to it's site and got hyped. The dudes that run YouTube just got lucky.

Sabot wrote:

The dudes that run YouTube just got lucky.

Again.  Weren't they the PayPal originators?  Seems like some people get all the money.

Herbie

thumbtacks wrote:



Dr Herbie wrote:  Sabot wrote: The dudes that run YouTube just got lucky. Again.  Weren't they the PayPal originators?  Seems like some people get all the money.

Yep.

Honestly, very few people could have pulled this off.  Think about the CPU and storage costs that would be neccessary to host the 100s of thousands of videos they host.  You or I just don't have that kind of money laying around.

They guys at PayPal, however, did.  And, to be honest, so did a bunch of other companies, but as others have mentioned, these guys seemed to get that mysterious critical mass.

Don't kid yourself.  If you had walked into a bank 3 years ago, described YouTube, and asked for a loan to set up a server farm, you'd be forcefully removed from the premises

I think what a few people have missed during this discussion about YouTube is not what they primarily do (Host Video content). But how they do it. They have made rehosting of content a no brainer just works scenario. They have very little constraints. They provide a shield when people fair use is questioned and work with parties for the fairest outcome when one side or the other cries abuse.

This is quite a different from the antiseptic and limited way MSN (Live) and Yahoo do video. I think the companies who will win in Web 2+ will be those that bring the most value to the customer and are not blind to the decreasing cost of storage and hosting while remaining innovative and relevant. (Something yahoo is having a hard time at)

Whose first will no longer matter.

odujosh wrote:



I think what a few people have missed during this discussion about YouTube is not what they primarily do (Host Video content). But how they do it. They have made rehosting of content a no brainer just works scenario. They have very little constraints. They provide a shield when people fair use is questioned and work with parties for the fairest outcome when one side or the other cries abuse.

This is quite a different from the antiseptic and limited way MSN (Live) and Yahoo do video. I think the companies who will win in Web 2+ will be those that bring the most value to the customer and are not blind to the decreasing cost of storage and hosting while remaining innovative and relevant. (Something yahoo is having a hard time at)

Whose first will no longer matter.

OK, fine, but this isn't some genius "eureka" moment where someone suddenly realized "Wow, if we bring value to our customers, we'll win!  Thank you Web 2.0!!!". 

Nor did the guys at PayPal discover the concept of streaming video. 

I've been downloading videos for much longer than YouTube (or Google) has existed, so YouTube is not an Invention of 2006.

Yes but Youtube's ease of use has brought it main stream. Its what they did that is important. Not whether they were first.

Google is hardly the first Search Engine. Windows is not the first operating system. Its Execution that have earned them their current positions.

Web 2.0 is just a icon that represents the current preparations by multiple industries leaders to overtake the next generation of the Web platform.

The Strategy used by YouTube is a Eureka moment. What they have done for Video content can be seen on any blogging platform. They have figured out how to be easy enough to use to be ubiquitiously used all over the net. Saying thier strategy is not inventive is ignorant to say the least.  

Here is my synopsis of their strategy:
Make our service state of the art. Do not make excuses for limitations work around them. Allow our content to be seen from anywhere.