 | Although Karim is named on YouTube’s site as a co-founder, Chad and Steve have promoted a highly simplified history of the company’s founding that largely excludes him. In the stripped-down version—repeated in dozens of news accounts—Chad and Steve got the idea in the winter of 2005, after they had trouble sharing videos online that had been shot at a dinner party at Steve’s San Francisco apartment. Karim says the dinner party never happened and that the seed idea of video sharing was his—although he is quick to say its realization in YouTube required “the equal efforts of all three of us.” Chad and Steve both say that the party did occur but that Karim wasn’t there. “Chad and I are pretty modest, and Jawed has tried to seize every opportunity to take credit,” Steve told me. But he also acknowledged that the notion that YouTube was founded after a dinner “was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible. |
We have no problem understanding how our actions shape representations, narratives, ideas. It’s some time more difficult to understand how those constructs shape us in return. Here’s a good example of a narrative elaborated in order to shape the behavior of future adopters (toward the innovation that is YouTube). As a marketing tool, the story about the party is supposed to give users a basic idea about how to behave with YouTube.
• Jun 12, 2010 link notes tagged: technology communication art representation fiction idea action community organization innovation users marketing YouTube story
“A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.
That’s a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it’s probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.
Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there’s probably more video to choose from.)” (more)
Ephemeral culture.
• May 28, 2010 link notes tagged: technology communication video time culture life half-life media YouTube death ephemeral
“Although YouTube’s birthday is officially February 14, 2005, the first video was actually uploaded to the site exactly five years ago, on April 23, 2005.” (more)
I already posted this video, in relation with an interesting post on the The New York Times’ blog The Medium (by Virginia Heffernan)
• Apr 23, 2010 link notes tagged: technology communication YouTube anniversary video Internet evolution
| Download any Youtube movies, clips or videos directly from your Chromium Browser [works with FireFox, Safari and Opera as well]. It will Instantly get the link from the webpage even if it’s not yet finished loading. No Website or software is needed. |
The most important part about this hack is the possibility to download Flash and MP4 (HQ, 720p and 1080p) videos using simple dedicated bookmarklets (one for each format). I’m done with Zamzar.
Learn more about YouTube playback formats.
• Jan 09, 2010 link notes [via] tagged: technology YouTube video hack codec
“When this technique of redundancy was used in the films of Godard, it was considered the height of sophistication, a comment on the way movies pile on information: they show, they narrate and they describe. The elephants are unmistakable to viewers, and yet Karim identifies them. Then he names the iconic shape right in front of us — “long trunks” — lest anyone miss that long trunks equal elephants equal long trunks. This founding clip makes and repeats a larger point, too, with every pixel: Video — trivial or important — can now quickly and at no cost be published, broadcast and shared. “Me at the Zoo” also sets a style standard for the classic YouTube video: visually surprising, narratively opaque, forthrightly poetic.”
About The Medium : “With television and the Internet converging at last, who’s going to watch all this here-goes-nothing online video? Everything from political propaganda videos to pseudo-candid celebrity rants seems to expect an audience. “The Medium” will find, review and make sense of all those senseless new images.”
• Sep 27, 2009 link notes tagged: art communication technology YouTube video online Internet broadcast history movie film
