YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

is an American online video-sharing

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

headquartered in

San Bruno, California San Bruno ( Spanish for " St. Bruno") is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, incorporated in 1914. The population was 43,908 at the 2020 United States Census. The city is between South San Francisco and Millbrae, adjacent to S ...

, founded by three former

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

employees— Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and

Jawed Karim Jawed Karim (বাংলাঃ জাওয়াদ করিম) (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to up ...

– in February 2005.

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, since which it operates as one of Google's subsidiaries. YouTube allows users to upload

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

s, view them, rate them with likes and

dislike {{Short pages monitor In October 2021, YouTube experimented with indicating the most watched parts of a video through a solid line chart appearing on the seek bar in the mobile app to facilitate watchers finding relevant parts. All channels' "Discussion" sub page is to be ultimately discarded on October 12, 2021. The feature was known as "Channel comments" in the site's early age, and served as channels' general comment section. Previously, it was gradually replaced with the that first rolled out to select channels, and since approximately 2018 to channels surpassing a subscriber count threshold that decreased over time, discarding existing discussions. During the same day, YouTube lowered the threshold to the Community page from 1000 to channels with at least 500 subscribers. The "Discussion" page was closed down earlier on the mobile site. On November 10, 2021, YouTube announced the removal of videos' count for negative user ratings (also known as "dislikes" and "thumbs down"), reportedly to protect creators from online harassment. The dislike count remains solely visible to respective channel owners. This change was first tested with select users in March and again in July.

Chronology of the logo

File:Logo_of_YouTube_(2005-2006).svg, 2005 File:Logo of YouTube (2005-2011).svg, October 2006 File:Logo of YouTube (2011-2013).svg, December 1, 2011 File:Logo of YouTube (2013-2015).svg, December 19, 2013 File:Logo of YouTube (2015-2017).svg, October 17, 2015 File:YouTube Logo 2017.svg, August 29, 2017

Internationalization

On June 19, 2007, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in Paris to launch the new localization system. The interface of the website is available with localized versions in 108 countries and regions, one territory (

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

) and a worldwide version. On October 17, 2007, it was announced that a Hong Kong version had been launched. At the time, YouTube's Steve Chen said that its next target would be Taiwan. YouTube was blocked from Mainland China from October 18 due to the censorship of the Taiwanese flag. URLs to YouTube were redirected to China's own search engine,

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...

. It was subsequently unblocked on October 31. The YouTube interface suggests which local version should be chosen on the basis of the

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

of the user. In some cases, the message "This video is not available in your country" may appear because of copyright restrictions or inappropriate content. The interface of the YouTube website is available in 76 language versions, including Amharic, Albanian,

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

, Burmese, Kyrgyz, Mongolian,

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

and Uzbek, whose countries do not have local channel versions. Access to YouTube was blocked in

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

between 2008 and 2010, following controversy over the posting of videos deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and some material offensive to Muslims. In October 2012, a local version of YouTube was launched in Turkey, with the domain youtube.com.tr. The local version is subject to the content regulations found in Turkish law. In March 2009, a dispute between YouTube and the British royalty collection agency

PRS for Music PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes ...

led to premium music videos being blocked for YouTube users in the United Kingdom. The removal of videos posted by the major record companies occurred after failure to reach agreement on a licensing deal. The dispute was resolved in September 2009. In April 2009, a similar dispute led to the removal of premium music videos for users in Germany.

Business model, advertising, and profits

Before being purchased by Google, YouTube declared that its business model was advertisement-based, making 15 million dollars per month. Google did not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as " not material" in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

'' magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at $200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. Some industry commentators have speculated that YouTube's running costs (specifically the network bandwidth required) might be as high as 5 to 6 million dollars per month, thereby fuelling criticisms that the company, like many Internet startups, did not have a viably implemented business model. Advertisements were launched on the site beginning in March 2006. In April, YouTube started using Google

AdSense Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...

. YouTube subsequently stopped using AdSense but has resumed in local regions. Advertising is YouTube's central mechanism for gaining revenue. This issue has also been taken up in scientific analysis.

Don Tapscott Don Tapscott (born June 1, 1947) is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, who specializes in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. He is the CEO of the Tapsc ...

and Anthony D. Williams argue in their book ''

Wikinomics ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything'' is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open-sourc ...

'' that YouTube is an example for an economy that is based on

mass collaboration Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-s ...

and makes use of the Internet. : "Whether your business is closer to Boeing or P&G, or more like YouTube or flickr, there are vast pools of external talent that you can tap with the right approach. Companies that adopt these models can drive important changes in their industries and rewrite the rules of competition"Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. (2006)
''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything''
New York: Penguin. . "new business models for open content will not come from traditional media establishments, but from companies such as Google, Yahoo, and YouTube. This new generation of companies is not burned by the legacies that inhibit the publishing incumbents, so they can be much more agile in responding to customer demands. More important, they understand that you don't need to control the quantity and destiny of bits if they can provide compelling venues in which people build communities around sharing and remixing content. Free content is just the lure on which they layer revenue from advertising and premium services". Tapscott and Williams argue that it is important for new media companies to find ways to make a profit with the help of peer-produced content. The new Internet economy, (that they term Wikinomics) would be based on the principles of "openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally". Companies could make use of these principles in order to gain profit with the help of

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

applications: "Companies can design and assemble products with their customers, and in some cases customers can do the majority of the value creation". Tapscott and Williams argue that the outcome will be an economic democracy. There are other views in the debate that agree with Tapscott and Williams that it is increasingly based on harnessing open source content, networking, sharing, and peering, but they argue that the result is not an economic democracy, but a subtle form and deepening of exploitation, in which labour costs are reduced by Internet-based global outsourcing. The second view is e.g. taken by Christian Fuchs in his book " Internet and Society". He argues that YouTube is an example of a business model that is based on combining the gift with the commodity. The first is free, the second yields profit. The novel aspect of this business strategy is that it combines what seems at first to be different, the gift and the commodity. YouTube would give free access to its users, the more users, the more profit it can potentially make because it can in principle increase advertisement rates and will gain further interest of advertisers.Fuchs, Christian (2008)
''Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age''
New York: Routledge. . 408 Pages. YouTube would sell its audience that it gains by free access to its advertising customers. : "Commodified Internet spaces are always profit-oriented, but the goods they provide are not necessarily exchange-value and market-oriented; in some cases (such as Google, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Netscape), free goods or platforms are provided as gifts in order to drive up the number of users so that high advertisement rates can be charged in order to achieve profit." In June 2009, ''

BusinessWeek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' reported that, according to San Francisco-based IT consulting company RampRate, YouTube was far closer to profitability than previous reports, including the April 2009, projection by investment bank Credit Suisse estimating YouTube would lose as much as $470 million in 2009. RampRate's report pegged that number at no more than $174 million. In May 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program to begin offering some content providers the ability to charge $0.99 per month or more for certain channels, but the vast majority of its videos would remain free to view.

Notes

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Youtube 21st century in the United States

Youtube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...