Dear Youtube

via The New York Times:

Early this year, the most popular YouTube video of all time — a 2007 clip of a British toddler gleefully biting the finger of his older brother — was supplanted by a brash newcomer.

The upstart was Lady Gaga’s slithering, sci-fi-themed music video for her hit single “Bad Romance.”

The shift was symbolic: YouTube, a subsidiary of the search giant Google, is growing up. Once known primarily for skateboard-riding cats, dancing geeks and a variety of cute-baby high jinks, YouTube now features a smorgasbord of more professional video that is drawing ever larger and more engaged audiences.

“Our biggest challenge is making sure we don’t taste too many things,” Chad Hurley, YouTube’s low-profile and low-key co-founder and chief executive, said in a wide-ranging interview last week.

That cornucopia of content appears to be turning YouTube — considered by many to be a risky investment when it was bought for $1.65 billion at the end of 2006 — into one of Google’s smartest acquisitions. On Monday, YouTube will celebrate its fifth birthday by announcing it has passed two billion video views a day; YouTube said it reached the one billion mark in October.

It's funny growing up in the 'computing & internet era'. While I was born as computers were just starting to take their modern form, my generation is one that saw computers and most importantly, the internet grow into the phenomenon that it is today. We started out all on Macs pining for Oregon Trail day at school, saw video games go from pixels on a screen to almost lifelike graphics, and watched as the internet changed from a geeky collaborative tool to an integral part of modern everyday life. Unlike younger kids who always had computers in their lives, we experienced a truly analog world, at least in some sense. The ease of accessing information used to be nil to those without an understanding of computers, unlike today, which brings me to my point. Youtube, 5 years ago, it was LITERALLY impossible to find a good amount of videos online, professional or amateur. If I missed something on television, I either had to wait until it re-aired or came out on video, hear it from my friends, or just be in the dark about it. If I needed visual evidence of something, I was limited to pictures. Then in 2005, a great thing happened: YOU, Youtube.

Youtube, you single-handedly launched the era of the viral internet. Online TV and movies, video-blogging, and random, funny viral videos were born from your birth. Half of the content on this blog, and damn near every blog on the internet, features your embed code in some form. Think about it. Before you, there were no video-taped rants about anything. There wasn't such a thing as Web 2.0. The internet was what was given to us by the technologically advanced heads. Youtube, you made everyone their own videographer and content provider. Content is what we want it to be. Before you, there was no Google Video, no Twitvids, no nothing. I suppose this letter is a huge neck-off, but I can't deny the impact that you've had on the internet we know today.

At the same time, you made it so that no recorded event would ever be safe. Any gaffe, faux pas, or blunder that happens to be in front of a video camera is immediately placed at your whims, whether intentional or supposed. Along with the advent of this new method of reaching content, came a whole new batch of negatives and caveats. People now pay have to pay careful attention to what they post, much like Facebook (though, you're not as invasive or annoying). Whatever the case, no one misses the days before you. Your ease of use and breadth of content is ridiculous and something kids today will grow up with. No, I'm not jealous; just curious as to how that'll affect them. I suppose only time will tell. They (whoever they are) said computers would never catch on in the 80s; look what happened...

Apparently, this was the most watched video in Youtube history?? Go figure..