YouTube - Best invention in 2006

Time magazine on Monday (November 6) said the online video sharing website YouTube won the '2006 invention' award.

A 79-year-old British grandfather retired, living a very simple life until before appearing on YouTube. Now he is an international "star".

A year ago, these stories could not have happened. But in the past 12 months, thousands of ordinary people have suddenly become famous. The world has changed and the game has changed, the author of those changes, no one else, is YouTube.

2006 is an interesting year of technology village. Nintendo invented a new gaming machine that could control like "magic wand". Automakers invent new cars that can run 3145 miles in a gallon of gas. A robot knows how to ride a bike, a special type of waterproof umbrella .

But above all, YouTube has opened up a new way to help millions of people entertain, educate, shock . with an unprecedented scale and level. That is why it was voted by Time to be the 2006 Invention.

But if YouTube is the invention of the year, then who exactly invented it? We all know who founded YouTube: 3 guys under 30 are named Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. At a party in Silicon Valley in 2004, they chatted with each other that sharing photos online with friends is now easy, but why sharing videos is so hard.

Then all three are determined to do something. They dream of a scenario where any video format is acceptable and users can view it on any Web browser, any kind of computer. They have built a virtual video "village", a website where people can post their own video clips, watch other people's videos, comment, rate, search . That's YouTube .

But even though they themselves are YouTube births, the three still don't really understand what they can do. They just thought I built a utility tool to help people share video clips. They guessed that people might use YouTube to post auction items on eBay. As for the current face of YouTube, I swear they never thought of it.

From the first minute seeing YouTube, users have a crush on it. Instead of posting home movies for sale (as YouTube's father believes), they shot drunk videos, dancing, ridiculous incidents and "throwing" them on YouTube. They upload amazing science projects, horror solo guitar displays, sightings of headphones in New Orleans after the storm over Katrina and the war in Iraq from both sides .

They sat in their own rooms and poured their most shameful, shameful secrets onto the webcam. YouTube has set up a separate world for them, lonely modern people, under pressure and very in need of expressing and expressing themselves.

As a result, after 18 months, YouTube has become a global cultural phenomenon with more than 70,000 new members and 100 million video clips watched every day.

So the reality is what happened? YouTube threw itself into the interference area of ​​three revolutionaries: First of all, the revolution in video production with cheap camera models and simple, heartbreaking video editing software. Second, the social revolution that analysts still call Web 2.0, has produced sites like MySpace, Wikipedia, Flicker ., allowing users to create and share information with each other.

The third revolution is about culture. Users have become bored and impatient with mainstream media. They do not want cut clips from Iraq, Lebanon or Dafur made by skilled reporters. They want the truth, a naked truth from the warriors fighting there, from the people who live and can die there.

Maybe those video clips are not perfect, but they are very, very real. That's why superstars like Paris Hilton and P. Diddy have to compete fairly with a lovely little curled sleeping cat or an anonymous robot-like guy.

Less than a year after its official launch, YouTube has become a media giant. Last month, the 30-person office that had snake dragons moved to Google's headquarters in a deal worth $ 1.65 billion.

Source: Time But not without problems. YouTube is the target of copyright-related lawsuits, but remember that it is not Napster. Very wise, YouTube has joined hands with NBC, CBS, Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music.

Final words: In essence, YouTube is a more interesting community and culture than a golden egg. It is the realization of the promise Web 1.0 made 15 years ago. If the blog turns ordinary people into journalists, YouTube will promote them into stars. The real challenge facing traditional media is not to protect copyrighted content, but to think about how to compete when meeting a better opponent.

Maybe Hurley and his two partners created YouTube, but ourselves, in our bedrooms and cellars, with broadband and cheap webcams, were the ones who invented it. .

Trong Cam