Pictures speak a lot louder than words..!
The adage has been traditionally proven the world over in many instances and Youtube is proving the same in the virtual world. Youtube is a collection of videos uploaded by members for sharing and watching by other members. Over the years Youtube has garnered an enviable member base and almost all the members are active. Although Youtube is used by members mostly to watch videos, many enthusiastic members also post their personal or professional videos that are the latest. Since the members are from various niches, the genres from which the videos are aide and varied and the variety is simply amazing. What is more important here is that most of these videos are educative and help the viewers to upgrade their knowledge base and skill-sets.
If one has never been on Youtube before, it is time to begin and make the most of it. The advantages of being a member of Youtube are numerous and a few of them explained as follows:
- The most major advantage of being a member of Youtube is that you can make a video of anything and everything and share it with the world at large. Most sought after Youtube videos today are in the genres of how-to, comedy, video blogs and new artist music videos. It is very easy to have fun with your video camera and share it with the world at large.
- As with every good thing on the planet there are a host of bad ones and Youtube is no exception here. You should be very careful as to what you post on Youtube since a lot of online predators are on the prowl. Don’t give out too much information about yourself and make sure that whatever you post on Youtube is perfectly legal. It is almost impossible to track down who is watching the videos and Youtube also works in close conjunction with law enforcement agencies to track and solve crimes. So, if you do not think twice before you leap, the consequences could be quite disastrous.
- Another great advantage of making vides for Youtube is that they are simple to make and upload. In addition to having video recording devices like camcorders or even mobile movie cameras, it is important one uses a movie editing software to make sure that the quality comes out good and the movie is previewed before being uploaded to Youtube. This will ensure quality of content as well as safety.
- Uploading is no great deal and anyone can upload a video to Youtube with ease. The ease of use and the ease of making videos and uploading them makes Youtube a pleasure to use and share with friends and family across the planet.
- The videos thus uploaded to Youtube can be viewed by millions of its members and members also have a facility to rating the videos that they watch. Using the ratings and the feedback you can make even better videos with time and hone your skills at video-editing and also learn what the world wants to see the most.
- Advantages to internet marketers: Almost every internet marketer worth his salt is a member of Youtube today and uses the features of Youtube as a good platform to advertise their products and services through advertising and posting videos to describe and market to a global audience.
- Advantages to professionals: Video, documentary and professionals who have an interest in film production use Youtube to assess their skills through viewer feedback with respect to public opinion, preferences and video quality. This feedback allows to them to better themselves in due course of time and aids to make them better in their professions.
As evident, Youtube is very easy to use and share, but having a little notion on security is very important. Proceeding with caution is the best path to follow and take it easy, you don’t need to post 20 videos in a day, once a week will be a good beginning and you can intensify your efforts after a few weeks of observation and feedback.
Now let us take a look at Youtube statistics that will give you a good measure of its popularity and a host of good reasons about why you should consider Youtube a part of your virtual life.
Number of videos on Youtube as of March 2008 – Over 80 million.
Average number of videos added on Youtube – more than 150,000 a day.
Category wise, Youtube hosts about 20% in music videos, 19% in entertainment videos, 14% in blog videos, 14% in comedy videos, 7% in sports videos, 6% each in autos and education categories, 5% in film category, about 2.5% each in pets, news, science and How-to categories and about 2% in the travel category.
The average length of a video posted on Youtube is slightly less than 3 minutes and the time that would lapse before anyone can watch all vides on Youtube back to back would be over 400 years.
The average age of a Youtube member who uploads videos is around 26.5 years and the video quality is categorized as 80% amateur, 15% professional and 5% of commercial videos. Video blogs contribute to about 5% of all uploads.
As in all content, copyright violations do occur on Youtube and about 12% of the videos are estimated to fall in this category. Maximum videos uploaded are from the USA and a major percentage of videos are in English.
The above statistics can be mind-boggling and anyone with a minimal business sense and an interest in virtual business can realize the potential that Youtube can offer by way of advertisements, reach and video marketing. These statistics along with its popularity makes Youtube an ideal platform for anyone with videography or internet marketing interests.
Making a video to promote your products and services is easy and inexpensive and advertising the same on Youtube is also quite easy and productive especially when considering that it reaches over 80 million global audiences. The possibilities are almost limitless using Youtube.
Youtube Statistics:
# Youtube attracted over 5 billion video views in July 2008 from USA alone. This is a 44% share of the online video market and included over 98% of all views. This translated to over 142 million US population viewing over 20 videos per head.
# Youtube has over 260 million users and about 50% of them visit the website weekly. Viewing is pegged at over 10o million a day.
# As far a global user-minutes spent on site, Youtube ranks 3rd and another amazing fact is that over 50% viewers watch videos to the very end.
# Video sharing is also very popular and over 52% of users in the age group of 18-34 use the sharing feature.
