YouTube

Business Communication,Uncategorized

I feel like the proverbial latecomer to the party, but I’ve just discovered the wonders of YouTube.

This is a social Web site that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. The tagline is “Broadcast yourself”. It was founded in February 2005 and has experienced phenomenal growth. 65,000 sub-10 minute video clips are uploaded and 100 million clips are watched each and every day. It’s estimated the company’s bandwidth costs are $1 million a month.

So what did I find so amazing about the site?

It was not the excruciating amateur home video, the garage bands, frat parties and stupid pet tricks. But buried in those million clips is content that I relish:

  • English folk rock from the 1960’s and 70’s, like Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Al Stewart and more.
  • Irish music.
  • BBC television comedies like Father Ted.
  • Scenes from my Cheshire childhood, like fishing in the canal and wandering a country churchyard.
  • Snippets of business communication, like past adverts for a specific computer company or extracts from speeches.

    • So here, as a total indulgence, is three minutes of Roy Harper, who is an obscure and wonderfully poetic chap with a guitar and an attitude, celebrating One of Those In England:

    and here is, literally, a trip down memory lane, an abstract wonder of out-of-focus home video of a Cheshire road I cycled every day from the age of 11 to 18 with the hoar-frost clinging to the hawthorn hedges:

    Explore YouTube – you never know what you might discover!

    posted by Theboss on 08.24.06 @ 8:03 am | 2 Comments

    2 Comments so far
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    Hello Ian! I made the Rope Lane video, or rather my daughter did, by holding my Kodak Easyshare camera out of the car window.
    It was an experiment really and I only put it on YouTube to see how it would look.
    Watch out for more videos of the area!

    By Carla, Crewe on 08.25.06 1:50 am

    Ian – have you heard Devendra Banhart, Jose Gonzales or Sufjan Stevens – new music that, going by your old folk rock faves, I think you’ll love.

    MySpace pages:
    http://www.myspace.com/devendrabanhart
    http://www.myspace.com/wwwmyspacecomjosegonzales
    http://www.asthmatickitty.com/musicians.php?artistID=5
    (not a myspace page – he doesn’t have one – but still has tracks to listen to)

    By David Evans on 08.28.06 7:14 pm

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