Happy Birthday

YouTube celebrated its fifth birthday this week. The brainchild of three Paypal employees, YouTube was prompted by two events, Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction and the horrendous tsunami in Asia. In 2005 there was no easy way to share videos of either event. As they talked about this at a dinner party, one of the three proposed that they start a video-sharing site. A few days later they agreed to move forward on the idea and designated who would do what part of the project.

Within three months, YouTube was launched in May, 2005. Its big break didn’t come until December 17th of that year, though, when a video titled, “Lazy Sunday” which was a copy of a Saturday Night Live skit, was uploaded. Ten days later the video had been downloaded more than 1.2 million times. While that’s an impressive figure, it pales in comparison to today’s numbers.

Ten months later, in November, 2006, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. Now YouTube receives over two billion views per day which nearly double the combined prime time viewership of the top three television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Every minute 24 hours of new video is uploaded.

Wow! In five years YouTube has those numbers. That is amazing, isn’t it?

YouTube has become a part of our culture. New singers are being discovered on YouTube. New expressions such as “This is going to be all over YouTube” are common. New folk heroes are embraced because they were on YouTube. We have become accustomed to referencing YouTube in many ways.

What does that mean for your business?

YouTube represents an opportunity for you. You may set up your own YouTube channel, www.YouTube.com/your business. Onto that channel you may upload videos that demonstrate your product, explain your service, give information, tell something new, or show something fun. Use the channel as you like to talk to your customers, increase your business, and spread word of mouth. Add as many videos as you wish to your channel. Your only limit is ten minutes and 100 MB per video. That’s a lot of time and space!

Shoot your videos yourself with a digital camera that records in .mpg mode. Ask your customers for testimonials, shoot the testimonial, and upload it. Show a new item that just arrived, communicate why it solves your customers’ problems, and upload it. Record an event at your business and upload it for all who attended (and those who didn’t) to see. Bring your business to life and make your customer feel involved with videos on YouTube.

You won’t break your budget doing this. YouTube hosts these videos at no charge.

Do you have a channel on YouTube? If not, get one soon.