World Domination

by Jon Danao

Most companies’ dream is to capture the mainstream audience. It is particularly difficult to introduce new high tech product to the market without a hefty marketing budget or irresistable business model. But YouTube does not have a business model. They focused more on the social model of their service – making YOU, the end user, the center of their strategy.

Simplicity brought YouTube to every computer. No need to install a program. It can run inside the browser. When sharing, there is no need to attach the file, just give the link. To upload, no need to pre-convert videos. The uploader has a facility to convert (on the fly) most video formats to playable FLV file, ready for streaming. The user can even participate by adding comments or post a reply video.

Hitwise reports YouTube acquiring 75% of US market share in May 2008 – more than four times the combined share of MySpaceTV, Google Video, Yahoo Video and Veoh. It became a household name. Online video or entertainment became synonymous with YouTube. It is safe to say YouTube is still inside the tornado. Even CNN used YouTube during the US Presidential Debates. It opened the doors for ordinary people to ask the presidentiables about their concerns. This recognition of such reputable news company using YouTube as a main avenue for communication potentially generates more hits and increase its user-base.

Let’s see some numbers. The total number of internet users in North America is about 248 million according to Internet World Stats. That is almost half of its population of 530 million as of mid-2008.

comScore, a leading measurement company in digital world released a report last October 2008 stating there are more than 147 million internet users in the US watching an average of 92 videos per viewer on the said month. 100 million is YouTube’s share, that is about two-thirds of the total internet users who watch videos online, and 40% of the total internet users in North America. That is a huge market share. Do you stil doubt YouTube hasn’t crossed the chasm?

YouTube became a phenomenon when Google bought them for $1.6 billion in stocks. With such a huge company backing them up, they can continue to offer their services for free. This is one of the top reasons why YouTube is very attractive to most users – free registration, free uploading, free viewing.

Interesting Facts from Digital Ethnography:

Popular Tags

Average Video Length:

2 minutes 46.17 seconds. Time it would take to view all of the material on YouTube (as of March 17th 2008): 412.3 years.

Let’s here it from one of the World Dominator himself: From Concept to Hyper-Growth

References:

• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570721-1,00.html
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_continues_to_destroy_all.php
• http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/youtube-popular-right.html
• http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208801200
• http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/is_social_media.html
• http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/12/08/daily37.html?ana=from_rss
• http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm