Thought Press.

20/20 had a fascinating two hour special on moments caught on tape in 2006. The program focused much on YouTube and its hold on us this past year. Now, about 65,000 videos are uploaded daily to YouTube’s servers with 45+ terabytes of storage. What’s even more mind boggling is that it would take more than a lifetime to watch all the videos on the site. It has become more than just a place to watch old band video clips or forgotten about videos from decades ago. It has almost become a video blog to the entire world. “Broadcast Yourself,” is the site’s slogan.

It has ruined reputations and broken copyright laws. Police videos and videos of violence are the viral videos of 2006. Videos of teens lip-syncing to their favorite song. And then there’s the college hazing videos and they don’t seem to care. 20/20 interviewed a woman who blogged about everything, including her sexual experiences. Of course she gets tens of thousands of hits because of that, but there seems to be a sliding away from the notion of privacy. And sure, YouTube can be the ultimate viral marketing tool for any company looking to reach a wide audience for free.

Blog posts about YouTube

The Year of Social Networking
It is taken a large role in the social networking market. 2006 is the year of social networking, I would say. Just look at Google’s 2006 Year-End Zeitgeist and you’ll see that the top two searches of 2006 were Bebo, a social networking site, and MySpace. Number 4 is MetaCafe, a video sharing site. Then share your music with Radioblog, number 5. Wikipedia is 6, “video” is 7, and “wiki” is 10.

As mentioned previously, we seem to have less and less privacy and much of it is voluntary. Networks such as Facebook and MySpace are perfect examples of people’s postings of their most personal information. How do I know my friend Josh is in New Jersey now? Facebook. Or that someone else got dumped by their boyfriend on Christmas Eve? Facebook. You can even send a text to Facebook and get a reply about any one of your friends and what their status is.

Sharing photos, videos, personal stories. It’s bringing us close together but it can also ruin relationships, cause jealousy, prevent job opportunities, and simply make you look bad, which is why I don’t understand why so many people post risque photos or photos of them funneling beer. Do they think only their close friends will see this? Or do they mind that their parents or employer may see this and be turned right off.

Google searches for YouTube