YouTube is the social media platform with video at its core.  People upload videos, watch videos, and socially interact around the video content.  YouTube has an an outstandingly vast selection of videos, covering an enormous range of topics.

YouTube was founded in the United States in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.  Just over a year later, in 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for over US$ 1.65 billion.  That is a large sum of money and the network is worth a lot more than that now.

Why is this worth so much?  Well, there is a huge community of people using YouTube.

They use it for three primary functions:

• Watching Videos: This is likely the largest group of people using YouTube.  On YouTube, you can watch video, socially interact through comments and social media sharing, and even source video for your own websites by video embedding.  Learn more…
• Uploading Videos: Video creators can upload their video content onto YouTube for other people to watch.  You can upload all sorts of video content and quality, from just a webcam of yourself to  A a professionally produced music video.  Learn more…
• Advertising: YouTube is a business and since it provides so much functionality to such a large community, it needs to make money.  It does this through advertisers.  Advertisers have numerous way to communicate their message on this platform.  We haven’t written a post about advertising, as YouTube provides comprehensive insights about their advertising platform.  If you have questions about it, please start a dialogue below.  You can learn more about in the advertising section on YouTube’s website.

So, if you associate with any of the groups above, you should click the relevant links above and read more.

This videointroduces the recent features and designs on the YouTube platform.

What do you like or dislike about YouTube?  Post comments below.  No registration is required.

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Photo credit: Rego – d4u.hu / Foter / CC BY-SA