YouTube – Popular like TV

I’ve just been checking the viewing stats on our WhatGetsYouGoat? YouTube channel and one video stands out with the most views.

It’s the video in which the woman, upon being asked to give a comment about Valentine’s Day, clutched her friend’s arm and cheered, “Oh! It’s YouTube!”

This post is simply an observation about the relationship people have with YouTube. Of all the people I have stopped in the street, young, old, foreign…I haven’t encountered anyone  who does not know of YouTube.

It’s the younger people who consistently react to the name YouTube. It appears to strike terror into the hearts of some (because they don’t want people looking at them?), curiosity into others (they’ll consider participating – depending on the topic)  or else they will do it no matter what it’s about.

The woman who was so excited about YouTube obviously came from the last. What would her reaction have been had I said I was from STV or BBC? Maybe a little more suspicion, I think. Think about her motivation:

• She wasn’t embarrassed at the prospect of people seeing her
• She recognised and associated the name YouTube with something she valued
• Hearing the name YouTube was enough credentials for her – she had no further thought about why we were filming

So, here are the stats:

Date	……	No. of video views
Friday 11th Feb, 2011	……	9, 7, 76, 21, 14, 22, 18
Friday 4th Feb, 2011	……	No filming
Friday 28th Jan, 2011	……	7, 11, 9, 8, 27, 26, 7, 17, 13, 22,

Look at the numbers of views for the videos: there are some in the 20s, one at 30 and then there’s one at 76 views. That’s the excited young woman who said, “Oh! It’s YouTube!”