A website on the Internet that revolutionized the world of communication via the World Wide Web, by allowing the exchange of video materials between users around the world, and it enjoys about four billion

views

daily. It had a role in the Arab Spring revolutions, and contributed to changing the concept of state sovereignty and monopoly over the media in particular. visible ones.

It is repeatedly blocked in more than one country, causing legal, political and legal debates.

The first video he uploaded was called "I'm at the Zoo".

Founded


in 2005, social media witnessed a new baby whose parents called it YouTube. As usual, newborns in this virtual world grew up in record time, imposing themselves in this world that does not stop creating new things every day. It became a destination for publishers and viewers of video clips. Regardless of their interests, genders and ages.

YouTube was founded by three former PayPal employees in 2005 in California, USA, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim.

Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science at the University of Illinois.

And the three wanted to publish a video to their friends, but they did not find the appropriate tool on the Internet, and then they thought of creating a site that solves this problem, and then work was done on designing the site for a few months.

The video uploaded by Jawed Karim, entitled "Me at the zoo", is the first video posted on YouTube, on April 23, 2005, with a duration of 0:19 seconds.

The site was opened experimentally in May 2005, and officially opened six months later.

YouTube opened to the public in November 2005, and its founders announced in July 2006 that more than 65,000 videos are uploaded to their site, and about 100 million viewers per day pass by, which means a huge growth rate.

YouTube ranks third in Alexa statistics, after Google and Facebook.

Headquarters


YouTube is headquartered in California, USA.

The Economy


In October 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

The company spends millions of dollars periodically on the site, and the basic material benefit it reaps comes from the ads that appear next to the video or appear within the video itself.

And while Google does not disclose specific information about the profits and costs associated with this site, Forbes magazine, which specializes in business and finance, estimated Google's income through YouTube at about $ 200 million, highlighting the continuous development of profits in the world of ads.

YouTube and selected content creators earn advertising revenue from the Google AdSense system, which is a program that targets ads according to site content and audience preferences.

While the vast majority of videos are free to watch, there are exceptions, including paid subscription-based channels, movie rentals, as well as YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, which are subscription services that offer premium, ad-free music and entertainment content.

Based on reported quarterly ad revenue, YouTube's annual ad revenue is estimated to be $15 billion.

YouTube Music and YouTube Premium are subscription services that offer premium, ad-free music and entertainment content. (Shutterstock)

Technology and languages


​​YouTube uses "Adobe Flash" technology to play animated clips. YouTube's consumption of electronic capacity in 2007 was the size of what the World Wide Web consumed in 2000, which is believed to cost one million dollars per day.

The YouTube interface is available in multiple languages, reaching 54 languages, including Catalan, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian and Slovenian, and its content varies between film and television clips, music clips, video produced by amateurs, and others.

Evolution and distinction


YouTube is no longer just a site for watching funny videos or watching movies and series, but rather it has become a source of news, imposing itself a new type of visual journalism, and the media benefit from it by displaying video clips that its correspondent networks could not obtain, and it relies on YouTube as a source of news In many cases, especially pictures of natural disasters or human disasters, political unrest, and other clips that anyone can photograph on their mobile phone.

Among the most viewed news videos are those showing natural disasters or political turmoil, which often include gruesome scenes.

The scenes of the Japan earthquake and tsunami were the most watched on YouTube among the clips studied, with 5% of the views.

In 2011, news events were the most searched on YouTube, including the Japan earthquake and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

And 39% of the most viewed clips were produced by ordinary citizens, compared to 51% for news organizations, although some were based on videos of ordinary users rather than journalists, while 5% of the clips came from commercial or political groups.

And YouTube announced that users upload more than 72 hours to the site every minute, and it achieves four billion views per day.

According to the comScore website, which specializes in market research, YouTube is the first site for video presentations in the United States, and in January 2009 it enabled its users to upload 20 hours of video viewing every minute, and it also ranked third in the world, according to Alexa, After Google and Yahoo.

And it varies from year to year, the videos that top the viewership, and it varies between music clips, commercials, TV programs, and others.

As of May 2019, there were more than 500 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute and 1 billion hours of content watched on YouTube every day.

YouTube was the reason why a large segment of viewers abandoned television to turn to the screens of their electronic devices.

(Reuters)

Channels


According to a study published by the Pew Research Center, television channels on YouTube quickly emerged.

The experience changed the behavior of a large segment of viewers who abandoned television to move towards the screens of their electronic devices.

And if it is still difficult for anyone to own a channel on television, because satellite screens are very expensive, then this has become possible on YouTube, and their obsession has become how to attract the largest number of viewers, subscribers and subscriptions in the shortest possible period and how they achieve through that an important source for income and profit.

YouTube is no longer restricted to media institutions or satellite TV channels, or interested persons from among journalists and others. This site performs distinguished services, especially its prominent role in recent world events.

Some Arab youth participated in the experiment, registering a revolution in the field of establishing youth channels in their various forms and contents.

Some of them include features of the political and social reality existing in their countries in a satirical and attractive manner. Most of these channels depend in their production, filming and presentation on the youth element, and discuss various issues and topics within innovative templates that differ from what the viewer is familiar with on the traditional screen. Easily to the minds of viewers away from the language of traditional dialogue.

YouTube has faced criticism for hosting videos ostensibly aimed at children but containing violence or sexual overtones.

(Al Jazeera)

Criticism and blocking


YouTube presents itself as an easy way to view video clips, allowing a large number of users to publish their ideas and introduce themselves to others, but the content that users broadcast makes this tool sometimes useful when spreading knowledge and morals, and a destructive message when spreading racism, hatred and what is contrary Other morals.

Critics of YouTube complain that it does not place any obstacles in front of unacceptable contents, and that it suffices with warnings intended to raise moral and legal embarrassment more than it is intended to interfere in favor of law and morals, especially since this site does not give the opportunity to review the clips before publishing them.

YouTube was criticized on several levels, including with regard to intellectual property, for which the site does not take great precautions according to the affected institutions, as it suffices to place an advertisement “Do not upload clips from TV”, and several lawsuits were filed against YouTube for this reason, and the matter ended with an agreement between This site and the institutions that publish films require a kind of cooperation that allows these institutions to publish some of their productions via YouTube.

YouTube has been blocked in many countries, including China, Iran, Thailand, Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, and others. In Tunisia, the site has been blocked since August 2007 because of the political videos of the parties opposing the ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and making sarcastic jokes about him.

The ban was lifted on January 13, 2011, before it was lifted.

YouTube has also faced criticism about some of its operations, including its handling of copyrighted content in uploaded videos, its recommendation algorithms that support videos that promote conspiracy theories and falsehoods, and hosting of videos ostensibly aimed at children but containing violence or sexual overtones. .

The American Time magazine selected YouTube on the Internet as an important person in 2006 for its role in giving the opportunity to its visitors to produce the materials that they display on the site.