April 7, 2012
The Beast With A Billion Eyes
/TIME, April 2, 2012, Page 42-47/
Introduction
In Japan, the average time consumed to watch a TV is rapidly declining especially among younger generation. This trend is not only domestic but also worldwide, happening everywhere the TV is a major source of information and entertainment. But people do not loose their interests in multimedia. Instead, they are finding a alternative media provider: YouTube.
Briefing
YouTube has started as a video shearing website in early 2005, and now it is the world-largest broadcaster and the most successful advertising agency. Its success is supported by the enormous scale of its contents: 60 hours video is uploaded for every minute, and its web trafic: more than 4 billion pages are viewed per day.
But such a scale is its enemy at the same time. No matter how it contains rich video contents, they are useless if they are distributed without order. Unlike webpages, videos are very difficult to classify for YouTube owner: Google, because computers are able to store the videos but not to get any images and ideas from them to sort them out.
There is another structural problem in YouTube when it is compared with the TV. When you turn on your TV, it will automatically provide you with news and entertainments. But in the case of YouTube, you need to find something you might get interested in. Google is trying to broadcast a relevant videos effectively for every individuals with their own interests, by introducing an idea of ‘channel,’ which is a certain group that every users can compose of any videos on YouTube, for example March 11th earthquake news channel.
Opinion
This article points out that the idea of channel is pushing YouTube to a TV-like media and concerns about a competition with the conventional advertising business model. As a consumer, I think that YouTube is superior to TV in meeting our interests precisely, but I cannot give up the rich entertainment made by profesional. Power balance in advertisement industry should be adjusted as far as viewers enjoy the features of both of these media.
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