My affair with Youtube

My affair with Youtube is an old one. It started with hate at first. Way back, in the beginning, the videos just did not streamed properly. There was always this drag and the need to buffer the video before actually playing it. Of course it was a big turnoff but still it fared much better than the other video sites of its time back then.

With time, Youtube kept improving itself. The buffering issues were solved and there was hardly any matching video sharing portal. It was proving far better than its contenders. After moving to Germany, I got close to it even further. It provided unadulterated entertainment at demand. It also became a means to keep in touch with the cultural changes ongoing in India. The latest trends in music, humor, sports etc were all available at the click of a mouse.

The most attractive thing I used to find about Youtube was its unbiased filtering. People could upload anything they want (excluding porn). It became a great tool to interact with people all over the world. It allowed social interaction at a level never seen or experienced before. Another interesting thing about it was the honesty and the rawness in the videos uploaded by people with no commercial intentions. It was pure unadulterated entertainment provided by normal everyday people for other similar people. It allowed true fan following without any marketing blindness. There were no advertisements involved by third parties etc. Its biggest asset was that it was non commercial to a large extent.

But further down the line with time, I felt things started changing and moving towards a more commercial domain. Google bought the whole thing and consolidated its holding on the internet market. Big money was involved. In addition to this, I feel that the people also got a bit greedy. The regular uploaders who were popular and had a big fan following because of their honest videos started receiving money from Youtube to keep the momentum going and to keep the viewers sticking to Youtube. From the uploaders perspective, it was fair. They were receiving rewards for their hard work and dedication in terms of money this time. But gradually, that money thing started making them stray away from their sincerity. Now, they kept trying to increase their subscriptions for the money and not for genuine fans. It has now become a number game. More followers or subscribers means more money.

Now Youtube has become totally commercial, with huge amount of advertisements before starting videos with no options to bypass them, the lower 20-30% of the screen is always covered with pop-up ads which sometimes have nothing to do with the viewer or the video he is watching. A lot of regular uploaders with big subscription numbers get lots of perks from Youtube and the uploaders also show off those perks to encourage more people in following them. A good piece of marketing and business strategy but diluting quality entertainment in the process.