Video Blogging and the 21st Century

Have you noticed how YouTube has suddenly come out of nowhere to be seen everywhere on blogs in the last couple of months?

YouTube was founded less than a year ago by two ex-PayPal employees. Their growth has been spectacular. They've been growing much faster than Google Video, probably mostly because they seem to be ignoring copyright issues (unlike Google) and they let everyone post the videos directly from their blogs (something Google just announced they have also started doing this week).

Most blogging platforms, including Blogger, will enable you to display a YouTube clip on your site. Here's an example (Jon Stewart discussing Hilary Clinton's "The Look") below:


I stopped watching the news on TV a long time ago. I can't take it seriously anymore. A lot of other people feel this way. A huge chunk of the younger generation now lists a comedy show (the Daily Show) as their main source of news. Yesterday Alyson Wardhas wrote an excellent summary about how Stewart's Daily Show may represent the future of what news will look like in the 21st century.

See also an interesting discussion about YouTube here at Matthew Haughey's site.

Here's the traffic growth over the New Year comparing YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video and IFilm. Source: Hitwise



Update October 2006: YouTube was just snapped up by Google for 1.6 billion. It may sound like a ton of money for a company that's not even two years old and has less than 70 employees, but hey, it really is the future of television.