Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas): YouTube

Before 2005, there weren't really any websites that allowed people to share videos with others via the Internet. Back then, you'd have to watch videos that were uploaded on specific websites. It wasn't until three Paypal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim were inspired to create a website that would make it easy to share videos with others after a dinner party in San Fransisco in 2004 where the trio complained how there was no simple way to watch and share video clips online. On Valentine's day in 2005, these three would found YouTube, a website that would become the biggest video-distribution platform on the Internet, generate billions of dollars annually, and be visited by billions of people around the world. It would also become a foundation for the rise of Internet celebrities, people who would become widely popular from the videos they post online. Using the model depicting Roger's Diffusion of Innovations theory, I will present a few major events that I believe are significant in how YouTube greatly impacted our lives and changed how we share videos online.

In 2005, two major events happened in YouTube's history after it launched earlier that year. While in beta, on April 23rd, 2005, one of the founders, Jawed Karim, would upload the first video on YouTube called, "Me at the Zoo." The video was a short, 19-second clip of Jawed Karim talking about elephants and their trunks at a zoo in San Diego. The other major event that happened in 2005 occurred in Septemeber, where a video on YouTube became the first video to garner one-million views as well as becoming YouTube's first viral video. The first viral YouTube video was a Nike ad, where a soccer player, Ronaldinho, received a pair of golden boots. Later on, Nike would also be one of the first major companies that adopted YouTube and saw it as a new platform to promote future products to consumers. By the end of 2005, YouTube would exit out of beta and publicly launch for the rest of the world to use.

In 2006, two other major events occurred that would be the beginning of the YouTube we know today. In February 2006, a clip from NBC's show, Saturday Night Live, went viral and brought more attention to the site. However, NBC wasn't happy about people posting these clips on the site and asked YouTube to take them down, which they did. Although in June 2006, YouTube would make a deal with NBC and would then promote their TV lineup. This deal would be the start to bring other traditional media companies into the digital era and form important partnerships. YouTube would also, later on, launch the Content Verification Program in October, which would help content owners like NBC remove videos that would violate copyright laws. The other major event that happened in late 2006 was Google buying YouTube for about $1.65 billion and called it, "the next step in the evolution of the Internet."

In 2007, multiple events happened that would allow YouTube to take off and gain the late majority. In May 2007, YouTube would introduce the Partner Program, a program that would allow 'YouTubers' to monetize their videos and earn money from it. This specific decision from the company would allow their users to finally turn their hobbies into careers and businesses. One example of someone who benefitted from this program was Michael Buckley. According to a New York Times article, Michael Buckley, creator of the "What the Buck Show," he earned more money from his videos than he did from his day job's salary as an assistant for a music company. The article also went on to report as well that the most successful users on the site earned around six-figure incomes from their videos around 2007-2008. In July 2007, YouTube would then partner with CNN to host the presidential debate for the 2008 election. YouTube would allow its users to submit video questions, which CNN would then show those videos to the presidential candidates and they would have to answer them on live TV. This was an extremely ambitious idea for the time, and it would become the first time in history where videos generated by online users would drive the debate.

At this point in time, I consider 2009 to be the tipping point for YouTube in its history. In 2009, YouTube would become more mainstream and garner a bigger audience as the United States Congress would launch multiple official YouTube channels. Even the Vatican launched its own YouTube channel soon after. This decision would help Americans attain a new level of access that could've never been done before without YouTube and the Internet. The music company, Vivendi also teamed up with YouTube to launch Vevo, a music video service that would be able to exclusively post music videos themselves onto YouTube via official Vevo channels.

I consider the time between 2011-2013 to be the years where late adopters started to use YouTube. Most of these late adopters were mostly users from the rest of the world as more and more countries got access to YouTube as well as getting it localized in their language (as of 2019, YouTube is available in 91 countries). In 2011, YouTube was one of the few online platforms that played a huge role in spreading messages of freedom and democracy to the rest of the world. During the start of the Arab Spring, activists used platforms like YouTube to post videos of protests to help bring awareness to the movement. These videos would become viral. In 2012, people all over the world were able to watch a live-stream of the summer Olympics through YouTube for the first time ever, and YouTube would also become the "go-to" place for the 2012 presidential election as it would live stream speeches and provide coverage over the election via YouTube's Elections Hub. Also in 2012, YouTube would hit another milestone as a K-Pop (Korean Pop) star, PSY, would become a worldwide phenomenon as his music video, "Gangnam Style," would be the first to gain 1-billion views in less than 5 months.

Then there are the laggards, which I believe like goes from 2016-2019. During this time, YouTube had expanded to more than just a video-sharing site. Today, you're able to watch videos, movies, live streams, and tv shows. YouTube, like many other popular entertainment sites, also has a subscription service called YouTube Premium, where it allows you to watch any video ad-free and also gives you exclusive access to original shows and movies, some of them starring popular YouTubers. Despite many of YouTube's success and huge impacts across the Internet and the world as a whole, it also brought issues. In the past few years, YouTube has been criticized for multiple operations that they handle including, its decision over copyrighted material in uploaded videos, its recommendations algorithm that's been found to help spread and promote conspiracy videos and "fake news," hosting videos targeted towards children than include violent or sexually suggestive content involving popular characters, and ad policies that constantly change to determine what can be monetized with advertising. Despite all this, YouTube is now 2nd most visited website of all time and it still rakes in billions of dollars of revenue for Google.

Sources:
https://www.businessinsider.com/key-turning-points-history-of-youtube-2013-2#in-a-little-over-5-months-gangnam-style-hit-1-billion-views-in-december-2012-22
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/11/business/media/11youtube.html
https://interestingengineering.com/youtube-its-history-and-impact-on-the-internet
https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/10/17268102/youtube-demonetization-pewdiepie-logan-paul-casey-neistat-philip-defranco