When Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube back in 2005 -- the trio simply wanted to create a better way of sharing videos. So from its inception, YouTube, has been a social tool. A tool that not only allows for the sharing of cat videos but allows businesses to market their latest products.
Over the past 7 years, YouTube has evolved exponentially. I remember the very first video shared by Jawed Karim -- Me at the Zoo. It was uploaded at 8:27p.m. on Saturday April 23rd, 2005. It's a typical YouTube video which runs for 19 seconds.
- 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute
- Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day
- YouTube's demographic is broad: 18-54 years old
- 800M unique users visit YouTube each month
The stats are impressive to say the least. And for any one outlet, blogger or company to ignore the YouTube "laws of attraction" is just being foolish. YouTube is a tool that must be used in any marketing campaign. But questions of "how" is this medium used effectively are still a mystery to most.
One very clever use of YouTube was done by Immunoprecipitation. These folks created an interactive video "guide to help find the optimal product for your specific experiment." This is a very smart use of interactive videos. This clearly works well for choosing products. But I am also thinking of how customer service can use this technique or even technical support.
Let me know what you are thinking.
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