YouTube as a Social Network

Yes, sometimes I do actual work on here.

How is YouTube a social network? 
A social network can be described as any place people congregate and share things about themselves. For example, on Facebook people are constantly moaning about homework, the weather, being ill, their siblings, the weirdo down the street, veneral diseases and so on, because this is a very social thing to do on the internet. People think you're being unfriendly if you're not slagging off their best friend for being a total b****.

So as a social medium, YouTube works in very much the same way. In fact, I'd say it was more akin to blogging, but with videos. You can video your day and upload it to YouTube and anyone who is following you can instantly be updated on your life. They can then comment on your video, or post a video response, or even be as sociable as to click a little thumbs up or thumbs down button to express their opinions of your video. 

How is video 'social' on YouTube?
Video is literally one of two ways that you can communicate on YouTube, the other being the YouTube-based private messaging service that no one pays attention to. But in terms of these videos being used as social tools, I think they work very well.

I personally follow a "vlog", which is essentially a blog in video form, in order to be updated on this person's life. And these days, because of the integration of so many social networking sites, if I like or post a comment on a video, then a post appears on my Wall on Facebook showing the video I have liked or my comment. This way, all of my friends can see exactly what kind of videos I'm into, and can decide effectively if they want to continue being my friend based on what they see. How social is that?

Is YouTube important, significant, social or new? 
This is a stupid question. YouTube is all of those things. YouTube is probably the most important video streaming site on the net, because it is so widely viewed and is just far easier to use than any other streaming sites such as Blip. In fact, YouTube has become so vast and significant that people can enter "YouTube partnerships" in which YouTube pay them based on how many views their videos get. Wish I could do that.

I've talked about the social aspects of YouTube to death, so let's move on. Since YouTube is only a few years old, and certainly didn't really kick off properly until about 2006, it is one of the newest things in the world. Or you know, it isn't. But every single second there is a new video, in fact, I'd wager that there is akin to about 100 videos going up every minute, and so it is entirely impossible to track every video that goes up. So how you can describe YouTube as not new is absolutely beyond me. It is literally the newest thing in existance. Why? It just got updated. With 25, no 37, no wait sorry it's 1,145 new videos. And that's only right now. By the time you finish reading this sentence there'll be more new videos on the web than there is stars you can count in the sky. Of course, by the time you've finished counting all of the stars in the sky (at night, doing it in the day doesn't count because there's just one) there will be more videos than there are stars in the universe.

I think I've made my point.

Pete out.