If you haven’t heard of YouTube.com by now, you’ve been living in a hole. So, what is YouTube, you ask? It’s a site where you can share, view and comment on videos. For free.
The site’s tagline is “broadcast yourself”, and that’s exactly what millions of users worldwide have been doing since 2005. Should the mood strike, you could upload clips of yourself dancing to the Spice Girls. Or you could take a more voyeuristic approach and watch everyone else’s clips.
The Appearance
The site is pretty bland – it’s mainly text and little movie frames. But you don’t go to YouTube to ooh and ahh over how it looks, you’re there for the videos. It’s pretty foolproof in that you just type what you’re looking for in the Search box on the top right, hit 'Enter', and you’re away laughing.
The Content
As far as content goes, YouTube is a little off the wall. You’ll find old footage of early Nirvana concerts in the same breath as Jem and the Holograms, the Napolean Dynamite dance scene or old-school Beverly Hills 90210 episodes. You can watch snippets from your fave movies, catch up on missed TV episodes, or in my case, watch uploaded movies of your friends doing stupid things. The site also has little ‘recommendation’ boxes, where it suggests other clips you might like if you enjoyed the current one. By the way – even though anyone can upload their clips, YouTube is generally pretty tame. You’re unlikely to come across little Johnny’s porn collection. Phew.
The Extras
I like the fact that I can watch clips of my friends in the UK doing silly things, and can then comment on them. By setting up a free YouTube account, members can save videos into their favourites, and subscribe to videos submitted by certain users. If you’re at all concerned about privacy, you can make your videos accessible to friends-only. But you don’t need to set up an account to enjoy YouTube, you can just browse away to your heart’s content.
Overall ranking: 7/10 YouTube gets a good rating because of its potential for hilarity and time wasting. My only criticism is that it needs a fast computer to download the clips, and if you’re paying for bandwidth, you might want to exercise a little restraint. My favourite clips? Search for ‘The Evolution Of Dance’, ‘Star Wars Kid’, and any of the old Saturday Night Live snippets with Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell before they were famous. Classic.
If you haven’t heard of YouTube.com by now, you’ve been living in a hole. So, what is