The Consumer Video Website

When my brother in law, Gerry Malixi sent me an email containing a URL, I clicked on it and caught the sight of a slightly bald man in jeans and T-shirt imitating the Elvis hip-swivel, twisting the Chubby checker-style, strutting like John Travolta, before moving like a zombie from Michael Jackson's thriller. It attracted me instantly as well as other millions of people in the globe! This clip is popularly known as Judson Laipply's six-minute mini dance movie, The Evolution of Dance. This was when I fell in love with YouTube.com.

Now, along with free music download sites such a Spiral Frog, the video filesharing website is planning to bust the paid-for downloads market by posting a copy of every single music video ever made on its site. But YouTube in particular is definitely 2006's Internet phenomenon.

Alongside sites such a Flux, SelfcastTV and Addicting Clips, YouTube allows people to share videos. Apart from that, viewers can rate what they see, add comments or create a video riposte. All these tools facilitate a highly creative community that is both public and personal, and it's great!

Since Chad Hurley and Steven Chen launched YouTube in December 2005, the popularity of the site exploded, with millions of videos viewed each day. As far as my research had gone, YouTube is currently the 15th most-visited website in the world and it wouldn't come to me as a surprise if it would suddenly be in the world's top three.

What dragged myself into this website was the sheer range of footage. Where else could you find footages of Kate Moss's infamous indiscretion, or my dumb favourite, the silly Paris Hilton in The Simple Life episodes with stick thin ex-best friend, Nicole Ritchie? Or my favourite singers Celine Dion and Whitney Houston? Or socialites Victoria and David Beckham? Or even soldiers performing in the Iraqi desert or July's Hands Off Lebanon hinting at its potential to engage young people on a political level? And a whole lot of other entertaining clips! But I feel that the most remarkable bit of the website is that a majority of the videos are done by regular people. It's nice to see how everyone's interests and paths in life differ.

Video sites are actually a new form of media with a future alongside TV, radio, newspapers and blogs, but if let's say for example, you're a kid in Lebanon, you can film footage on your phone and text it to Selfcast and, within a couple of minutes, millions of people could be watching that video. And people can respond as well. Apart from providing entertainment, the website can also be an eye opener.