Evolution of YouTube
On the “way back machine” I chose the website, YouTube. I frequent YouTube quite often, but not as much as I used to. YouTube used to be apart of my everyday life because I was subscribed to a lot of channels. I remember the first time I went onto YouTube. I know I was young because my mom and her friend told me I shouldn’t be on it. I really did not know what it was, I went on it because I saw my mom’s friend on it, she was watching the “free hugs” video that was probably one of the first viral videos on YouTube. I was really moved at the idea of sharing videos for the world to see. I was so young and YouTube was so new that I could not really comprehend what it was. Of course I snuck onto YouTube without my parents permission because, why not? A few years later when my babysitter would come over (more of a family friend), we would watch videos that this one group of teenagers put up every week. It really became a part of my life. I think this was the first time I was using technology as a toy and not a resource.
I searched back to the first screen grab of YouTube, it wasn’t anything I expected, and the site included a dating search bar under the site’s main search bar. “Are you a F/M, seeking F/M, age, etc.”? I am starting to wonder if that was the reason my mom did not want me on it in the fifth grade. I hopped around for a little big and clicked on a screen grab from 2008…a prime time of when I would use it. The popular videos on the homepage were some of the channels I would watch at that time. One screen grab had a video under the most viewed section entitled “Why is Iraq a Concern?” At that time, President Bush was about to get out of office, and it makes complete sense as to why that video would be a highly viewed one.
Flipping through the years, the site became simpler to use. Very straight forward I would say. I noticed that each year, sometimes different months, things would move around the homepage. The biggest thing I noticed was how different years had different popular videos, which is kind of obvious. All of the things pertaining to what was happening we the most viewed. It was very interesting to see what year brought on certain videos and what people were finding interesting to watch.
