So YouTube is five years old. And what do we have to show for it? A video of a baby biting his brother's finger, watched by 190 million people and counting, making it the most popular video ever on the site.
Yeah, thanks for that. But don't worry, it's not all rubbish. There's the sneezing panda of course, watched by more than 60 million people.
However despite such popular nonsense, there is no denying YouTube's impact has been profound - with two billion views per day currently - making embedded video on blogs such as this and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook an effortless, viral and widespread reality while turning bedroom creatives and online activists into overnight celebrities:
At the heart of much discussion has been the relationship between YouTube and the traditional media. This relationship has often been an uneasy one. Disputes over the use and abuse of copyrighted media have been a constant theme but at the heart is a wonderful, if awkward, symbiosis. We have seen television content become a YouTube sensation - see Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent - immediately bestowing greater success and global spotlight for the show and the channel which originated the clip.
It's no coincidence the mainstream shows that have benefitted most from the viral effect of YouTube are those programmes and broadcasts whose content can be broken down into short, easily digested clips - from song and dance routines to famous sporting moments.
In fact, it could easily be argued the popularity of YouTube and it's reduction of our collective attention span, has fundamentally changed the way we consume any form of video and the structure therefore of mainstream programming.
This clip from Charlie Brooker - for a while earlier this year the best-rated and most-reviewed clip of all time on YouTube - best reveals the revolution that has taken place. It's traditional broadcast content in a perfect, easily-digested two-minute chunk, which satirises its parent's obsession with formula, in a formula perfectly crafted for the ascending broadcast platform of the age. If you're still with me; if that ain't post-modern I don't know what is!
But if you want to really understand where the complementing ends and YouTube's own uniqueness begins, just look at the figures. YouTube may lack a single defining moment of mass audience engagement: compare the 190 million people who have watched 'Charlie Bit My Finger', spread over the past two years - at around 10,000 per hour on average - with the 715 million who all sat down simultaneously, during the same two hour period, to watch the last World Cup Final, or even the 600 million who tuned in for just nine minutes to watch The Grand National. But what it lacks in 'prime time' YouTube more than makes up for in relentlessness and breadth of content. There is no one definining moment; but rather there are millions of them, simultaneously, one after the other, one on top of the other. That is why it works, because we choose.
And then of course there is the democratisation of broadcast. You'd have thought with 500-plus channels and programme options available on many consumer cable and satellite services we wouldn't need this bottomless pit of random video. But traditional broadcasters could have a million channels and the mindset and heritage they brought to the table would determine that they'd still never have come up with anything so unnecessary yet truly captivating as 'Where the Hell is Matt' (28 million views):
And ultimately that's the greatest lesson we've learned from YouTube's unceasing rise. No matter how silly or surreal - and the odds still seem stacked in favour of the bizarre - anything can now get the audience it deserves, however you choose to interpret that.
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