Youtube.coms Way of Producing Value and Transforming it Into Money - Essay Example

Order 147704 Topic: Review of Youtube.com, Youtube.com’s Way of Producing Value and Transforming it Into Money Introduction This paper seeks to analyse and discuss the modes of the value production, the kind of labour involved or exploited, and the business model behind the web surface of Youtube.com. Specifically, this will answer the questions:” How does that website produce value and how does it transform that value into money? How does it exploit or valorise the free labour of users or the collective free production of the public?” Youtube.com is a popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. It was just founded in February 2005 by three employees of PayPal. It service utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video and it therefore has a wide variety of site content including movie and TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging. Just after a year from creation, the company was named TIME magazines "Invention of the Year" for 2006 and in the same year about October 2006, Google, Inc., announced its acquisition of the company for $1.65 billion USD in Googles stock (Wikipedia, 2006) (Paraphrasing made) You Tubes uses video playback technology that allows the company to display videos with quality comparable to more established video playback technologies that generally require the user to download and install a small piece of software called a browser plug-in in order to watch video. Although the Flash itself requires a plug-in, said plug-in is generally found on approximately 90% of Internet-connected computers, hence users could easily download. It was the use of this technology that explains a key component of company’ success as it viewers watch video instantly without installing software or dealing with a common problem found in other video technologies stock According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million clips are viewed daily on You Tube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours (Wikipedia, 2006) (Paraphrasing made). You Tube business must have come to what was predicted long ago where the users of its website may be considered the ‘technocrats’ or part of the ‘knowledge class’. In the early 1970’s Bell (1973) predicted the advent of the information society would which inevitably lead to the hegemony of the creators of information: the Knowledge Class. Touraine (1974) was predicted also about the new dominant class [of technocrats] which defined as knowledge and a certain level of education. Youtube.coms production chain operational strategy and how the production of video content works. Youtube.coms production chain operational strategy is a combination of contributions from creative labour and immaterial labour. Creative labour is part of the Creative Professionals which Richard Florida (2002) described as those “who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and healthcare professions, and business management. These people engage in creative problem-solving, drawing on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Doing so typically requires a high degree of formal education and thus a high level of human capital.” On the other hand, immaterial labour may refer to what Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2000) described as ‘not imposed or organised from the outside, as it was in previous forms of labour, but rather, cooperation is completely immanent to the labouring activity itself. The same authors thus observed that today ‘productivity, wealth, and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational, and affective networks.’ (Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire, page 294.) (Richard Barbrook, n.d.) (Paraphrasing made). Lazzarato, M. (n.d) also explained that people now lives in a post-industrial society where the immaterial workers satisfy a demand by the consumer and at the same time establish that demand and the fact that immaterial labour produces subjectivity and economic value at the same time demonstrates how capitalist production has invaded our lives and has broken down all the oppositions among economy, power, and knowledge. ( With visitors and users having the freedom to upload videos at You Tube’s Website, the virtually become part of the free labour or immaterial labour that enhances the value of the company to same users. The uploaded videos are of interest to other users of the websites and this is creating big traffic in the website everyday. On the other side, the professionals or entities hired by the company to maintain the functioning of its website may be considered as the creative labour. The founders of the company took advantage of these current realities brought out by the power of the Internet to create value to its customers. The interactions created in the companies company’s website resulted in various companies across industries to promote their products and services thus making the You Tube’s website a very good site to advertise. In explaining the reality of free labour under digital economy, Terranova, T. (2005) acknowledged the role of continuous, creative, innovative labour in the digital economy as the ground of market value. She then observed that the process of valorisations (the production of monetary value) happens by foregrounding the quality of the labour that literally animates the commodity (Paraphrasing made). This must be the same thing as the product of ‘general intellect referred to by Virno (n.d.) in Postfordism. Said general intellects includes formal and informal knowledge, imagination, ethical tendencies, mentalities and ‘language games’ and what could be produced by these are thoughts and discourses to function in themselves as productive ‘machines’ in contemporary labour and do not need to take on a mechanical body or an electronic soul. (Virno,n.d.) (Paraphrasing made). Conclusion The company produces value by contributions from creative and immaterial labours by their uploading and downloading activities. The opportunities to make upload and download video files from the company’s website are the things that encourage people to visit the cite and where people meet and know each other there are interactions created and interactions spread knowledge about cultures and events and also about products and services. Advertising opportunities come out as result for You Tube. References: Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: a venture in social forecasting, Basic Books, New York conflicts and culture in the programmed society, Wildwood House, London . Lazzarato, M. (n.d), Immaterial Labour {www document} URL http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm, , Accessed January 9, 2007 Negri, A. and Hardt, M. (2000), Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass Richard Barbrook (n.d.) The Class of the New {www document} URL http://www.theclassofthenew.net/the_class_of_the_new.pdf, Accessed January 4, 2007 Richard Florida (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class: and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life, Basic, New York 2002. Terranova, T. (2005), Free Labour: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy {www document} URL http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary, Accessed January 3, 2007 Touraine, A. (1974 )The Post-Industrial Society: tomorrow’s social history – classes, Virno, P. (n.d.) General Intellect {www document} URL, http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno10.htm, Accessed January 9, 2007 Wikipedia, (2006) You Tube, {www document} URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube.com, Accessed January 3, 2007 Read More