YouTube as a Social Media Platform - Essay Example

YouTube Social Media PlatformIntroductionWith the growing rise in technological advancements, it is quite clear that the modes of communications have equally increased. Indeed this has affected our way of living in different ways positively and negatively. Social media platform entails web-based and mobile technologies that turn communication into social interactions between organizations, communities, and individuals. The social media technologies further subdivide into magazines, social blogs, microblogging, photography, videos, podcasts, pictures, web blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and internet forums (Funk 8).

Social platforms have diverse applications that include communication, entertainment, marketing, multimedia, and authority building (Bellamy 9-13). These applications vary from one social technology in a social platform to another. For a fact, various social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo, and YouTube (Singh and Diamond 121). YouTube is a social media platform with a massive number of users. YouTube website allows the sharing of videos where users can upload, view and share video materials.

Individuals, other organizations, media corporations like BBC and CBS upload videos on YouTube and offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program. This paper will address the strong and weak features of YouTube social platform. It will equally highlight the history, success, or failure of other companies or users experience on using the Social Media Platform. Moreover, it will denote the typical demographic of the Platform users.Typical Demographic of the Platform UsersIn 2011, Americans streamed 15 billion videos on YouTube where approximately 35 hours of video get to YouTube every minute.

Indeed, there are registered and unregistered users on YouTube social media platform. Unregistered users can watch videos, while registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos. Only registered users who are above 18 years of age can access videos considered to contain offensive content. YouTube now operates as a subsidiary of Google hence has an increased number of users. Moreover, YouTube videos are equally available on some smartphones. A wide range of Apple Products, TiVo service, Android, Play station 3, and Xbox live.

As such, the users of the platform are diverse and almost everybody is at liberty to use YouTube social media platform. However, most of the users of this platform are young people who do it for entertainment and communication. About 52 % of users are women aged between 25 and 44 years old (Singh and Diamond 121).Strongest Features of the PlatformThe success and dominance of YouTube social media platform emanate from various strong features that it possesses. YouTube videos are available in a range of quality levels and users can actually upload videos up to 15 minutes each in duration.

In addition, users can upload videos of duration up to 12 hours in length. The videos are highly accessible as users have the ability to view its videos on web pages outside the site. Nielsen observes that there are about 100 million videos on YouTube (Funk 3). Moreover, users of YouTube social media platform can view the videos on YouTube in different ways including the common anaglyph for achieving the 3D effect. Additionally, the YouTube Flash player displays stereoscopic content interleaved in rows, columns or a checkerboard pattern, anaglyph, or side-by-side for a better view.

Most importantly, YouTube is available in most countries in the world hence a wide network. In matters relating to the content uploaded on YouTube, the platform has a set of community guidelines aimed to reduce abuse of the site's features. These guidelines regulate and control sexually explicit content, shock videos, hate speech, videos of animal abuse, incitement content, and content uploaded without the owner's consent.Weakest features of the PlatformThe platform has various weak features that include critics to a violation of the same guidelines it has set.

Additionally, the leeway that allows users to leave comments after viewing a video has attracted attention for the negative aspects of both their form and content. Indeed, most of the content on YouTube is very offensive where it contains defamatory, criminal incitement, pornography content. As a result, information drawn from YouTube has led to various disasters and international conflicts. Moreover, the easy access to videos on YouTube has led to the violation of copyrights and promotion of music piracy.

Indeed, YouTube suffers many lawsuits against the violation of copyrights and its inability to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. The huge number of users is also a challenge to the regulation and management of the platform. History, success, or failure of other companies or users experience on using the Social Media Platform.Facebook was established in February 2004 and uses social media platform. It assumes the number one social networking site with about 100 million users through mobile phone access.

In its early days of inception, it faced lawsuits relating to startup and originality. However, the company came through and started growing on a big scale. Its most popular feature is the ability of its users to upload photos and their ‘events’ feature, which provides the ability to organize, be part of, and plan for events. In course of expansion, the company faces privacy issues where it seemingly exposes the privacy of its users. In the short term is growingly tremendously in numbers and in products offered and plans to go it alone in building the most successful social networks.

Works CitedBellamy, Donceletta. Social networking For idiots. London: Donceletta Bellamy, 2011. Print.Funk, Tom. Social Media Playbook for Business: Reaching Your Online Community with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and More. London: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print.Singh, Shiv, and Diamond, Stephanie. Social Media Marketing For Dummies. London: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.Print.Yadav, Sid. Facebook – The Complete Biography. Mashable, 2006.Web 3 May 2012. < http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/>