Online video has improved by leaps and bounds during the past few years. There's more of it, for sure, but the quality is much much higher (bigger screen sizes, fewer pauses when watching). This change is largely about improvements in technology - digital video cameras are much more common (including on standard digitial cameras and cell phones), highspeed internet access is much more common (important for watching videos but also for uploading them to the internet), video editing software has become far less expensive (often free online or pre-installed on newly purchased computers), and online storage (server space) has dropped dramatically in price.
That last one, the price of online storage, has been revolutionary - without it, companies like YouTube would not be able to host videos from millions of users without charging them a dime. The (relative) ease of creating video, uploading it to the web, and storing it in an easy-to-access environment is starting to impact the way our society gets its news. Think about it - anyone with a digital camera can capture a news event on their cell phone video camera and save it to a YouTube account. Anyone remember the 2006 senate race in Virginia? The popular incumbent running for re-election started to lose steam after a YouTube video showed him insulting his oponent's campaign worker. He later lost the election. The video spread like wildfire in large part because of YouTube's video embedding function. All YouTube videos offer code that allow you to embed a video (it doesn't have to be yours - you can embed any video you find on YouTube) on your web site or blog. Look below where an outstanding video is embedded. Content
Now, please understand that it's not just serious stuff - reporting, politics, etc. There's thousands and thousands of fun, even useless, videos on YouTube for your watching pleasure from old commercials (Life Cereal, Colgate Toothpaste), local history (Kingdome) and classic Seattle hip-hop. But what about public libraries? How about showcasing the opening of new facilities? Or Story Times? Author interviews? There are many opportunities to use video out there. There's even library dominoes... Social Networking? YouTube employs many of the social networking components we've seen in previous Learning 2.0 lessons - all videos are tagged (you can't upload a video without adding at least one) and video watchers are able to comment on what they've watched. YouTube has also introduced an online video editor which is perfect for making simple edits to cell phone videos. Google. Again. YouTube is no longer the fresh-faced start-up company it was - they become part of Google in 2006. Google paid $1.6 billion for the company. Google got into the video game too late and decided it was smarter business to acquire their main competitor. Discovery Exercise
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