[Initial Perspective] YouTube That Changed the World and Reflections on What Comes Next

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Hye-sun] Today is the birthday of the video platform YouTube. YouTube was born on February 15, 2005 (Korean time). The background of YouTube's birth was simple. It was because people could not find the video of singer Janet Jackson's exposure incident during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show on the internet. YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, with $1,150 in a shabby garage in Silicon Valley, sought a way for everyone to easily create and share videos. The name they created, 'YouTube,' means 'You are the television,' or 'Television for you.'

YouTube allowed users to embed content on other sites and watch videos via links without logging in. YouTube grew rapidly, and by around June 2006, 65,000 new videos were uploaded daily, reaching 100 million video views. However, facing financial difficulties due to continuous investment, the two founders sold their 'child' YouTube to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion (about 2 trillion won). At the time, there were many voices about the 'bubble theory,' but this decision allowed Google to hold the 'goose that lays golden eggs.' Fourteen years after Google's acquisition, YouTube's corporate value increased 100-fold, surpassing 200 trillion won. In the fourth quarter of last year alone, YouTube's advertising revenue reached $7.96 billion (10.1012 trillion won).

Together with digital technology, YouTube has changed the world. People easily recorded moments they wanted to capture instead of just 'watching,' stored and shared these records on media. YouTube led not only user enjoyment but also socio-cultural revolution. It even took over the place of TV and radio. People who cut off TV and watch broadcasts via internet streaming services (code cutters) hastened the end of the television business. The age spectrum of content consumers is also broad, ranging from 3 to 80 years old. Over 2 billion users log in to YouTube worldwide every month, and the total video playback time exceeds 1 billion hours per day. Last year, YouTube was the most used application by Koreans, with a total usage time of 17.5 billion hours. There are claims that YouTube's economic impact on Korea reached 2 trillion won.

Content creators are also diverse regardless of age or gender. Grandma Park Mak-rye, who has 1.25 million subscribers, was born in 1947. The main character of Rabbit, Your Owner, with 1.05 million subscribers, was born between 2011 and 2012. Teenagers and people in their twenties also use YouTube for information searches.

There is still no groundbreaking video platform surpassing YouTube. The short-form video platform TikTok threatened its position, but YouTube's active expansion of its 'Shorts' business, which collects videos under 60 seconds, has increased its influence. However, in the rapidly changing digital world, the YouTube era will eventually come to an end. Just as Yahoo, which dominated the internet portal market in the 1990s 'dot-com era,' made a bitter exit after 22 years. What will be the world after YouTube? Will it be the super-large artificial intelligence (AI) resembling the human brain? Before welcoming a new world, we must develop media literacy, the ability to critically understand information provided by media. There is no information or media that is only kind.