This article, by Erika Morphy, brings a very interesting characteristic of the internet to light: it wants to take over everything. No, not in the destroy the world kind of way, but it wants to take over other media functions in our lives. Rather than listen to conventional radios, we now have internet radio, granting us access to almost any radio station on the planet. E-mail has taken over traditional postal services. Who needs to make a phone call when you can video chat instead?
YouTube has been changing it’s features in order to make it more interactive, more sensitive to the types of videos each person likes to “consume”.
The layout is simpler and more streamlined. The video appears at the top of the page, and the subscribe button, social actions and video information are directly underneath the player. Playlists appear to the right of the video. The changes are designed to encourage consumers to treat YouTube as a de-facto television experience, complete with the ability to channel surf. All of the tweaks serve to make the site stickier.
YouTube. Source: jeffbullas.com
This change in YouTube shows that, once again, the internet is trying to take over some integral part of our lives. However, I don’t think that the takeover, if it happens, would happen any time soon, because ” television is still a major medium that no advertiser or content provider can ignore”. Aside from this fact, television has been so ingrained in our culture that it cannot be uprooted so easily as mail or radio.
In my opinion, one of the major reasons that the internet will have trouble taking over television’s role in our lives is sports. Television companies have a strong hold on professional sports organizations, and as a result, it will be hard for internet to take their places, let alone YouTube. YouTube is known for hosting short videos, or muli-part clips that create the full episode. It is not known for full-length features. As a result, it will have trouble marketing itself as a viable option to television unless it can expand into this market.
“YouTube didn’t become the success it did by copying another media,” Bogardus said. “It created something new and different that no one had seen before. Copying an existing service seems like a step back innovation-wise, rather than a step forward.
YouTube is is an innovative company. If it does succeed in taking over television, I can’t wait to see what changes they make in order to claim dominance.