Youtube: my one-year anniversary emits thoughts as a device

I was fairly late in joining Youtube – one year ago today, the day after I launched this Web site.

My roommate first told me about the video sharing and hosting site in November 2005, a year after it launched and a year before Google purchased it. However, I didn’t even think to join it until last December, when I put this site up and realized it was decidedly 1999-like without any multimedia.

Video was a first go. One year later, I have some thoughts on Youtube’s use as a social networking tool, how it moves forward and what it will mean in the future.

I just updated my channel last month. Made my background gray, organized my videos, juggled my subscribers and friends. Before that I took all my episodes from my travel blogging and podcasting with NBC’s Junior year Abroad and put them in a playlist, so one might watch them all collectively.

Maybe that’s working. I have nine subscribers and 14 friends. While that is certainly not heavy numbers in even my own social networking experience, I joined Youtube more for its hosting than its viewing and sharing, yet these and others continue to find and watch my videos there, instead of here, on My Life To-do List, on my MySpace page, at WeDontSpeaktheLanguage.com or elsewhere I’ve posted them.

My Youtube page has been viewed more than 1,000 times in a year and my 40 videos have been seen nearly 8,000 times. Despite my own age – low 20s – and the perception of social networking as a youthful endeavor, a third of those views come from folks between 35 and 44, according to statistics provided by Youtube (see chart below). Of course, online ages are subject to volunteering that information, but it seems interesting, still. I also might add that, of course, the ladies like my material – 51 percent of my views.

christopher-wink-youtube-video-demographics — Click to look closer.

So people have watched my videos. No startling numbers – my top watched video is at 1,800 views, but that has nothing more to do with me than being in my old neighborhood – though I wish views could be calculated from videos posted on foreign Web sites. That is, how many times has the video of me at the Eiffel Tower been viewed on my personal Web site.

The site does clearly offer a platform I wouldn’t have had in 2005.

In a year’s time, less than 50 people have clicked to my site from my Youtube channel, according to my WordPress statistics. Still, though that number is small relative to my overall page views, that is the single most traffic my site has received from a single profile of mine on a social networking site, other than my Facebook page.

But because I have quite a bit more content on Youtube than Facebook, it’s fair to say Youtube is better video hosting and sharing site than social utility. It does breach a wider demographic – it’s become a regular tool and diversion for older folks – and also at least one of my Youtube videos makes it to the first page of Web searches of my name, sometimes two or even three on some days. Having a presence in more than form of media is valuable indeed.

It’s what I learned about Facebook, and then decided about MySpace and others, it helps to, at the least, sign up and develop a profile. If you’re interested or involved in any media industry – anywhere that your name is your brand – then jam up those those Web searches of your name, be aggressive in determining what potential employers or clients or interviews will see and know about you.