Youtube Named Times Person of the Year 2006

Well it's actually user generated content, or basically you, lol, but we all know who is responsible for the brunt of it.

Here's what i had to say after i learned about this back in 2006:


It's official, and on Monday you can buy a copy of Time Magazine to read the article behind it.

It has the youtube background for vids, pause button, full screen, all that, but instead of a video, there is a foil like box in the center, with the youtube frame around it.

At the top it says Times person of the year 2006
And at the bottom it states plainly, You.

Youtube has changed the information age, and allows user generated content.
It's search functions Rival Google and it's power is seen with the demise of a senator for his meckack remark.

Steve and Chad, have revolutionized the world. Entertainement on a new level.
The power is in your hands.

I'm glad to say I was on the Youtube Bandwagon, Wayyy before it was ever popular.
I hope now you will all join me.

Someone replied with this:

Youtube is in no way, shape, or form any sort of revolutionary identity. The revolution happened over a decade ago. The only thing special about youtube is that it's well known.

Time magazine disagrees with you.

I suggest you pick up a copy of the magazine on monday.

And i also have a feeling you don't use youtube, those who haven't used the computer, never understood it's power.

That same is true with youtube.

User generated information, voted on, favorited, vloged, spoken about, and featured, has won the time's greatest achievement.

A man running for senator, lost his senate seat because of it.

The majority agree, had he not made his racist statement, and had it not traveled on youtube, he would be in our U.S senate today.

The power in that... is amazing.

I continued to mention:

Tell me any website, that was around, before youtube, that did everything youtube does.


Someone then mentioned:

Try typing 'www.google.com' into the address bar.

My reply:

If google, is the same as youtube... and youtube didn't revolutionize anything than why did google feel like it needed to buy youtube?

Google, does not provide videos with a community, feedback systems, favoriting, your own channels, NONE of that.

Even after Youtube, people tried to copy it, like Google video, but they failed.

Google video is shutting down soon, google now owns youtube and will use it's resources there.
Google, and Youtube, are two different brands.
Two brands that would be the same would be like Google buying ask.com

Google would never buy ask.com..... why? Because they are 99% equal.
Google bought youtube, and for 1.6 billiion, because it was revolutionary, and it provided a niche that wasn't there before.

An internet media, by the people, and for the people, NO ONE has done that before.

Someone reiterated the point that youtube didn't win this award, that it was really us creating user generated content:

The Times person of the year is actually "You", to represent all bloggers, community websites and videowebsites who contribute to the "digital democracy".

I watched the Cnn documentery about this, i listened to the person who actually choose the person of the year, and he said that it was youtube that had won, it's idea, what it does.

Him describing the age of technology and sharing and content of videos is good and all, and i'm all for it, but youtube was the inspiration for it all.

Without youtube, this cover would not exist.

OH and thom... try reading my post before you post, i know about the picture, i saw it last night already, no need to remind me.

The you, plainly is a play on the phrase Youtube, If you haven't noticed, look around the reflective thing... what do you see?

Did anyone else watch Cnn's documentery about this, i should go check youtube to see if it's there.

Yes it means i'm breaking some laws.... do i care... not really.

Someone then mentioned that Wikipedia is more revolutionary than youtube:

I also think that YouTube wasn't anything revolutionary. No more than wikipedia, and I'd say less than wikipedia. Certainly it was evolution using the increasing speed available to users of the web and mainly a good business idea.

Wiki.. is more important than youtube....
Show me one person who would buy it for 1.6 billion.
Game, set, match.

No investor would feel that Wiki is better or more revolutionary than Youtube.

Youtube, was the inspiration for this cover.
It's true that it isn't exclusively youtube but a few other sites that the times article also addresses, and it's more of an idea than a site, but youtube was the inspiration.

OH and someone here mentioned youtube is a website and can't be person of the year.
A few decades ago, The computer, was person of the year.

Again, game, set, match.

AS for copyright infringement, If you buy a cd and want to share it with people, on a global scale, I HAVE no problem with it.

Someone then obnoxiously ignored the whole thread and commented on my last sentence above.

I don't think it's up to you, though?

The power is with the people.
Unless you are a totalitarian...

The government is for the people and by the people, in order to protect our civil liberties.
Its abilities stop after that point and become frivolous politics.
The power lies with us, the people.

So yes ... i believe this is up to me.

And I have made my stance.
Have you?

Some lasts points on the issue someone made:

The idea of taming livestock to be used as a source of food was revoluntionary. The idea of using electricity as a source of power to fuel anything from light bulbs to give light over expensive candels, to modern day times of powering the computer you currently are using, was revolutionary. The idea of taking food and keeping it cold to make it last longer was revolutionary. Youtube is not revolutionary.

The person who invented the refridgerator was not a revolutionist. The idea to store food to keep it cool to make it last longer was long ago thought of before the fridge ever came out. All the fridge did was make this idea convenient to the masses. Before that, it was limited to a room full of ice blocks.

The idea of massive public sharing of videos, opinions, information, data, etc, etc was well in existance long before YouTube came along. YouTube simply made sharing videos easy, a convenience. Before youtube, there was/is bit torrent, before that, peer 2 peer programs, before that, user made websites, before that, Usenet, etc etc. The idea behind the Internet itself was to be able to send and share data with people all over the world.

If anything, YouTube is no more than the VCR. But unlike the VCR, you can share vidoes with people all around the world near instantaneously.Again, it's convenience. The creators of YouTube took the idea of sharing videos, and made a simple, easy way to do it. But they weren't the first ones to do it/ think up the idea.

A product is never revolutionary, it's the idea behind the product that is. YouTube is a product of the idea that there should be a way to massively share videos with people all over the world. But that idea has been around long before YouTube.

My response:

I agree with you, so cars are not revolutionary because the idea of the wheel was thought up well in advance. [sarcasm]

Ideas always exist my friend....

It's people who take them and use them properly who win.

Ask.com fails
yahoo.com search fails
and msn.com search fails.

Google wins, Google being bigger than Disney and Time Warner put together.

The idea was there, but they sucked at it.
Google revolutionized it, and NO ONE can say google was not part of a revolution in the way we live.

You have it all wrong your analogies lack coherence.
Youtube, was the first, is the first, and has always been the first, to do what it does.

Call it what you like, there has been nothing before it, that slightly looked at it.
Even if the internet, in essence did it, Youtube was a whole other system, a community, it was marvelous.

You will not deny youtube it's much deserved credit, it is worth more than any of us may be in our whole lives. 1.6 billion.

The resistance to youtube being revolutionary continued and people fired back with this:

Let's say you do something new. I then do it while wearing a funny hat. I was the first to do what I just did, given that what I did was slightly different than what you did and therefore not the same thing. By your logic, that is.

Youtube is not slightly different than ANYTHING.

Name something that "without a hat" is youtube...

Your analogy is flawed, nothing has come near this.


Back on the copyright point someone mentioned this:

I would like to point out to you the website www.sellaband.com, where the rights of a band's music is not owned by a big recordcompany, but by the fans themselves. Profit of the band goes to the fans/investors and the SellaBand for a couple of years (I think 2 or 3) and after that the band gets everything. It's a great Dutch initiative

Lol and the tension still exists, these people never give in lol :D:

I'd even go as far as saying that YouTube used the concept of Wikipedia (or any other similar system which came earlier) as the foundation of its website. Instead of allowing people to create and upload text information, they did it with videos. They certainly didn't invent anything new, only put it in a convenient form. Convenience is everything, which is why it became so popular. It's evolution, not revolution.

With my reply i strike the killer blow:

Ohh... it' evolution... not revolution?

So the car... was an evolution on the wheel and later on the wagon, and later on the horse driven wagon?

I'm sorry.. but the Car was Revolutional.
It changed everyone's lives.

Why can't it be both? An evolution of an object, or idea, that becomes revolutional, WHY can't youtube be concidered revolutional.
The darn thing is worth 1.6 billion.
And it has added about 80 dollars to google stock, 80 BUCKS!! That's more than most companies stocks are worth.

Your spewing out NONSENSE.

Your first trying to say, WIKIPEDIA, is the FRAMEWORK of youtube....... how in the world are they alike?
Then you are saying Wiki is doing a better job than youtube is, at what it does...
YOUTUBE is completely different than wiki... in a trillion ways... i don't even see how their frameworks connect.

Can someone who agrees with him, please explain it to me?
Am i the only one who thinks WIKI is a completely different product than youtube?
Should we go off which site has more hits?
If that's the case, i'm pretty sure youtube would come out winning.

And you know why google, WILL NOT buy WIikipedia, it's not because of search.....
It's becuase it has no growth value, and it really isn't that interesting.
It's used as a reference and Entertainment trumps reference anydays.

I give you t.v versus dictionary.

One person yet remains and he says:

Wiki and youtube have the same idea behind them. That is to host a convenient way to share data with a massive amount of people freely and openly. Wiki shares data in the form of text. YouTube shares data in the form of videos. The underlying principle of the two is the same.

My reply to silence him:


Using your same analogy I underlined, that would mean the Internet would be included, as well as google, yahoo, and a MILLION other websites and items.

THAT is the most GENERAL definition of youtube i've ever heard.

And that's not it's aim.

It's Aim is to create a community that can express itself thorugh vlogs and can choose themselves, what they like, and what they like to see. All done in the form of videos.

That's a WAY better definiton of youtube.

But hey, i understand why you defined Youtube so Generally, because you needed to link it up to wikipedia ... which you can't do.

You can't... and your attempt at it, links up the whole internet..

It's like saying your related to EVERYTHING in this world... because.. you live on it... therefore.. everything is just an evolution of everything else.

Nothing is genuienly new... because.. we thought it up already.....it's VERY VERY general counterpart.

Again... the wheel and the car.

And with that the discussion was finished, it took a couple of replies but youtube will not be sold short and it's revolution will not be undermined.