YouTube is a viral video sharing site, with many of the same features as the other social web services that we've already examined (personalised accounts, tagging, voting for favorites, bookmarking). YouTube is, however, the only one of these services that hosts video of my college dorm being demolished with explosives.
There are a bunch of other great Sorby-related videos too, if that's your scene, (but really, why would it be?...)
Back to YouTube. If you create an account, you're able to search videos, favorite them, compile playlists, rate videos and interact with other users by leaving comments and by preparing video reponses. This allows a conversation to form around certain content.
YouTube doesn't allow videos to be downloaded (as a way of retaining attribution) but several web-utilities that can encode YouTube videos for downloading do exist, so it is possible (though not convenient) to take your favorite YouTube clip with you.
In further evidence that Web 2.0 is catching on, YouTube was also recently used as the medium to pose questions to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidates in the first CNN / YouTube debate. YouTube puts user-generated video front and center on the web. The fact that these are video clips that can be viewed by anyone may also make YouTube the first web 2.0 service to cross over into the mainstream. I would argue that it is certainly the most popular / widely known of the 23 things!! With recurring themes like the Mentos & Coke fountains
and the excellent treadmill music video,
there's no limit to the power of YouTube!
