How YouTube(rs) Work
Since YouTube was first launched in 2005, the company has evolved into something much bigger than what it was intended to be. YouTube is more than just a site for the public to post videos on. The platform helped push people to show off their abilities and allow their voices to be heard in a viral way.
The Google-owned website has become a place for visual entertainment sources and a feeding hole for advertising companies. Many, what are called ‘YouTubers’ today, withhold a generous amount of subscribers and multiplying viewers. With the appropriate numbers, YouTubers are often recognized by brands and companies and are offered money in exchange for helping the company advertise their products/services through the YouTuber’s channel.
Popular YouTuber’s such as Tanya Burr, Carli Bybel, and Tyler Oakley have been given opportunities such as creating their own books, partnering with brands, and even developing their own products.
The popularity of this new way to earn fame/income was brought about from mostly how easy the site is to use. YouTube does the majority of the hard work for you. For example, videos with different file formats can be uploaded because YouTube converts them into the Adobe Flash video format, with the file extension .FLV, for you. According to Lifewire, “Standing for Flash Video, a file with the FLV file extension is a file that uses Adobe Flash Player or Adobe Air to transmit video/audio over the internet.” This enables the video to be played using YouTube’s Flash player, which can be installed on your computer or smart device for free.
Another popular benefit, especially for news websites or web articles, is the idea of embedding YouTube videos onto another website. By simply copying and pasting a bit of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code, you can input a video on another site using the YouTube player. The IFrame player API (Application Program Interface) allows you to embed a YouTube video player on your website and with that be able to control the player using JavaScript.
JavaScript is “a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, and is best known as the scripting language for Web pages.” This is way more efficient than having to host the video on your site alone, which requires a significant amount of bandwidth. Bandwidth is the range of signal frequencies needed to transmit data over the internet. In using this, people have to pay for the amount they use. YouTube streams extremely large quantities of data each day, carrying the bandwidth burden for other sites that want to display video; again proving how the site is so easy to use.
Although embedding is a sufficient way to come across YouTube videos, the evident method is simply searching for them on the site itself. YouTube uses a complex system made up of over one million lines of code.
When something is looked up in the search bar, YouTube uses the process of metadata, which decides which videos appear and in what order. The results are ranked through metadata and this is why it is imperative for YouTubers to think of their thumbnails (the cover image of a video that is representative of the content), titles, descriptions and tags carefully if they wish to be successful. All of these components are the deciding factor of whether or not they appear when keywords are searched.
YouTube’s algorithm can seem complicated. The developers use a variety of aspects to determine which videos are available dependant on the searched words. The algorithm is important for YouTubers due to the fact it determines whether or not they are seen. This is similar to what social medias Facebook and Instagram utilize. They show viewers what they want to see, or at least what the algorithm “thinks” they want to see.
The YouTube ranking algorithm focuses on the ways in which the audience interacts with videos. This is by using artificial intelligence that “learns from over 80 billion bits of feedback from the audience daily to understand how to serve the right videos to the right viewers at the right time.”
Overall, there are a few key steps in mastering these components of YouTube and growing a successful channel.
One of the biggest determiners, along with what was previously mentioned, is the amount of time viewers stay watching your videos. According to YouTube, “Channels and videos with higher watch times are likely to show up higher in search results and recommendations.”
Eventually, once the combination of subscribers and views becomes a high ranking, companies will begin to sponsor certain people based on their channel’s content. This is how the majority of YouTubers make their money.
When deals are offered, YouTubers often incorporate their own twist in the way a product or service is advertised. For example, for a Audible.com, many YouTubers mentioned the company in the beginning or end of their video, or even in the description box, and explained how viewers can sign up. They would also typically, provide their own discount code to get viewers to be more inclined to show how that specific YouTuber persuaded them into checking out the company.
Another way brand sponsorships are incorporated into videos are by people “reviewing” their products. A lot of the time an honest opinion is not given due to the fact the YouTuber is getting paid to say nice things about it. However, when searching for an honest review, an unsponsored video is typically more informative.
YouTube’s team is constantly making updates to the site and is changing the way videos appear to viewers. The money YouTubers once made has drastically decreased due to this new era of advertisements within the site. The future of YouTubers and the site itself may not be the same in the upcoming few years. However, the site still proves to be the most visited website in the world.
