Why Youtube? What is it and why would you care?

I regularly solicit topic suggestions for our community Computer Club. Some of the suggestions leave me puzzled; for example, one recent batch included the word "mouse" by itself. I'm trying hard to ignore that one.

What I'm finding impossible to ignore is requests for "YouTube". I'm suspicious as to why this keeps coming up. I think it might be that grandparents are hearing their grandchildren mention it and are afraid to go look for themselves, so they want a "Youtube class". I pushed aside the first few requests, but it kept coming up again and again: they want to learn about YouTube.

After giving up trying to ignore the requests, I sighed deeply and looked around for someone else who might be willing to present such a class. Finding no volunteers, I sighed again and agreed that I would do it.

Moments later, I felt deep regret. How can I possibly talk about YouTube for twenty minutes?

The gift of blarney

Well, that's not quite true. I can bluff my way through twenty minutes on just about any subject, but I do have this annoying desire to do a good job, so just blabbing away for the allotted time wasn't going to be my goal.

As I started thinking about all the ways I use YouTube myself, I realized that maybe there actually is enough meat on the subject and there may also be quite a few people wondering what dangerous thing the grandkids might be doing there.

Hence, this hub, lovingly prepared for them and as grist for my presentation next month.

Sharing

I suppose you can buy a digital camera that does not have movie making capability, but I bet you'll have to do some searching first. I have come across seniors and some not so senior who never noticed that their camera can also take movies, but even that happy unawareness is becoming rare.

What do you do with those movies? If it's the grandkids or your cat doing something incredibly cute with the family dog, you probably want to share it. There is no lack of places to do that, of course, and YouTube is just one more.

With most places, you can choose to make your video public or only give it to specific people. That's true for YouTube: you can list specific people or say that only someone who has the link (which you will provide) can view it.

It's the public option that is the most valuable with YouTube. Nobody goes to Facebook or Google-Plus to search specifically for videos, but people do go to YouTub with exactly that intention. If you want to share a video with the world, YouTube is absolutely your best choice.

Money

It used to be that making money from YouTube videos was a privilege reserved for only the most popular presenters. That's changed; since Google bought YouTube the requirements have been loosened quite a bit. Even my videos qualify for monetization and - trust me - I'm not anyone with a lot of viewers.

This may not be anything that interests you and it may even horrify you, but it is part of what attracts people to post at YouTube rather than (for example) Facebook.

Rentals

Yes, you can actually charge people to view your videos! While you aren't likely to get many to pay for a video of your cat flushing your toilet, educational and training videos could be marketed in this way.

You can also rent real movies from YouTube and watch them on your computer, mobile phone or your TV (with supported equipment, of course). Prices are competitive with others offering movie rentals.

Asking a question

I've used YouTube to find out what was feeding on our ButterFlybush. I shot the video you see below and had a correct answer within a very few minutes. Can you imagine trying to describe that Hawk Moth without a video?

Teaching

I also make videos to show people how to do things. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is sometimes worth a lot more.

"Click on that thing up on the right that looks sort of like a.. well, I'm not sure what it looks like, maybe a hat? I don't know, it's blue and it's not the one that looks like a pencil",

Instead of that, I can quickly make a video that shows exactly where to click and what will happen.

By the way, I use Jing for that. You might like it too.

Learning

When I need to learn how to do something, I usually prefer written text. However, there are subjects that really do need videos and YouTube is the place to go. Whatever it is, somebody probably has made a video. It may be a truly bad video, the sound quality may be awful and the speaker's accent may make it even worse, but you will find something. Actually, video quality has improved greatly; the biggest problem you are likely to have is thick accents.

Fun

Of course YouTube is also chock full of fun. Funny pets, funny clips from TV shows, would be comedians.. and other things.

There is enough to talk about

Obviously, I was wrong. There is more than enough about YouTube to fill a twenty minute class - no doubt I could fill an hour if I wanted to.

Did I miss anything? Let me know if I did.. the Computer Club will appreciate it!