Google and YouTube - What Might They Do For You? October 11

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Google’s acquisition of YouTube, the video-sharing website, for £883 million this week has thrust the role of internet TV and videos firmly into the spotlight - bringing into view the exciting possibility of an organised and archived video library which would be easily searchable.

The “clip culture” fostered by YouTube has been generated largely with entertainment - people’s favourite user-generated or anything else they wish to see featured - in mind, which explains in part why Google was careful to seal a deal with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group to display their music videos just prior to the YouTube deal. But it also presents intriguing opportunities for businesspeople who wish to spread the word about their enterprises, especially as the site estimates that it currently receives 72 million individual visitors every month.

Creating a piece of video content and setting it loose in cyberspace provides a range of possibilities. One - fairly parochial - example is of Norwich’s Maddermarket theatre, which recently submitted a range of short films to YouTube which were aimed at potential volunteer workers. So many people, especially the younger generation, use the website today in their search for visual ephemera , so why not potential employees? There is little doubt that, as a means of recruiting, the internet is growing in stature all the time.

Drawing attention to your company’s activities and offerings via new media can gain you a vast new audience - similarly to audio podcasts, an informative or even slightly offbeat video can illuminate perceptions of your enterprise and see information disseminated swiftly. With Google mooting a comprehensive new video searching archive as a result of the deal, a web surfer could potentially enter your name into the search engine and be greeted with a selection of video broadcasts made by your firm in years to come.

It is also worth seeing YouTube as an example of a startup which has, while initially unprofitable, attained quite outstanding success. With just 67 employees it started out as an innovative, but loss-making, Silicon Valley enterprise - and its potential has now been recognised in lucrative fashion by one of the most powerful and influential names on the planet.

In a sense, YouTube currently resembles a vast, entertaining bring-and-buy sale of assorted internet phenomena - but its acquisition by Google promises to make it, if anything, a more serious and well-recognised prospect. Companies will be able to see and be seen; interactivity may become increasingly visual, and customers, vendors and potential employees may become keen to size each other up - and promote themselves - in this way. Google and YouTube still face several issues; copyright law, given that many of the clips featured are taken from broadcasters, may become unkind to them, although this might then privilege work created by individuals and small companies yet further. This phenomenon may only be at its beginning, but looks likely to take off fully soon.

Article Written Exclusively by AdFero for Seriously Business

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