Presently the trend of online video sharing is on its hype. A lot of people now upload and share their videos online by using some specific tools/web sites. However, this trend is more supported by the online free video sharing website such as YouTube. The concept of online video sharing emerged in 2005 when YouTube was established in a garage by three former PayPal workers Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim in the city of San Mateo, California, USA but it was publicly released in December 2005. Afterward, it appeared to be an instant hit among its users and it offered new trend of online video sharing. This type of online free video hosting websites has offered an open opportunity to share and offer the facility to watch video of everyone on the web. Additionally, the online video sharing websites helps anyone connect to the website to share and upload videos easily. However, the basic aim of this type of video sharing is to share someone’s ideas, views, likings, and disliking with other people. In addition, at the present the online video sharing websites have become active and popular due to their free of cost services. These websites allow the small independent video publishers the capability to share and publish personal, event, entertainment or some public video files to anyone without size related problems (Loeffler, 2009) and (Robertson, 2007).

According to the recent research, one-half of all participants shared videos via e-mail to family and friends. Twenty-three percent participants used social networks to sent videos out to friends, 21 percent used instant messengers and 14 percent people used video-sharing web sites for instance YouTube and Hulu to share videos to their friends. Additionally, according to same research YouTube was the most commonly used web site for sharing, finding and watching video online, after that music sites, e-mail, Yahoo! and other news sites. In addition, this video sharing appears to take place mostly among close friends, relatives, and colleagues, since 72 percent of participants shared video to just one, two or three people (Hotel Marketing, 2009)

Why we share video online or what is the purpose of online video sharing?

The answer to this question is that we live in a society, we want to meet people, we want to share things and want to view and present our ideas to others. Another new aspect that emerges in 21st century is defining the way of entertainment by us. In the past, TV, Film, or Radio presented and defined the ways of entertainment. However, in this age of internet and web based technology firms for instance YouTube and Yahoo have offered new ideas regarding entertainment that are managed by its viewers. The basic idea is that we distribute or upload our favorite video(s) on the web so that other people can view and also enjoy in a same way as we do. In this scenario there are a number of web sites that facilitate this video hosting and sharing. In this way the video host will store the video file on its web based server, and after that will show it to others to provide them online entertainment. An ordinary web user also have some other intentions regarding online video sharing like that he desires to make permanent or more secure copy of video on the web servers . A user can also make a common place for sharing and collaborating multimedia data to his friends, relatives and community people. A person can also share a video because he wants to be famous. Moreover, this new way of web based entertainment and video sharing has offered facilities to a common man to have an opportunity to make himself famous without any costly efforts that are required in film and TV mediums (Good & Pick, 2009) & (Loeffler, 2009).

References

Good, R. & Pick, M., 2009. Video Publishing Online: Where To Share Your Video Clips On The Web. [Online] Available at: http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/11/25/video_publishing_online_where_to.htm [Accessed 14 May 2010].

Hotel Marketing, 2009. How people share online video. [Online] Available at: http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_people_share_online_video/ [Accessed 15 May 2010].

Loeffler, J., 2009. Creating a video sharing web application using Flex, Flash Media Server, and Flash Media Encoding Server. [Online] Available at: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashmediaserver/articles/video_sharing_web_app.html [Accessed 13 May 2010].

Robertson, Mark. “History and Detailed Overview of Googles YouTube Video Sharing.” 29 September 2007. [Online] Available at: http://ezinearticles.com/?History-and-Detailed-Overview-of-Googles-YouTube-Video-Sharing&id=757432 [Accessed 13 May 2010].