HOW FIVE YEARS OF YOUTUBE TURN A NOBODY INTO A STAR
Índice
1. Prereading
1.1. What do you know about
the Internet?
2. Reading
2.1 How Five Years of
YouTube Turns a Nobody into a Star
3. Postreading
3.1 Quiz
3.2 Dictation
1. PREREADING
1.1 What do youknow about the Internet?2. READING
2.1 HOW FIVE YEARS OF YOUTUBE TURNS A NOBODY INTO A STAR
Five years after Karim and two fellow PayPal employees founded their video-sharing website YouTube, it hosts more than 120 million videos. The site is a phenomenon that’s generated a whole culture of YouTube celebrities. Never before had anyone with a video camera been able to reach a potential audience of millions and for many they did so by accident. But when the site started including advertisements related to the user’s search, some people were able to make money out of their hobbies.
The science behind what makes a video a hit remains vague. It’s easier to bathe cats than to predict whether the public will like or dislike something. It’s an illuminating choice of elements: cats are, of course, a pretty good bet. Also babies, though it’s still surprising that a merely moderately amusing family moment is the most watched YouTube video of all time: “Charlie bit my finger”,a clip in which Charlie, aged one, bites the finger of his big brother Harry.
With its ability to grant an audience of millions to any clip the site has extraordinary democratic potential. Last year, a clip of Neda Agha-Soltan being shot in the chest in Iran was put on YouTube instantly and became a powerful tool in the protest movement against the Iranian government.
The site’s democratic character had already taken on new, practical uses with the so-called “YouTube election” of 2008, when what many had dismissed as simply a site for teenagers became a battleground for one of the most interesting presidential fights in history.
S. Hoby and T. Lamont (The
Guardian, 11-4-2010)
3.1 Quiz & Dictation
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