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Posts Tagged ‘Generation Gap’

When is YouTube going to help stimulate the economy? After all, didn’t they get acquired by deep pockets when Google bought them for all those stock shares? A few million in cash changed hands to boot. I hope the two nice rocket scientists who founded YouTube didn’t park their extra cash with Bernie Madoff . Seriously, though, we expect the guys with the big bucks to help wean us out of this economic malaise.

Back in 1981, Bill Gates helped start the ball rolling by getting all the Joneses we like to keep up with to buy these new-fangled personal computers. During the 1990′s, the kick-start to the financial engines was the proliferation of relatively inexpensive cell phones. Now that brick-and-mortar industries have moved to countries where English is the third language, we expect the last vestige of American dominance- the Internet- to pave the way to our glorious economic rebound.

But, don’t expect it from YouTube or even Facebook. The reason comes later but in the meantime, let’s do some 20/20 hindsight analysis:

Back in the old days- before the Clinton Years- we watched television “broadcasts”. These shows were meant to satisfy the cultural tastes of critical masses on a large scale. They were cast out to as wide an audience as possible. There was little choice. With less than half the tv sets in use with remote controls, most viewers picked a network for the night and stayed with it. Nielsen ratings could pretty much tell you that each network rarely had less that twenty million viewers per show with the highly rated ones scoring up to fifty million! Today, television is so segmented with too many channels and too much choice. Some networks- and there are way more than even a dozen now- are glad to brag about five million viewers a show.

We no longer allow the networks to control our viewing habits or appetites. We have entertainment on demand through the Internet. YouTube is currently the most popular site to watch video clips of whatever you decide at that given moment. Just as there is a king of the hill, there will surely be another entity to come along and dethrone YouTube. And that’s because of the new generation gap.

Years ago advertisers thought up the word demographics which is another way of analyzing how the various age groups have different tastes and spending habits. Most social security recipients are on fixed incomes and are not as technologically savvy as younger ones. Many have never seen the Internet. Let’s face it, even middle aged humans are confused by iphones and anything you can hold in the palm of your hand that requires the use of a stick or finger touching a tiny keyboard.

YouTube has decided to ignore the demographic continental divide that it has become. The younger Facebook crowd is more interested in making their own video clips, showing off their (lack of) talent and reaching out to meeting others as a surrogate electronic social club.

Those of us among the older visitors tend to be more interested in seeing entertainment from bygone days. We watch the classic television and movie clips and like to offer our quick, often flippant comments.

Although these two subcultures don’t clash, they don’t mingle either. Can YouTube survive as a two-headed monster? Allowing the uploading of television and movie clips has created a headache for them as they have to monitor copyright infringement whereas the younger element tend to upload original content.

At some point, someone is going to come up with a solution on how to please the older crowd in a safe, non-annoying hosted site that contains the breadth of material found on YouTube. And, then there may be a new king of the hill, or just separate thrones.

This is one major reason Google has tight reins on YouTube and has done little to pave the way for newer, economically sound , trickle-down innovations.