Reminiscing about YouTube

Hello all!

So, this week’s social media networks to check out included YouTube. This happens to be a technology that I am very familiar with. I started my own YouTube back in 2008 to share my color guard videos. I actively tried different things to get more subscribers and watched hundreds of other successful videos until I ruralized that I simply do not have video content that is appealing to a large audience. So, I became happy with the following I did have.

I got annoyed when Google decided to merge its platform with YouTube a few years later. The look and feel of YouTube changed completely. The myspace feel customization was no longer there and it kept asking me to change my channel name of “wakullaguardgirl” to “Mallory”. But I already had over 100 subscribers and had grown attached to the name so I was very hesitant. I only ended up caving when I got to college and had to use my gmail account which had the address of wakullaguardgirl@gmail.com. I thought this was not professional so changed it to where my name appeared as my name.

However, some good things have come with the evolution of YouTube. My favorite newer feature is the YouTube playlists. YouTube has always had playlists that you can create yourself, but now it will create playlists for you that will autorun. It pulls information based on videos that you click on, or songs that are similar to the one you type it. For example, if you type in Shakira you will see the playlists that other users have created, but you will also see a YouTube specific one that will change things up as it learns which songs you skip and which you replay. It is really quite fascinating.

This learned playlists feature is something that 

has led me to want to get YouTube red. This is a subscription service similar to Spotify and Pandora but for videos. Key features that you do not already get are that you can turn off your screen or go into another app while the video still plays in the background (not possible on mobile without the subscription). The other feature is that it eliminates ads completely. I love using YouTube for how to videos, but it gets annoying when you go to watch something, and a 30 second ad pops up (something that did not used to exist). The last feature that they think they are selling, but is of no real interest to me is that they have their own YouTube red exclusive content similar to the Netflix Original concept.

The subscription is only $10 a month and since I do not currently have any music playing service  I think I will sign up for it and tell you all what I think here. Meanwhile, while checking out my old YouTube page I found that I had a photobucket linked to it and found this gem. Enjoy.