YouTube [Case Study]
What kind of customer value does YouTube provide in the marketplace?
YouTube provides/allows user to watch and share video content with anyone and with ease instead of having them to download special software to view/share videos. Videos could be viewed directly on the web conveniently at home or anywhere now with the availability of mobile devices such as PDA phones and iPods. YouTube’s videos are in a format that can be played by Flash player found on all PCs. They make recommendations to members at its homepage, according what they recently visit. So in a way, YouTube is a convenient platform for anyone to broadcast themselves and share videos.
How do businesses like YouTube alter the ways that organisations and customers interact?
YouTube allows users to link videos to websites, blogs and social networking sites. Good videos that will get passed on as users as sharing is part of networking. This will eventually build up a community of users. Users can rate videos they like; users can comment/critique a video. The comments section acts like a public forum in way that there will be user-to-user interaction.
Phone review videos like the above allows people from virtually around the world to come together and talk about the product or just share their opinions and experiences using that product. As you can see, that video alone captures the attention of over 1.3 million viewers!
What are the challenges facing YouTube in the future?
After reading the notes given..
- One of the most important challenges facing YouTube is generating revenue. This is hard for the company as it doesn’t want to alienate its current client base.
- The fear of losing money due to the costs of storing and delivering videos, there is also the risk of additional costs such as potential copyright lawsuits.
- Many other websites such as Yahoo, Metacafe and Vimeo provide a similar video sharing platform. Big content creators load well-known videos on their own websites which are free to watch.
- Metacafe only advertise/promote ‘good’ videos on its homepage. It rejects copies, uses 100,000 volunteers as film critics and analyses vlips using its VideoRank algorithm. Metacafe has this “exclusive image” that has the potential to draw in a different kind of crowd, crowds that would want to watch an original un-copied version of a video.
