How has YouTube succeeded? YouTube makes uploading and sharing videos free and easy. It has hosted some popular high-quality clips and stimulated calls for a copyright-brawl-of-the-millennium. These are well-recognized aspects of YouTube. But consider the outpouring of sympathy for Martin. YouTube has also succeeded as an innovative communications service.
Social networks and communications services are closely related. Robert Young, an insightful industry analyst, recently noted:
communications ultimately serves as the anchor feature and the driver of retention and growth. …when dealing with an online community, that one lasting activity is almost always communications. … Social networks, which are rapidly becoming the portals of the next generation, must place high strategic priority on their communications functionality if they wish to continue their pace of traffic growth, usage, and retention.
Mirroring this remark, Norman Lewis of Orange, a mobile communications service provider, suggested at the Telco2.0 Industry Brainstorm:
Any future applications which do not have a social networking aspect to them will be irrelevant. If we don’t understand that, we won’t have a business in the future.
YouTube shows communication service providers that video can be important driver of communication. On the other hand, sharing video, like providing VoIP, is a service that many providers potentially could offer. If YouTube doesn’t link itself closer to enduring real-world social networks, it may not have a business in the future.