‘Charlie Bit Me’ was only the beginning
Since 2005, YouTube has grown from a startup above a San Mateo pizza shop to the second largest website on the planet. These days, everyone knows what YouTube is — it’s basically synonymous with video on the web. Even as competitors like TikTok grow in popularity, it seems unlikely YouTube will ever fall from its pedestal. So how does the site continue to grow from here? It turns out the blockchain might have something to do with it.
To keep growth accelerating — even with one-fourth of the world’s population already having signed up for an account — YouTube is concentrating its efforts on two factors: how creators earn income from their content and how to get more eyes on everything uploaded to the site.
In a post on the company’s official blog, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that the company has been paying attention to emerging blockchain-based technologies like cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and DAOs. This announcement comes days after parent company Google recently teased a potential cryptocurrency, even naming an executive to oversee blockchain research. YouTube will need that infrastructure in place if it wants to set up an NFT ecosystem for users to sell their videos. Although the company hasn’t committed itself to any course of action, selling videos as NFTs isn’t new. Earlier this year, the classic video “Charlie Bit Me” was sold as an NFT for over $750,000.
In addition, YouTube plans to keep up its momentum in the gaming space. The numbers for gaming-related content are kind of staggering: 800 billion views, 250 million uploads, and 90 million hours livestreamed. Meanwhile, the company hopes to continue to turn watchers into paying customers. YouTube now has over 50 million subscribers between its Music and Premium platforms. In fact, Music has been so successful, it paid over $4 billion in royalties in 2021 alone.
Finally, its Shorts program will remain unavoidable. YouTube’s TikTok killer has garnered over 5 trillion all-time views and continues to attract new talent through the Shorts Fund. Maybe 2022 is the year you finally paid for the hundreds of cat videos taking up space on your phone.
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