YouTube comprises approximately 10% of all internet usage, with uploading videos, managing, sharing and watching them eradicating all difficulty with their easy to use, integrated platform. More importantly, it started a realm of interconnectivity and eliminating the barrier between different videos which kept them as standalone units of content. Now, in our new generation of online video sharing, we’re seeing the ways of interconnecting each video through a recommendation system, relevant video responses and a multitude of playlists to tie in all videos into one handy spot. Videos are now able to be uploaded flawlessly, converted from a multitude of formats and to be tagged by relevant keywords. Not only are they easy to upload and view, in true produser fashion, they’re easy to share, with the ability to email links to them or embed them on a web page or blog. For example:

Any user can comment on and rate videos which will, consequently, make a video go viral and have the whole world talking about it. Communities and groups are now enabled from the social networking that exists in YouTube, as “videos are no longer independent from each other, and neither are users” (Cheng, Dale, Liu. 2007). Because of the montage that the progression of YouTube has now allowed for, there is so much more meaning created when two or more videos are placed together. Users being allowed to comment, rate and make video responses also plays on the fact that in our modern society we are all becoming produsers, and that videos will never exist in isolation and that from the comments, ratings and responses, we are now creating a whole new meaning through this two-way interactivity.

The YouTube recommendation system works in amazing ways to not only suggest videos to users, but to also gather data and knowledge about the types of videos and content that users are interested in, as to create more targeted content for them. Playlists / montages can also be created from the knowledge of what people enjoy watching and find relevant to their interests. It’s been counted that recommendations account for around 60% of all the video clicks from the home page.