How they work: “You Tube (Cont’d)”

At first sight, you might be feel somehow overwhelmed by YouTube might when you arrive at the main Web page. The page shows thumbnails of videos currently being watched by other users, a list of promoted videos, a larger video window on the right featuring a sponsored video and a list of featured videos farther down the page. There’s also a search field that visitors can use that to look for videos about a particular person or subject. The main page has tabbed links to four other important YouTube sections: videos, categories, channels and community. In each tablets you can search for videos in different ways. The videos tab takes you to a page where you can browse videos based on various statistics, including the most recently uploaded videos, the most viewed videos, videos with the highest member ratings and videos that many members have picked as favourites. The categories tab arranges videos into broad subject categories decided by the creators. The channels tab divides videos into sections based on the type of member who uploaded the videos e.g. comedians, directors, gurus, musicians, nonprofits, partners and sponsors. The communities tab divides videos into two sections: groups and contests. Groups are organizations formed by YouTube members focused on a particular subject or theme. Contests are competitions and games sponsored by YouTube members -- each contest has different rules and prizes.Once you become a YouTube member, YouTube assigns a personal channel to you. The channel has divisions designed to display a short personal description, thumbnails of videos you’ve uploaded, members to whom you’ve subscribed, videos from other members you’ve picked as favourites, lists of members whoare your friends and subscribers and a section where other people can comment on your channel. (This is similar to the Face book phenomenon). After filling in your profile information, you can adjust your personal channel’s colour scheme. You can pick one of YouTube’s suggested colour schemes or create your own using hexadecimal colour values. Using a simple menu, you can change the layout of your personal channel. You can choose to display orhide sections, and you can choose whether they appear on the left or right side of the Web page. These options let you make your channel unique. Once you’ve set up your channel, it’s time to fill those empty fields. Explore the site and look for videos you really enjoy. You can watch videos and click on the favourite link to add the video into your personal channel’s “favourites” section. You can subscribe to the person who uploaded the video to keep up with his or her uploads a screenshot of the member’s latest video will appear in your personal channel’s “subscriptions” section. When you upload a video of your own, it will appear in the top right section of your channel (unless you’ve changed the layout options). As you upload more videos, you’ll fill the “videos” section in your personal channel, and the latest clip will feature in the upper right side of your profile. YouTube is all about sharing. In the next section, we’ll look a little closer at the YouTube community, the people who post and their videos. eddie@afrowebs.com