This week in my social media strategies class, we were visited by Dr. Stephen Daniel who gave a great lecture on YouTube and statistical analytics. Within the lecture itself we reviewed the history of YouTube, the rising and falling popularity of different channels and styles of video, and the ever-changing algorithms that one must properly understand to gain notoriety on this platform. Prior to this lecture, my understanding of YouTube was restricted to the content I have viewed since the creation of it in 2005. YouTube was originally started from a group of PayPal employees but quickly sold the company to Google in November of 2006. Originally starting as a way for people to share quick clips, such as “Me at the zoo”, YouTube quickly gained traction as a way for marketing and promotion for individual creators and companies alike.
Analytics are a tool one can use on YouTube via Google that track viewership data and important information regarding retention and popularity of a video. As discussed by Dr. Daniel, YouTube has recently modified the algorithm to exhibit retention based viewership in which data can be extrapolated to see the time span in which someone views a video. This information can be vital to the success of a video based on such algorithms, mostly in part since a longer retention rate on a video can produce greater opportunities for external advertisements to boost revenue. This is why a change can be noted in the overall length of YouTube videos in the past year. The majority of said videos now exceed five-to-seven minutes whereas prior it was not uncommon to see a three-minute video.