Felix Baumgartner sets two records

Felix Baumgartner had made a historic jump breaking the record of longest free fall jump.  While he was shattering the record, he also set another record.  His jump attracted the most number of live viewers on YouTube to date.  There are 8 million YouTube viewers watching the live cast of the jump.

To put this in perspective, this is 16-fold increase from earlier record of 500,000 viewers watching London 2012 Olympic Games, and it took less than 3 months to break the earlier simultaneous streaming record.

You are all powering YouTube: Filter your own content

Thanks to social media, we all are publishers.  Whether we have been trained to be media savvy or not, keyboards and free social media accounts have been popping up on our computer and mobile device screens.

Here's the problem that I see this with everyone getting access to global media:

We are just getting used to this new media.  

We have not been talking or teaching kids about how to use social media.  People don't distinguish whether something is a fact or opinion.  There is nothing that tells the subscribers whether something is a fact or opinion.

YouTube, the new global media

This morning when I turned on NPR, it was talking about new trends on popular YouTube content.  Among the examples cited, the first example was a K-pop sensation by Psy called "Gangnam Style."

I first heard of "Gangnam Style" from my Facebook Social Media News interest group.  I knew of Psy from his earlier album released in 2000, but never thought that I would see people around social media sharing his  music.  To date "Gangnam Style" has been viewed 66,624,589 times and its viewership is accelerating according to YouTube analytics.

YouTube: create an ecosystem for content

One genius creation by Steve Jobs for iPhone is to create its developer ecosystem.  By recognizing that wealth of applications can be developed on iPhone platform, Apple executed fantastically to create App Store and developer ecosystem.  I see the similar pattern developing with YouTube.  YouTube is becoming 24/7 American Idol platform for anyone who wants to create content, and it's leveling the playing field for vlog amateurs.

YouTube is a broadcasting network.  It's only as good as content that runs on it.  More interesting original content YouTube can attract, more valuable YouTube will become.

YouTube: a new way to discover what to watch

In our living room we have a TV, but it's rarely on.  Part of it is because of my wife's no TV policy for my two and half year old boy.  Yet I don't feel as I'm missing much by not having a cable TV.  One big reason why I don't feel the need is that I get most of my video content from YouTube.  Facebook news feed shows me YouTube links that my friends are sharing, and I click to watch the video clip.