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[AntoneM]

And those websites have dramatically changed how we interact with the Internet.

You can keep passing the praise down the line until we say metal workers revitalized the Internet but from a user perspective, websites and other interactions are key. The average person isn't really going to care about the history of the WWW because it doesn't matter. What matters is how quickly they can get to A to B while receiving the most amount of information which YouTube and Google provide.

This makes no sense. I literally praised the creation of WWW which allowed for all the things you're talking about. All websites that start with "www" are part of the revolutionary change I was talking about. What you are talking about is better database management to allow for better search results; as well as data mining accounts to get better results. None of those things have to do with the internet.

That's why I said I think we have a fundamental difference (sorry I used misunderstanding before) of what the internet is.

 

[border]

Absolutely. WIthout a doubt.

Did websites have video content prior to YouTube? Yes. Did that video content play and work in even a remotely reliable fashion? Fuck no.

Unless you were an internet denizen prior to the YouTube era, you probably wouldn't realize it though. Now every website has embedded video that plays absolutely seamlessly.

But when YouTube launched, even websites that were trying to do video were absolutely terrible at it. You'd go to Gamespot and try to watch a trailer.....oh, the pre-roll advertisement would load perfectly, but when it was time for the content you wanted to play you'd just get stuck with neverending "buffering". 99% of the time you were better off downloading your desired video to your local hard drive, and just watching it with your media player of choice.

I often marvel at how long it took other websites to catch up with YouTube. GameTrailers was ostensibly dedicated to video content, and yet their embedded player was absolute shit up until a few years ago.

And all this I've talked about completely ignores the power of user-created or user-submitted content......they revolutionized the web just by getting video to play quickly, reliably, and seamlessly.

 

[Hidden One]

I'd say Youtube revolutionized to Modern internet yes.

 

[massoluk]

God, I still have nightmare about Realplayer, and that tiny embed Mpeg on websites

 

[Cipherr]

Remember this one

Man this thing had either a plugin, or a natural extension that would let you tune into 'channels'. I distinctly remember my roommate in school turning this on his crt monitor and having it play episode after episode of the simpsons.... Just... all damn day. And he showed me a listing of other 'channels' that were about different shows topics.

I remember I was thinking at the time that it would be the future of the internet to be able to stream stuff like that. I had no idea what was coming in the future with all this new shit like Kodi or whatever.

 

[Josh5890]

Seeing as it is a place for me to watch old sports clips all the time, that is great since 15 years ago my only hope was Sportscenter.

 

[friskykillface]

I remember using this thing before YT made watching videos online easy.

*buffering...*

🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐
Haha I remember that piece of shit being just terrible , struggles all around


YouTube did revolutionize the internet
It connected everyone

 

[Cipherr]

man, I still remember this layout.

looks like a cluttered mess by today's standards, but it was kinda typical of the late 90s/early 00s "EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME" approach to websites.

Jesus... Just atrocious. Its always been amazing to me how basically every single UI update to Youtube is heckled as the worst thing EVER. Yet if you were to revert to that horse crap today, 90% of people would lose their minds.

 

[Hidden One]

man, I still remember this layout.

looks like a cluttered mess by today's standards, but it was kinda typical of the late 90s/early 00s "EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME" approach to websites.

The 09 layout was perfect.

Then 2010 came and they replaced the star ratings.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

I remember using this thing before YT made watching videos online easy.

*buffering...*

LOL "easy"

 

[border]

YouTube did revolutionize the internet
It connected everyone

Yeah, just the idea that there should be a central repository for everyone to distribute video is pretty revolutionary.

When YouTube came out, most webhosting services were defined by how much storage space you got on their servers and how much bandwidth your viewers/readers could eat up in a month. So even if you wanted to have a video-focused website, you were utterly screwed because uploading video would destroy your storage limit, and if you were popular then your bandwidth cap would ruin you.

 

[The Kree]

apple.com/trailers

Like this if you cry every time.

 

[Bad_Boy]

apple.com/trailers

Like this if you cry every time.

Only went there because they had the best quality trailers lol

 

[Subpar Spatula]

This makes no sense. I literally praised the creation of WWW which allowed for all the things you're talking about. All websites that start with "www" are part of the revolutionary change I was talking about. What you are talking about is better database management to allow for better search results; as well as data mining accounts to get better results. None of those things have to do with the internet.

That's why I said I think we have a fundamental difference (sorry I used misunderstanding before) of what the internet is.

We have the same, you're just not understanding it from a user experience which is ultimately the only real way to determine if it has been revolutionized. It's very similar to how current web accessibility trends are revolutionizing ways for disabled people to use it; yes, it's all database management and front-end trickery but the point remains the same. Let's say the WWW change occurs but somehow we don't end up in this current situation of Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, etc. Would you still consider it revolutionary? The Internet is more a marketplace than playground now and how you serve people with it matters a whole lot more.

 

[Ominym]

It's in the top 10 websites visited on the internet. It absolutely did.

 

[lastplayed]

I revolutionised the internet with my awesome Geocities page.

 

[Escape Goat]

It did in the sense everyday people became content producers.

 

[manzoman96]

The 09 layout was perfect.

Then 2010 came and they replaced the star ratings.

Yeah this layout was great. Also I miss video responses to videos.

But yes, YouTube most certainly revolutionized the internet. It walked us from one era of the internet into another, pretty much right alongside Facebook.

 

[Laz-E-Boy]

I remember using this thing before YT made watching videos online easy.

*buffering...*

Watched a lot of 20 second DBZ and shitty porn clips on this.

 

[CadetMahoney]

Remember this one

I still use Winamp.

This version, or the one that looks just like it.

Version May 26 2005.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Tons of people use the internet and don't even touch youtube, myself included, so no.

 

[NoblesseOblige]

Tons of people use the internet and don't even touch youtube, myself included, so no.

I don't drive so the automobile wasn't revolutionary.

 

[megarockexe]

Pre-YouTube, if a website even had streaming as an option, you had to download the video which took a long time and usually came in strange, proprietary codecs. Oh, the days of media codec packs where the user had to do all the dirty work for the privilege of watching a video. Now, even video ads play without your consent and it couldn't be easier to watch a video on practically any device.

 

[Einchy]

Tons of people use the internet and don't even touch youtube, myself included, so no.

How do you not use Youtube?

 

[Anon67]

YouTube changed how we view content on the web. Before it became a behemoth that it is, people read text on other websites to acquire whatever they needed, be it a recipe, a walkthrough, opinion pieces, cheat codes, etc. Now everyone just goes to YouTube because 1. all the content is there and 2. it's way easier on the mind and probably more fun to watch videos explaining whatever 3. visualized content is more understandable than text. Even in the games-sphere, if most people want to know about a game, they most likely will look it up on YouTube and see how it is and what people think about it. I doubt you'd see them rushing to the forums first unless they are deep into an online community.

 

[water_wendi]

As Time Magazines Person of the Year 2006 i agree.

 

[always crazy bacon]

No, because otherwise there would be more Youtube style sites. Has Youtube evolved? Yes.

 

[t26]

How it is more revolutionizing than email?

 

[always crazy bacon]

How do you not use Youtube?

Going to a library vs going to Blockbusters would be a good analogy.

 

[HotHamBoy]

YouTube was better when it was a wild west show of unpoliced cipyrighted material. You could literally find every show every made on there.

Anyway, it did revolutionize the web when it caught on because it made web players like RealPlayer and Quicktime obsolete.

No, because otherwise there would be more Youtube style sites. Has Youtube evolved? Yes.

You're looking at it wrong. There used to be more YT-like sites. It's YT's ubiquity that was revolutionary.

How it is more revolutionizing than email?

Email was literally the first instance of the internet. It revolutionized society but not the internet itself. It started the internet.

 

[Aquavelvaman]

I remember when I first saw YouTube and I thought "I wonder how much you have to pay to post videos there?"

 

[Wolf Akela]

Totally. It made people WANT broadband connection. I remember waiting a long time to buffer videos. I considered 3 minute videos to be serious investment in my dial-up time.

It's also amazing how a site that would be very expensive to maintain in paper is somehow still free. Just think of everything it needs: loads of bandwidth to deliver data, heaps of storage to store all videos, power hungry servers to convert videos.

 

[LookAtMeGo]

Napster was the bomb.

 

[Man with Knife]

Remember this one

I still use this

 

[disappeared]

Man this thing had either a plugin, or a natural extension that would let you tune into 'channels'. I distinctly remember my roommate in school turning this on his crt monitor and having it play episode after episode of the simpsons.... Just... all damn day. And he showed me a listing of other 'channels' that were about different shows topics.

I remember I was thinking at the time that it would be the future of the internet to be able to stream stuff like that. I had no idea what was coming in the future with all this new shit like Kodi or whatever.

Yup, I never knew how that worked. When I visited a cousin of mine back in '99, he had his winamp auto-boot when his pc turned on and it just automatically linked up to some music/radio channels. Constant stream of music. I was baffled as all I knew was napster, real player, and windows media player, and that was manually loading one media file at a time; streaming was entirely foreign.

 

[ghostjoke]

I remember using this thing before YT made watching videos online easy.

*buffering...*

There are a lot of things I miss. This is not one of them.

 

[hodayathink]

Remember this one

There was a time when I had Winamp 2.x and 3.x installed at the same time, and I can barely remember why.

Nowadays I'm still using 3.x, mainly because I don't like WMP and it allows me to send the music through my speakers while all other audio goes through my headphones.

 

[Prototype Viktor]

Albino Blacksheep

 

[Majine]

Stage6 died for our sins.

 

[Booker Dewitt]

Google Video > Youtube

Man, remember what a bitch putfile was?

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

I vaguely remember thinking this too. Shitty home videos, music parodies, pet videos? Okay.

I had no idea that such a vast and diverse amount of content would live on that site. Reviews, lets plays, instructional videos of all the kinds, guided meditation, fringe music stuff, rain sounds for 10 hours, animation, alt right nonsense, mst3k style commentaries, hilarious educational videos from the 50s, old ads...

Same here. How old are you similarly jaded folks?

I'm 28 and I remember thinking that I'd never waste my time watching someone else's stupid home videos when I never even took much time to watch my own.

 

[Ethelwulf]

The biggest revolution is internet without a doubt. But yea, YouTube is a huge part of that revolution. Instant information, everywhere.

 

[massoluk]

Yes, and I still remember newgrounds

Was that where I went to watch the latest awesome Xiao Xiao Stick animations?

 

[Booker Dewitt]

Was that where I went to watch the lastest awesome Xiao Xiao Stick animations?

Bruh, you sent me down a path.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Used to watch funny clips on ebaumsworld.

 

[kurahador]

Guess I'm the only one who remembers Stage6?

 

[Auto-Reply]

Kinda, yeah... shame about most comment sections going to shit, but without a plattform like youtube the internet would suddenly feel really stale and basic.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

Guess I'm the only one who remembers Stage6?

It never stood a chance.

 

[Always-honest]

Duh.

 

[sinxtanx]

Stage6 died for our sins.

Guess I'm the only one who remembers Stage6?

It never stood a chance.

stage6 deserved to win