I've just been watching some old videos on youtube after reading this article about the site's future in the New Yorker.
This video on Youtube's official channel, from October 2005, is another reminder of just how quickly things have moved online. I'm sure a lot of us have vague & hazy memories of a time before youtube, but watching the presenter's reactions to Youtube's features you also get a sense of how Chad and Steve really understood what people were about to start wanting to do with their content.
It's really inspiring to think of something as big as Youtube coming from such small beginnings in such a small time. They were able to understand how people were going to want to do video online, and develop an interface to exeed that expectation. Quotes like "you don't have to download it, you can just play right there on the site" and "it gives you a link to share your video" show just how revolutionary this kind of thinking this was back then.
Are there any new sites/products doing similar things now?
