When looking at institutions and audiences in relation to our project brief 4, it has been essential to understand how Youtube works from a user perspective. It’s pretty easy to search for things and watch whatever you want but to create content and have people watch it you need to be familiar with the production side of the Tube. The most popular users are also makers of their own videos and generally speaking these users have some specific interest or theme of their channel. It’s like Instagram where people with large followings, not bought, generally stick to a theme like food, beauty or landscapes. This makes it easy for people flicking through hundreds of pictures minute by minute, to quickly get an idea of what a user is about, what interests them and whether or not their pictures are something they want to see on their feed every day. All this is taken into consideration when deciding to follow someone you don’t know in real life. It’s the same with Youtube.

People seem to be quick to know whether you’re full of it or not. You can be specific in the content but unless there’s something engaging about it, people just exit the window. If you’re doing a parody of a character or an event that has happened that people know about, it’s more likely to get views if the maker knows how to use youtube and is already familiar with interacting with other users. You need to know how to use descriptions and tags effectively and how to target a selected audience. If you target a wide audience you’re less likely to find the smaller group of people who are actually interested in specific content. To build up an account takes time. But hopefully we will be able to gain a little more interest over the next few weeks and become a more familiar with the intricacies and tactics video makers on YouTube use to promote and sell their videos.

As a media student and media maker of the future, it’s essential for me to have a really good understanding of how these social media platforms work from a production point of view.