Last year YouTube went from virtual obscurity to becoming a global Internet phenomenon. Not only was it given the accolade of Time magazine ‘Invention of the Year’, Internet giant Google bought the site for an eye watering $1.65bn before its second birthday.
It's not the newest or the most advanced site of its type - Microsoft's recently-launched competitor, Soapbox offers better quality, for example - but it's by far the most popular, and ranks as the 13th most popular site on the web according to analysits Hitwise.
The service has become so popular that some amateur video makers have become online stars from the success of their posts. 21-year-old Brooke 'Brookers' Brodack netted an 18-month TV contract after her house-made sketches built up an audience of millions.
But what does it take to achieve YouTube stardom? I sought advice from UK online celebrity Peter Oakley. The 79-year-old is more widely known as Geriatric1927. He has reached worldwide fame from his video blog where he gives wisdom and advice. “I had no intention of invading the site as it was obviously used by young people, but decided to make a video. I was amazed when it was uploaded and got such attention,” he told me.
Peter explained: “YouTube is the greatest medium for social interaction. It has become a community with friendships developing between users all over the world. I myself have many very close friends through it.”
Peter’s success shows the limitless appeal of YouTube, and popularity has little to do with age, technical ability or expensive equipment. Despite all the success Peter has achieved, he has done so using relatively simple technology; he only uses Windows Movie Maker and a webcam.
The idea
The first thing you need to create your YouTube video is an idea. “It is easy to get attention by making a very controversial statement, which will get people arguing. However, the only way to make a really successful video is to have something to say that attracts viewers,” Peter said.
Popular YouTube hits have included video blogs like Peter’s, comedy sketches and mimed sing-alongs, which have the advantage of requiring little in the way of hardware. You can set up your studio in the comfort of the study, bedroom or shed and just use a webcam like the Microsoft LifeCam (£52, www.amazon.co.uk). Even cheaper models comes with a built in microphone, so the world can listen to your rants in full stereo quality.
The cast
Lacking Peter's years of life experience, I decided that I wouldn't be able to sustain a solo show. After a bit of team discussion we decided to let the great British public take the stage instead - a straight vox pop film, with a single question: What's the strangest thing you've ever bought on eBay?
Opening the cast list up like this might sound more demanding, but it's actually very efficient. You don't require advanced filming techniques or much post-processing, and you don't need to interview many people. The golden online rule: viewers have a short attention span before they click on to something else. In light of this, I decided to go for just a minute of finished footage.
Production
You need to plan the filming, and shoot plenty of footage, so you can make pick and choose section when editing.
When you have finished filming, edit your package ready for YouTube. Windows Movie Maker, which comes with Windows Vista, is an easy-to-use application that can make your video look slick and professional.
Then you have to upload your video to YouTube. But, with 65,000 videos uploaded on the site every day, competition is fierce. So when uploading your video start with a title and description that's going to help it show up in searches; vague stuff like 'my home movie' isn't nearly as good as 'my home movie of the cat attacking the hair dryer'.
You can also add tags, to give your film more chance of being hit upon. The more tags you use for your movie, the more likely your video will be found.
The promotion
Lacking an audience, I made the best of what I had. I put the video up on the magazine web site and emailed the link to as many friends and family I could think of. I sat back to watch the 'views' counter skyrocket - and, a day later, it had stumbled to a whopping 87.
Obviously this wasn't the viral hit I was hoping for. If I wanted this to be seen by everybody, I couldn't rely on it being forwarded. I had to find a captive audience.
One of the most popular link-sharing sites at the moment is digg. Thousands of users sign up to a voting system, rating every site submitted. Highly rated sites can then receieve thousands of visitors. So, I submitted the link to Digg and waited for the rush of visitors. No such luck. Two days later, five votes and a princely 400 views was all i'd managed; barely enough to clog a dial-up modem.
Back to the drawing board, and back to another online institution; Fark. Older than Digg, it's one of the original link-sharing communities. Fark submissions are screened before they go up by a human moderator, but luckily my clip appeared on the front page a day after submitting it, and was an immediate hit.
The views rocketed past 10,000 in the first day, and three days later had topped out at 14,391. On Fark it found the perfect audience, sparking an extended comments thread where viewers discussed their own unwise buys.
Finally, fame was mime; I'd got just about a quarter of the daily viewing figures for th BBC Parliament Channel, or 0.5 per cent of Sky One. Not quite champagne-popping territory, but I cracked open a can of lemonade in triumph.
What have I learned? Well, it's easy to be a YouTube star if you appeal to people who spend a lot of time online, but they're harder to get in front of than you might think. Still, it took only the first day to sail past the number of people who would have seen it if all I had was a DVD - and with YouTube's community features it's easier to pick up repeat viewers.
My advice for getting famous on YouTube? Start small, see how your first film fares, and you could be surprised by how popular you become.
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