YouTube celebrates 20th anniversary milestone
YouTube celebrated a milestone last month.
It's been 20 years since the first video was uploaded to the platform — and a lot has changed since then.
Me at the Zoo shows a man standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. While it's not exactly riveting in terms of today's content standards, it does capture an important moment in time.
"If you think about that 19 seconds and what it's turned into today, it's incredible," said Alexandra Hunnings Klein, head of communications for YouTube Canada.
"It's a platform where anybody anywhere can start a business, express themselves."
According to YouTube, the platform's popularity is dominant across age groups in Canada, with usage peaking among Canadians aged 12 to 34.
"It's a platform not just for Canadians to reflect culture back to each other but also globally," Hunnings Klein said.
Part of YouTube's success can be attributed to its consistency, says Richard Lachman, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's media school.
"For most of us the way YouTube serves content now is very similar to the way they did 20 years ago, they got it right," he said, adding it's also been incredibly influential on the way people consume and share media across traditional industries like journalism and film.
"It's really changed our culture into being a moving video culture," he said.
Lachman says with the platform hosting more longer-form content than some of its social media counterparts, it's also been a bit more resilient to misinformation.
"Rather than quick hits, just headlines, people are engaging, they're not just seeing a 20 second clip about something. There's more deep digging," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
3 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
A river cruise with our American frenemies – what could go wrong?
Jane Christmas is a Canadian author. We are on the Rhine, sailing down the lazy river, staring at ancient European castles and pine-covered hills. The occasional barge or river boat passes in the opposite direction. We wave. We lean over the rail and watch the currents and eddies. The river flows, the sun beams. It's life in the slow lane, and boy, do we need it. Away from the noise of an angry, divided world. Away from blaring headlines, from the fearmongers urging us to prepare an emergency kit because the Apocalypse is closing in. Away from the stuff that makes our hearts race and our minds plunge into dark thinking. Look who's sorry now: Americans are an apologetic bunch to this Canadian on vacation Our party of four Canadian couples finds itself to be among a distinct minority on this small cruise ship. The American passengers vastly outnumber us: 135 of them, fewer than 30 of us. It's awkward, given the trade tensions between our two nations. Still, we're pretty sure we can roll with it. We're a friendly, easygoing bunch. Two nights in, the cruise director announces a pub quiz. Hey, that sounds fun. Let's do it. The other passengers form their groups, grab their drinks, and off we go. Team Canada hits a near-perfect score, falling at the question, On which side of her face is Mona Lisa's smile? But it doesn't matter, we've won handily. Our reward is two bottles of champagne, one of which we immediately hand to the American group sitting next to us as thanks for marking our answer sheet. They're simpatico. We think. Walking back to our rooms, I clock another large group of Americans. Their lips are tight, their arms crossed. I can imagine they're the type to start yelling 'U.S.A.! U.S.A.!' at a moment's notice. They glare at us. One of them – male, white, obese, scarfing down an entire tube of complimentary peanuts – gives me the stink eye and calls out, in a MAGA tone, the number 51. 'In your dreams, buddy,' I say with a smile, and walk on. But when I reach the door of our room, the smile is gone and my head is filled with less civil replies, ones that might elicit a punch being thrown. One of our friends asks what that guy had said to me. I confirm what she overheard. The faces on the rest of our group fall. Apparently, there's no escape from bullies, even on a seniors' cruise. Keller: We see your joke about the 51st state, and raise you a reference to sacking the White House As the trip goes on, things do not improve. Aside from two Americans who approach us to apologize for their current President, the rest treat us as if we're COVID carriers. They rarely acknowledge us in the hall, don't meet our eyes or say hello or good morning like normal people do when they're on a pleasure boat together. During the off-board excursions, they huddle with their countrymen and either ignore us or shoot us looks of disdain. More Canadian invisibility arrives via the tour guides, who constantly point out Americanisms to their guests – a U.S. embassy here, a bridge named after JFK there, the former home of the guy who designed the Statue of Liberty. Americans are on a constant drip-feed of their own cultural fodder. That's why we won the quiz – as the saying goes, Canadians know about the world; Americans only know about themselves. Here's the thing: It's not enough for Canadians to buy ABA (anything but American), we need to work on self-belief and entrepreneurship. We haven't promoted our country or culture abroad as vociferously or aggressively as we could, believing that polite and passive would win the day. How's that been working out for us? As a Canadian living in Britain, I've witnessed the fallout. We are a ghost nation beyond our borders. I had to remind an otherwise educated English twentysomething where exactly Canada was on a map. It's humbling given the rhetoric that 'Canada matters on the world stage.' What stage? We can't even get verbal support from the Commonwealth or England when it matters. They snickered when our PM was called 'governor,' and our sovereignty was bullied. They thought it was a joke. Look at them scrambling now. Still, why have we assumed that the world knows who we are? Each week I leaf through the British newspapers and see the same dull tourism ads for Niagara Falls and the Rocky Mountaineer that I've seen for the last two decades. Where's the nightlife of Canada's cities? The picturesque Newfoundland villages? The Inuit arts and awesome Northern landscapes? The architectural and cultural charm of Quebec? Where are the theatres, galleries, literary festivals and vineyards? I'd suggest our tourism ads include shopping as a visitor activity (our dollar being a bargain) but we've shamefully cross-border shopped so much that we've lost our signature department stores, having sold most of them to the highest (often American) bidder. Nice one. Is no one minding our commercial legacy? It's time to step up. We need to be seen as a country on the rise, as well as one that gets involved. Yes to increasing our defence spending, but also to elbowing in to some of the world's ongoing conflicts and helping to mediate their end. Why do we always leave this task to the U.S.? Then there's the lack of overseas trade. Aluminum and steel, sure, but what about wine? There's no end of Australian, New Zealand and American wines on the shelves of British grocery stores, but nothing from Canada. No one in Britain is even aware of Canadian viticulture. Let's get those bottles overseas. It's all very well to wear your 'Never 51' shirt, or to post your Canuck creds on Instagram, or to boycott Netflix and Amazon, but it's time to think bigger, bolder. Time to make a splash. If our efforts are rebuffed south of the border, big deal. There are other countries in this world to woo. Why do we still measure Canadian success against our neighbour's barometer? It's obvious by now that big isn't always best. Back on board our cruise boat, the froideur continues and mystifies my group. Did we belittle their leader on national television, as Donald Trump did ours? Did we threaten their sovereignty? Upend their trade deals? No. They started it. And it sounds like a playground spat until you understand that it's moved into gaslighting territory: We are somehow the enemy. This is the strategy of their leader: Drop the stink bomb and blame the other guy. He's told/signalled/tweeted to his nation that Canadians are lazy, do-nothing freeloaders. Of course it's a lie, but try convincing a boatload of Americans of their country's misguided path, a group who've dined on a century of obsequiousness that the world – including Canada – has fed them. The water might be choppy, but it's time we charted our own course, and make waves that count.
Winnipeg Free Press
6 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Wes Anderson's Phoenician Scheme falls a little bit flat
Wes Anderson's cinematic obsessions and stylistic quirks are so distinctive, so immediately recognizable that when trailers for his movies are released, it can be hard to figure out whether it's an actual Anderson preview or just another YouTube pastiche. Devotees might see this latest project, his 12th feature film, as Peak Anderson. Doubters, meanwhile, might suggest the 56-year-old auteur has overshot the peak and fallen into self-parody. For those Anderson viewers who find his works alternately brilliant and exasperating — and sometimes both things simultaneously — The Phoenician Scheme will probably end up classified as minor Anderson. Mixing up a mid-20th-century international caper with family dysfunction, the story (co-written with Roman Coppola) is intermittently interesting, and it's underlaid — of course — with exquisite and elaborate visual tableaux. But the charm often feels forced and twee, the artifice frequently hardens into rigidity, and that tricky Andersonian balance of irony and sentiment is way, way off. The Phoenician Scheme seems destined to land near the bottom end of Anderson's up-and-down oeuvre, somewhere around The Darjeeling Limited and Isle of Dogs. Benicio del Toro (who worked with Anderson in The French Dispatch) plays Anatole (Zsa-zsa) Korda, a super-rich plutocrat who made his fortune from various nefarious sources (including but not limited to war profiteering, bribery, theft, tax evasion and possibly murder). Having survived repeated assassination attempts that have him pondering his mortality, Zsa-zsa decides to bequeath his empire to his estranged daughter Liesl (The Buccaneers' Mia Threapleton), a pious novitiate nun. First, Zsa-zsa takes Liesl to visit a massive infrastructure project involving a canal, a tunnel, a railway line and a dam, to be built in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Phoenicia. Zsa-zsa is perhaps hoping to make up for years of paternal neglect, while Liesl wants to ameliorate her father's brand of rapacious capitalism (which includes engineered famines and the use of slave labour). TPS Productions/Focus Features/TNS Benicio del Toro (left) and Mia Threapleton play a formerly estranged father and daughter in Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme. The mismatched father-daughter pair, along with Dr. Bjorn (Michael Cera), a Norwegian tutor who's been drafted as Zsa-zsa's new private secretary after the last one was blown up, then visit the scheme's principal investors. These include two basketball-playing Americans (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston); Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a canned fish aficionado and nightclub owner; Marty (Jeffrey Wright), an easygoing shipping magnate; and stern, uber-wealthy Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson). There are tussles with assassins, secret agents and amiable Marxist revolutionaries (led by Richard Ayoade), as well as conflicts with a consortium of besuited bureaucrats (led by Rupert Friend), who are attempting to scupper Zsa-zsa's business by driving up the price of 'Bashable Rivets.' Threapleton gives a grounded performance as one of Anderson's recurring types — the wise, grave young woman — and Cera is a constant daffy delight, whose pure enjoyment of Andersonian caprice spreads to the audience. Unfortunately, del Toro, who is in almost every scene, is flat — and not just Anderson flat, with that trademark deadpan delivery, but oddly empty. There are many of the usual Andersonian tropes — a distant parent attempting a late-life redemption, excellent luggage, obscure books (Fleas of the Americas), gorgeous tilework and wall coverings, and vintage modes of transport. TPS Productions/Focus Features (From left) Mathieu Amalric, Michael Cera, Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Jeffrey Wright get tangled up in The Phoenician Scheme. There's a magpie-like collection of cultural references, from the films of Orson Welles to Boys' Own adventure stories. There are starry cameos, including drop-ins by Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Bill Murray as God (or vice-versa). There is lots of symmetrical, head-on framing and a gorgeous pastel colour palette of sand, ochre and aqua (last seen in Asteroid City). But does this elegant, eccentric cinematic style add up to much? The film's themes ostensibly involve a socioeconomic look at unfettered capitalism, a philosophical examination of morality, and perhaps an allegory for the process of filmmaking and film financing, but Anderson's extension of these declared ideas feels perfunctory. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The tone is uneven. There are scenes of slapstick violence that try for antic comedy but don't always come off. But the real problem is the dramatic hollowness. Even amidst their arch artifice, the best of Anderson's films, such as Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel, tend to be burnished with gentle melancholy, with laments for lost innocence. There is no affective undertow here, and the final scene, which celebrates the modest pleasures of work and family, doesn't have enough emotional heft to work. Even minor Wes Anderson is worth a look. The Phoenician Scheme is watchable, but it's also, sadly, forgettable. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Global News
14 hours ago
- Global News
Giant human spiderweb at Calgary school hopes to strengthen community
Hundreds of students gathered with staff and Indigenous elders at Foothills Acadamy Friday, joining hands in a symbolic gesture of community strength. Ani to pisi (spiderweb) is a Blackfoot creation story local students are now bringing to life — in a big way. Beginning with drumming and a round dance, participants say the giant spiderweb symbolizes interconnectedness. It's hoped the event will be followed by other community-building events, expanding Canadians shared journey through reconciliation.
