Life Changing Experiences of Unintended Popularity through Web-Video Dissemination: A Study on YouTube

Along with the rapid growth of Internet companies such as Yahoo!, Google, and amazon, carries also with them the web’s instantaneous trait of worldwide notoriety for ordinary people. This possibility unconceivable not too long ago, is now an ordinary experience feasible for almost everybody in the world. YouTube, a rapidly growing website now owned by Google, creates more significance in this phenomenon with its ability to contain millions of web-videos uploaded everyday by users around the globe. Moreover, it is a free service, easy, and accessible almost to anyone, anywhere, anytime with internet access. Because of the technology of the User Generated Content (UGC) and Web 2.0, videos are easily disseminated throughout the web. YouTube has become the common originator of Internet celebrities that then spread to other mainstream or old media. Some of these media stars are not initially looking for fame. Their popularity comes from other users watching and sharing their stories or videos to others which later on gained the attention of mass media. These web-videos then become life changing experiences for the subjects projected and sometimes even for the viewers that watch them as well, with good and often bad undertones. Thus is the nature of this new media.