If you missed it, TIME released their best inventions of 2006 and the best invention at the top of the list was YouTube. Why did it win?
YouTube is ultimately more interesting as a community and a culture, however, than as a cash cow. It's the fulfillment of the promise that Web 1.0 made 15 years ago. The way blogs made regular folks into journalists, YouTube makes them into celebrities. The real challenge old media face isn't protecting their precious copyrighted material. It's figuring out what to do when the rest of us make something better. As Hurley puts it, "How do you stay relevant when people can entertain themselves?" He and his partners may have started YouTube, but the rest of us, in our basements and bedrooms, with our broadband and our webcams, invented it.
So now that Google is going to buy YouTube, they need to make sure this invention doesn't drown in legal battles.
Save up to $400! Register now for SES New York 2012, the Leading Search & Social Marketing Event, taking place March 19-23. Google's Digital Marketing Evangelist Avinash Kaushik will keynote. Hurry, pre-agenda rate expires March 2!
