Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, the authors of The YouTube Reader, say that there are three types of contributors to YouTube: the big media companies, WebTV companies and amateurs. What I am going to do in this post is to show how important the amateur contributors are for YouTube with the example of Jimmy Tatro, a student at the Arizona State University. I will also try to explain why Jimmy Tatro became so popular whitin such a short period of time.
Jimmy Tatro joined YouTube on November 23th, 2011. His username is LifeAccordingToJimmy and he makes videos about everyday problems for college students, for example akward social interactions. Tatro is part of a fraternity house and makes a lot of his videos together with his fellow roommates. His videos are not made to be taken very seriously but rather to entertain his audience in a funny way. Tatro releases a new video every monday and for this reason, many people follow his channel on YouTube to always be up to date.
The main reason why Jimmy Tatro becamo so popular is, in my opinion, because he talks about problems that most of the college students face every single day. For example, he talks about the different kind of people on Facebook in a funny way but at the same time, most of the stuff he says is true. My favorite video of him is "Gym Etiquette" and I can tell, from my own experiences, that most of the stuff he talks about in this video is true. Part of the reason for his success is that he figured out what college students want to hear and see and finally made videos about it. College students are a big part of the YouTube audience and because of that, he became famous in a short time. Many students know about him and recommend his videos to their friends. His most recent video, "Breaking Up with Overly Attached Girlfriend", was uploaded on YouTube five days ago and already has more than 5.5 million views.
The most important thing to be successful on YouTube is to make videos about things that people are interested in. The example of Jimmy Tatro shows us that it is possible to become famous over night. Even though it seems to be easy to make videos that people like watching, you have to do something that does not already exist and you have to talk about things that people are interested in. Many students can identify themselves with Jimmy Tatro and have already faced most of the things that he is talking about.
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