The First Video Sharing Platform – From Where it All Started

Video sharing is one of the major strides in the video technology world. That being said

“The internet changes pretty fast, you could miss it if you don’t stop and look around” – Ferris Bueller

This quote in itself is self-explanatory as technology evolves rapidly. Talk about keeping up with another thing when we’re already keeping up with the changes of life, age and science. With time and the evolution of the internet, video-sharing platforms have become a hit and are evolving as well.

Did you know? About 84% of internet traffic will be video by 2020? Here’s something more interesting. According to research, people will spend 100 minutes a day watching videos online in 2021.

Enough to blow our minds. When people are spending that much time watching videos, there is certainly a need to share them. The demand for sharing videos is likely to increase in the future.

What Is a Video Sharing Platform?

Saw an informative video and want to share it with your colleagues? What about a training video? Might as well be an onboarding video that needs to be shared within the organization. Let’s say your video is ready for a roll-out but requires the CEO’s review before going live.

Here’s where video sharing platforms come into play. People often wonder what is a video sharing platform? So, let me describe what a video sharing platform exactly is:

“A place that allows users to upload, store or share uploaded video content for other people to see, interact and engage.”

The general audience tends to share videos for personal reasons, and businesses share them for training, marketing, internal review etc. In this regard, choosing a secure video sharing platform that will let you share quickly, and easily without hassle is the one to opt for.

Learn more in our blog on 51 business use cases for video in an organization.

For that, VIDIZMO is a perfect choice and a perfect bet for businesses to share internally and externally. VIDIZMO provides much more than sharing a video. From AI capabilities to embedding to transcoding. VIDIZMO has got them all.

The History: First Ever Video Sharing Platform

It is believed that the first-ever video-sharing site was “shareyourworld”, and it all started back in 1997.

Whoa! It’s even older than me.

Chase Norlin was the founder who now owns a video/audio company called Pixy. As the days go by, in 1999, a P2P file-sharing network entered the scene, making it easier for people to share videos by eliminating the old HTTP downloading method. Early viral videos were typically spread via email chains.

However, downloading a movie would typically take several days in 56k dial-up connection, and only 3% of the Americans had broadband access at that time.

Big changes happened in the early 2000s, leaving the first video sharing platform and old-school video sharing method via email chains behind us. Once High-speed internet came to the scene, sharing was easier than ever before. This, combined with the launch of social media platforms like Friendster (2002) and MySpace (2003), paved the way. In 2004, we got the social media platform Facebook and then came the most popular video-sharing platform in existence, YouTube!

Renowned Video Sharing Platform – YouTube

YouTube, has been a renowned video-sharing platform for the past 2 decades. Over 1 billion video content is being watched every day, and it is ranked as the second most popular video streaming and sharing platform. YouTube has made the best use of machine learning technology for indexing and compiling suggestions for users.

The company rose to instant fame, just like the first video sharing platform. There are even possible ways for creators to make money that can be earned through pre-roll or mid-roll ads, facilitated by AdSense. Or if a creator has more than 50,000 subs, they can officially sell their merchandise. YouTube also offers analytics of the video uploaded, such as

• Total viewership
• Total subscribers
• Traffic source
• Age and Gender of audience

And get a time-wise summary of user-related activity. Here is a couple of fun facts about YouTube

• Around 37% of the mobile internet goes to YouTube
• The very first video posted was back in 2005
• A song titled as Gangnam style broke YouTube’s video counter
• There are over 31 million YouTube channels.

The Evolution After YouTube

Another differentiating point from the first video sharing platform to YouTube to now is on-demand video streaming and sharing that can be suited to various organization use cases. Many other platforms are surfacing and gaining popularity with their advanced features that offer VOD.

For example, corporate communication videos such as training or on-boarding videos can be made available within the organization while sharing them on-demand to new hires. The scenario falls short when it comes to YouTube. Below we have discussed the best platform when it comes to upcoming trends of On-demand video sharing.

Upcoming Trends

The upcoming trends are all about video content and how we can securely share, manage, and organize them. YouTube is not the greatest when it comes to streaming and sharing videos internally within the organization.

To eliminate these issues, video hosting and sharing platform such as VIDIZMO is here to save the day. VIDIZMO is a Gartner-recognized video streaming and management platform that is for both live streaming and on-demand videos.

You can have an internal portal just for your organization to access those videos and a public one for the public. It provides out-of-the-box integration with the best security. The platform is end-to-end encrypted with FIPS 140-2 compliant modules and others. So, you can share your videos stress-free!

It even offers temporary video sharing, where you can define how many views or time duration recipients get.

Sharing has Become Much More Powerful

With VIDIZMO, you have all the power to choose how you want to share your videos, who should have access to them and what an authorized person can do with it. You can either

• Generate a link and decide when it expires
• Add a limited sharing option such as setting the number of views allowed
• Set a time duration between which they can watch the shared videos

Or restrict departments, even the entire organization, from sharing video outside the premises.

Furthermore, VIDIZMO EnterpriseTube is a complete video platform to stream videos for end-to-end use cases. it has rich content segregation options, integrations, the ability to add interactive elements, followed by AI features such as automatic transcription and translation. It surely provides the user with a seamless and enhanced playback experience. You can try it yourself with VIDIZMO’S free trial.

Conclusion

From the very first video sharing platform with basic features to now the most advanced video sharing platforms, the trend changed so did the technology. Since the rise and demand for video are increasing by the day, it is necessary to use a platform that securely shares your videos and provides you with those rich capabilities that offer a seamless user experience.

You can learn more about the different video sharing platforms in our comparison across 5 different types. Or contact us to learn more about the capabilities offered by VIDIZMO.