It’s important to look at the implications of the services and products we use every day in our lives. It is easy to start using something, receive benefit from it, consider it a “good” thing, and then not give it a lot of thought after that. We should keep thinking about our use of the product. Is it still good for us? Have our needs changed, and should we discontinue use of the product? Maybe our use of the product has transformed, and now it can replace other products or services in our lives.
These are all questions that we need to take time to consider, if we want to have control of our own lives (by which I mean our time).
I started thinking about this again after reading an article in Fast Company magazine. I find the magazine thought provoking and I spend 2-3 hours a month on the issues that I receive. I think I benefit greatly from that time spent with the trend news and innovative ideas that I come across in the magazine.
Recently I was reading Discovery Engines: Policing the Riot of Information Overload. The question the article addresses is how do “we” filter through the social networking content to find the information that we want and find useful. If you have ever spent any time on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or any blog pages (I know you have or you wouldn’t be here!) you understand the problem. There is so much junk out there, it is hard to find useful content.
It reminds me of the old joke (turn away if you don’t like gross) about the little boy who accidently spit out his chewing gum while walking through a chicken pen. He started looking for it on the ground to continue chewing it. Unfortunately, he found it six times.
Anyway, this is all lead-up to the point I want to make. I understand the issue very well and think about the questions this article brings up often. However, there was one real gem of a comment made in the article that gave me pause.
Fans who use YouTube through its Leanback interface (designed for TVs and leveraging its what-to-watch-next algorithm) stick with the site for 30 minutes a day, compared with 15 minutes for the average viewer. Although that’s encouraging, it pales when compared with YouTube’s goal of several hours of daily viewing.
Did you catch that? YouTube’s goal is to get you to watch YouTube videos several hours every day. Well, actually, as usual, the statement is probably misleading toward YouTube. In a Telegraph article on Chad Hurley, one of YouTube’s co-founders, Mr. Hurley does compare YouTube to TV and suggest that most of the average 5 hours per day TV watching will be replaced with gathering content from the web. Obviously, YouTube desires to be a big part of that to make lots of money selling advertising. (As an aside, I wish Farhad Manjoo, author of the Fast Company article, had provided a reference for this statement that purports to be fact. One of the problems with magazines is a willingness to make “factual” statements without providing a way for the reader to check up on it, but that’s another post for another day.)
This caused my mind to begin thinking about this whole issue of who controls my life. YouTube apparently wants most of my non-sleeping, non-working hours so that they can sell my time to advertisers. You can’t blame them, they have to make a profit, right? They can only make a profit on my time. But, they have to compete with the slots casino down the road from me, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pirates, TV, and the local adult-beverage-purveying establishments for my limited time. (Not that I give any of my time to many of those listed time sinks.)
Somehow, in an effort to make a profit, it is okay for organizations to waste everyone’s time and encourage people to throw their time away on trivial pursuits (not to be confused with the game by the same name). What kind of a society do we have once a large percentage of citizens are averaging 4-5 hours a day watching YouTube videos? Will they spend the rest of their “free” time stuffing quarters in a machine and pulling the lever hoping to hit it rich so they don’t have to be productive any longer?
This comment raises some big questions in my mind. But it’s not YouTube’s fault – they need to make a profit.
You and I have to be careful to whom we give our life (time). I’m going to be thinking about this a lot more in the weeks to come.