lee crane

Slate.com and Wired Magazine’s May issue break down the explosion in online video in simple, straight forward pieces. On Slate Paul Boutin’s article A Grand Unified Theory of Youtube and Myspace he claims that Youtube.com and Myspace.com are popular with the kids precisely because neither of the sites tell kids what to do. In The Fab 4 Million (also on Slate.com) Sam Anderson investigates the popularity of lip-syncing videos and points out that Youtube.com is “the polar opposite of American Idol,” but it’s still making kids famous, albeit for horrifying reasons.

As technology continues to isolate everyone, the need to see what other humans in other parts of the world are doing (lip-syncing, getting nutted on handrails, or crashing on thier bikes) is going to be of growing importance. If that is true, then the superstars of the new video revolution are going to be a lot more like Emogirl21 and a lot less like Kelly Clarkston. I’ve yet to figure out which is worse.

Ancillary Linkage:
– Youtube updates their system to include “favorite subscriptions” [via: Digg]
– Youtube raises another $25 million in VC
– The Myspace Backstory by aspiring journalist Trent Lapinski [via: Valleywag]
– After Five Months YouTube is a Star
– Youtube bandwidth: $1 million a month [via: Twit.tv]