The Little Things

How did YouTube come to dominate? They were not the first video site. Were they lucky? Did they just have perfect timing?

There is no coincidence for Steve and Chad's success. If you study the YouTube site carefully, you realize that they pretty much did all the little things right.

1) Simply to register.

2) Simply to add videos.

3) Easy to tag and describe videos.

4) Easy to find videos.

5) Easy to display YouTube videos on blogs.

6) Awesome recommendations engine.

7) Simply rating and feedback system.

8) Easy to invite friends.

YouTube may not have been the prettiest looking site, but they understood all the truly important details extremely well. Perhaps the only thing that they could have done better was to hold off on the Google acquistion. With all the talk about a $12 billion MySpace valuation, can you imagine what YouTube might be worth today? Not that $1.6 billion is chump change, and Google is definitely a strong fit for them. It would have been interesting to see how YouTube would have evolved organically. The one company that may enter the rare status of the Internet super-elite by going it alone is Facebook. It is not such a stretch to image that YouTube may have also been able to have join this super-elite group that includes Google, Yahoo!, eBay, and Amazon. Back when it looked like Facebook was for sure going to be acquired by Yahoo!, it seemed crazy that Zuckerberg would turn down the $1 billion plus offer. Now that numbers like $8 billion valuation is being thrown around, looks like Zuckerberg is way smarter than all of us.