If we started with a coffee pot
The first every webcam shot, circa 1991
There were about fifteen of us involved in related research and, being poor, impoverished academics, we only had one coffee filter machine between us, which lived in the corridor just outside the Trojan Room. However, being highly dedicated and hard-working academics, we got through a lot of coffee, and when a fresh pot was brewed, it often didn't last long.
Some members of the 'coffee club' lived in other parts of the building and had to navigate several flights of stairs to get to the coffee pot; a trip which often proved fruitless if the all-night hackers of the Trojan Room had got there first. This disruption to the progress of Computer Science research obviously caused us some distress, and so XCoffee was born.
If we started off with the first every 'live' image from this simple image of a coffee pot in 1991, 24 years ago and if Youtube which gave everyone access to instant online video is only just over 10 years old (with the first ever video embedded below), where are we going to be in another 10-20 years? Easy answers are improved quality (4k or 8k, even?), rid of Flash, instant streaming from any location worldwide, more and more acceptance of everything being recorded, an expectation to be able to watch live video on demand. What would you add?
Viewership figures for Youtube in 2014
More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth
100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
80% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
YouTube is localised in 61 countries and across 61 languages
According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network
Millions of subscriptions happen each day. The number of people subscribing daily is up more than 3x since last year, and the number of daily subscriptions is up more than 4x since last year