The importance of YouTube: Learning Not to Control It

What will YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace and other Internet-based social networking technologies mean to business communicators? Most of them are still trying to work that out. And as the April attack at Virginia Tech showed, students are way ahead on this technology.

YouTube’s impact on the business world is obvious: Google spent $1.65 billion to acquire it, and now Viacom is suing it for a billion, for hosting video material that Viacom holds copyright on.

There is a wider significance, too — not only do millions of young people around the world spend inestimable hours searching, watching and posting videos on YouTube, now, students are getting suspended because of it.

Six students from the South Carleton High School in eastern Ontario were suspended for a day by their principal for participating in a “flash mob.” About 30 students mimicked the unaired commercial for Xbox by suddenly, seemingly without warning, aiming their fingers at each other in the cafeteria, saying “bang” and falling to play dead.

It’s an example of “flash mobbing,” a phenomenon shown in the Microsoft ad, that’s been played out by young people in places as far-flung as Gdansk and South Florida.

At South Carleton High, students planned the flash mob through the FaceBook website. Apparently, school faculty learned of the plan in advance and prepared to intervene. The reason: according to school board official, it was “threatening the moral tone of the school” and “stripped the ability of students to feel safe.”

It hardly seems like something to get suspended over; essentially, the kids were playing Cops and Robbers or some other elementary-school game. Who hasn’t pointed a finger-gun at a playmate?

The difference here is obviously the use of the Web-based social networking technology to plan the event. The principal’s reaction was clearly motivated by fear, fear directly tied to the fact that the student action was spread by the democratic, uncontrollable tools that youth are using. Clearly, there’s a fear of new technology here. If the Internet, which rightly evokes worries among adults about the safety of children, hadn’t been involved, would the principal have cared?

This is an important question, when you consider how students at Virginia Tech used social networking and the Internet in general to communicate during and immediately after the gun attack on April 16. There's no doubt that the technology and the websites that have become popular among students and other young people had real benefits in helping people deal with the shock and grief, and may even have saved some lives by informaing people durin gthe crisis. It's time to get past the fear, and to start looking at what's really working in new communications media and technology.

Business has been slow to start to take advantage of technology like blogs, wikis and social networking systems. But there are clearly a lot of opportunities here.

It hardly seems like something to get suspended over; essentially, the kids were playing Cops and Robbers or some other elementary-school game. Who hasn’t pointed a finger-gun at a playmate?

The difference here is obviously the use of the Web-based social networking technology to plan the event. The principal’s reaction was clearly motivated by fear, fear directly tied to the fact that the student action was spread by the democratic, uncontrollable tools that youth are using. Clearly, there’s a fear of new technology here. If the Internet, which rightly evokes worries among adults about the safety of children, hadn’t been involved, would the principal have cared?