1) The Nerds Are Winning
Back in 2000, any sales and marketing guy with half an idea was able to loosen the purse strings of an overzealous investor, as VCs desperately tried to cash in on the buzzing tech industry. Now the founders and CEOs looking for investment are the coders that are developing the products and apps. For start-ups this means that products have often already been developed to a certain extent before investment is sought. Also, giants like Facebook and Google (founded by programmers) realise that developer talent is very important and are remunerating them as such.

2) Broadband
This is quite simple: broadband speeds are multiple times faster than 10 years ago, which has enabled people to stay online for longer (without being annoyed by DSL speeds). Also, websites are more dynamic and intuitive. Sites that epitomised the crash such as boo.com, which relied heavily on Javascript and flash, would have a greater chance of succeeding now as quicker broadband speeds would enable the site to load quicker and enhance the user experience.

3) Internet In Your Pocket
With the advent of smartphones, tablets, wifi, 3G and even social networking, internet users are online more often now than ever, and in ever stranger locations. This has led to sites that are free to end users, with large corporate sponsors and advertisers footing the bill.

There are now 3 billion YouTube video views every day, and 45 hours of footage uploaded every minute of every day, figures which are quite staggering. Think about it, when you want to find a song quickly (let alone a football in the groin video) where do you look first? The way we use YouTube has shaped the direction the company has taken which has led to all sorts of complicated licensing deals with the major record labels (and now the film studios), as they attempt to negate any copyright issues.

They did not set out to become a music hub but as we upload content they have facilitated ways of keeping this content available. Now, the artists themselves have their own channels with links to download their tracks, which in my opinion has been one of the biggest factors in the fall from grace of myspace.

It is through ease of use, quick search results and playback, and, of course, the fact that it remains a free service that lets YouTube handle the second largest amount of search queries on any website on the planet (yes, even more than Bing or Yahoo). Even Facebook can’t ignore the impact of YouTube with more than 150 years of footage watched on Facebook every day, the vast majority of this via YouTube. They have made it easy for us to share our video on any website through the embed code, while still counting every view in their stats.

The vast majority of users will never upload a video, but this figure is growing all the time, as smart phones provide us with the tools to create video and upload directly, from any location.

YouTube really has something for everyone, from ‘how tos’ to music videos to (illegally uploaded) TV shows and it is definitely here to stay, so grab your camera and point and shoot. You could be the internet’s next star and someone may even right a song(ify) about you.

Footage from Nasa’s open source video library, soundtrack composed with Abaltat Muse and hijacked from youtube. The creator seems pretty happy with the use of the free footage and Muse soundtrack both of which can be posted anywhere.