Transcriber: Ellen Maloney Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good evening everyone; thank you so much, I'm very excited to be here.
Tonight I want to talk a little bit about some reflections that I've had
in my three years at YouTube, about why people share online.
I want to start by showing you a short video clip
of the type of video that I watch every single day.
(Crashing sounds)
We're all here in California; the Bay area to be specific.
We all know, as much as we may try and deny it,
the geographic reality that this particular place on the globe
is prone to earthquakes.
So, quick poll, quick poll; I want to know how many people think
that their first instinct would be
to whip out their video camera if there were an earthquake right now?
(Laughter)
Knock on wood, that's not going to happen; OK, a couple.
Well, in Japan, on March 11th,
hundreds of people shot video footage just like that.
At the moment of truth, as the floor was shaking beneath them,
the books were falling off the shelves,
and waters from the tsunamis were actually rising in their homes,
and in their businesses,
they thought to themselves, "Let me hit the record button;
I want to document this thing that is happening,
and share it with the world."
And even within hours, we started to see videos coming into YouTube.
Before anything else, these people thought, "I want to share this;
I want other people to see what it is that we just went through."
My role at YouTube as News Manager is to sift through
all of this vast amount of content that comes into the site.
And to really try and find those raw eye-witness videos
that everyday citizens, just like you and me,
decided to capture.
They happened to be in the right place at the right time,
when this thing happened.
Or the wrong place, depending on how you look at it.
But I have to be honest,
and say that I don't think I'm one of those people;
I don't think that I would put myself in danger, at that type of moment,
to capture this experience.
So it makes my job a little bit strange,
because my job relies on people doing things that I would never do.
Like, for example, running into a burning building,
with a helmet-cam strapped to my head.
There's a lot of firemen on YouTube who do this; you would be amazed.
Or putting myself into a war-zone, this video's from Libya, with a flip-cam,
to document police brutality, and upload that to YouTube.
Or, run across the street as bullets are flying,
to film a young woman dying on the sidewalk.
This is the iconic "Neda" video from Iran.
The question is, "Why do these people do this?"
This is something that I think about every single day.
I try to understand, "What are the motivations?
What is the psychology of somebody who's willing to risk their life
to share an experience like this?
I always assumed this was a positive development for media;
you have citizen reporters out there,
covering events that maybe otherwise wouldn't be covered.
But it wasn't until I had a personal experience of my own
that I really started to wonder whether this behavior I was promoting
was actually unveiling
a sort-of darker side of humanity, potentially,
rather than a brighter side.
I was walking home from work one day, and I saw a police car and police tape
blocking off Valencia Street in the Mission,
about half a block from where I live.
Immediately, I have this sense of panic
that there's something in my apartment building, or something.
I asked somebody standing there, "What's going on?"
They pointed up.
My eyes gazed up, along with the rest of the crowd,
and I saw a young man, standing at the edge
of a ledge of a four-story building about to jump.
Immediately, I felt sick to my stomach.
And yet I was filled with this adrenaline.
After a couple of seconds of processing what was going on, I thought to myself,
"This is the moment;
this is when these citizen reporters that I work with
would capture this on film and share it!"
I thought, "Let me pull out my mobile phone",
and I hit the "record" button.
And then I uploaded it to Facebook.
He was OK; he didn't jump.
I went home, and I just felt really unsettled.
I went on Facebook, and I started getting some comments on the wall post,
and I took it down.
It really made me think, "What is it about me, and this culture,
and this culture in which I exist, that inspired me to take that,"
and put it up and share it?"
At the time, I was thinking,
"This is a really amazing moment, and people are going to comment on it,
and they're going to "like" it, as weird and inappropriate as that is in this case.
And I'm going to be the center of their attention for the 30 seconds
that they're focused on my post in their news-feed.
Then they're going to move on to one of the hundreds of others
that have come in in the last two minutes."
I think we now live in a culture in which publishing is so easy;
the barrier to putting content online and sharing information is so low,
that oftentimes, the frequency and volume of sharing content is rewarded,
over the quality, or the intent, or the utility of that content.
I want to share a couple of quick stats
to show you how ubiquitous this behavior really is.
Every single minute on YouTube,
35 hours worth of new content is uploaded to the site.
In that same minute, 150 years worth of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook.
And in that same minute, more than 400 tweets include a YouTube link.
Now, in that minute on Facebook,
you have almost 83,000 status updates posted.
You have almost 136,000 photos.
In a day, in 2010, Foursquare had a million check-ins a day.
And now, Twitter's latest numbers are 140 million tweets per day.
These numbers are astounding, right?
I quickly want to walk through three different types of sharing,
but I really want to focus on the last one.
The first one is the most obvious, right?
This is personal sharing;
this is the information you share with your family and friends.
Oftentimes it's basic, it's facts about you;
where you grew up, where you went to school,
where you live, and where you work.
This is sort of your stake in the ground.
Then, I think, there's the more self-expressive.
You know, "Here are the types of music that I like, movies that I enjoy,
the shows that I watch every week."
This is a little more about, "I want to give you a sense of who I am,
a little bit more of a global perspective."
The last type of personal sharing I call "self-locating".
These are the types of posts that are sort of more subtle,
they give people a sense of where I fit in to a social network.
It might be a cool restaurant that I "checked in" to,
with a specific person that bumps me up in the social circle.
The second type of sharing is really around content.
This is interesting links, funny YouTube videos, amazing awe-inspiring photographs.
This type of sharing, I think often is either about informing your friends
and family of something you think they might find interesting or useful.
Or, it's about starting a conversation around a topic that you really care about.
But it's the third type of sharing that I think is most interesting;
I think it's completely different, and something we don't talk about as much.
This is, oftentimes, it will start with some type of personal experience.
It might be a piece of content, so it's sort of a blend of the first two.
But this type of sharing transcends the person that initiated it;
it is about something much bigger.
Oftentimes, this type of sharing requires someone taking a risk,
like the videos we saw at the beginning.
People are putting themselves outside of their comfort zone,
and documenting some experience
that then will have a broader implication to the rest of the world.
I think the key thing about this type of sharing is that it makes people realize
that they're a part of something bigger than just themselves.
I'm not sure how many people have heard of the "It Gets Better Project"?
(Applause)
Amazing, amazing stuff; if you haven't seen it, check it out.
Last fall, after a string of nationally publicized suicides of gay teens,
who'd been bullied and ridiculed by their peers,
a man named Dan Savage and his partner, Terry,
made a video, in which they told their story.
They talked about what it was like to be gay,
as a young person in high school.
They talked about how horrible it was
to have to deal with the people at their school who didn't like them.
They talked about coming out, they talked about meeting each other,
they talked about falling in love and starting a family,
and the message underlying this entire video was:
"As bad as it seems now, as dark as your life may feel,
there is light at the end of the tunnel,
and it does get better."
This video started to get some traction; it started getting passed around a lot.
Before too long, other people started making their own videos,
their own "It Gets Better" videos;
talking about their experiences, and sharing their stories,
many of which had never seen the light of day.
People were telling their greatest fears and their most painful moments
to complete strangers on the Internet.
They were talking about what it was like to go to sleep at night
and not want to wake up in the morning.
These are really powerful stories.
And in isolation, none of these people probably would have shared these videos.
But they knew that they were part of a movement,
and they understood that their act of sharing this was an act of solidarity.
I want to just play one video
that's one of my favorites from the "It Gets Better Project".
My name is JD and I've been a sworn law enforcement officer for the past 15 years.
My names Alan, I'm a staff sergeant in the United States Marine Corps.
We are here to tell you it does get better.
When I was in high school and middle school,
I was picked on continuously and constantly by cruel people.
But in spite of that, I did persevere, and you will as well.
We want to let you know that no matter what you think about yourself right now,
and what other people might be thinking about you that might be negative;
whether they said you're too feminine,
whether they said that you're too masculine,
you are perfect and wonderful, exactly as you are.
We want to let you know that indeed.
It does get better.
(Applause)
I love that video, and I really encourage you to look at the "It Gets Better" site;
it's just incredibly inspiring.
Why'd these guys make this video, right?
They're not making this for Facebook friends,
"Hey, FYI, here's our video!"
They understood that telling their story
was something that was going to help somebody else.
They knew that they were part of something bigger.
People not only risk themselves emotionally,
but they risk themselves physically.
I think we've seen this in the last few months, during the Arab Spring.
This video was actually from Iran, in 2009,
where we really started to see this movement grow.
These protesters understood that foreign media had been kicked out their country,
there were no reporters to tell their stories,
and that suddenly, the onus was on them,
to document what was happening on the streets,
and provide a visceral window into what was happening
in Tehran, in Cairo, in Damascus.
These people understood that it was more important for them to capture video
than it was to throw stones.
The camera was their weapon,
and information was the single most threatening thing
to the dictatorship that they were trying to overthrow.
People also understood that they needed help
through social networks to get the word out.
In Iran, we started seeing videos that were being uploaded
with titles and descriptions that said things like,
"We are the media, you are the media;
please share this with as many people as you possibly can."
The onus was then on them, to get the word out.
And they did; through Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, and other social platforms.
The word was spread and mainstream media was covering the story
through the eyes of these protesters.
Obviously, the revolution in Iran hasn't come to fruition.
But one of the most amazing things about what has happened
is that the perception of a nation was entirely changed.
I think before this,
many Americans thought of Iran as the center of the "axis of evil".
All of a sudden, it was a country filled with empathy-worthy individuals
that weren't so different from you and me.
More recently in Egypt, these videos have shown a sense of solidarity.
We heard anecdoteally that many people
felt like they were really unhappy with the Mubarak government,
but they didn't necessarily know all their neighbors felt the same way.
When they started to see videos on YouTube
of thousands of people gathering in Tahrir Square,
and they started to see activity on Twitter,
they realized that they could go out and join them, and they were not alone.
My point is, it's not all about what you had for breakfast.
Although, that type of everyday sharing is still really important;
it's a part of the human experience, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I think that this type of transcendent sharing,
where you are broadening your experience,
and really making it universal to the rest of the world,
is what is so exciting.
The last anecdote I want to share really quickly is from Facebook.
There was a woman in Alabama last week, which was the state that was hardest hit
by the tornadoes that swept through the south-east.
She woke up and found her lawn littered with photos and letters,
that had been traveled through the wind, 200 miles.
She collected all these photos, and she was so moved
by these individual memories that were on her front door,
that she felt like she needed to do something.
So she scanned all of them, and made a Facebook page.
She put them up on Facebook and said to herself,
"If all I can do is return one photo, then I'm happy."
She put her email address up there, and within a few days,
there were 100, 000 people who had fanned this page.
And 36,000 photos have been uploaded.
I took this screen shot a few days ago; I went to the page this morning,
and every five minutes, there's a new photo that's being posted.
I think that it's stories like this, that really give me hope.
As much as I may sometimes wonder about our motivations,
you know, "Are we promoting ourselves? Are we being sensationalistic?"
Like I was when I posted that photo from my neighbourhood.
I think that the world is ultimately becoming a more connected place,
through the ability to share online.
I think connected people are more empathetic people,
and empathy is ultimately what allows us to make the foreign seem less foreign.
I think that's what brings us peace.
Thank you.
(Applause)