{"id":938,"date":"2009-12-02T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T08:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=938"},"modified":"2009-11-27T08:29:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T16:29:37","slug":"the-power-of-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=938","title":{"rendered":"The Power of YouTube"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s power in media. Back in the old days, only the rich and big companies could wield that power. With YouTube, the power is now in your hands.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nOccasionally someone asks me, &#8220;Can&#8217;t you do anything?&#8221; The question is regarding some shoddy computer product or tech support. People figure I have some kind of clout with every company and can use my massive influence to help right their wrongs.<\/p>\n<p>I really wish that were true.<\/p>\n<p>As these things turn out, there&#8217;s lots of power in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\" target=\"other\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As you probably know, YouTube is the place where you can post your home made video efforts. Gazillions of people around the world can then view them. If you&#8217;re lucky, you&#8217;ll get a video that has thousands, if not millions, of views. The more your video can resonate with people, the better the odds are that you&#8217;ll get a winner and become an Internet sensation.<\/p>\n<p>Take the case of Dave Carroll.<\/p>\n<p>Dave is a musician who had the misfortune, as many of us can attest, to have flown United Airlines. If I recall correctly, United&#8217;s motto is something like, &#8220;We&#8217;re too big to give a rip about you and your issues.&#8221; Thanks to YouTube, Dave proved otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>The problem: The ground crew at O&#8217;Hare damaged Dave&#8217;s $3,500 Taylor guitar. He tried to get some resolution from United on this problem, but United explained that it&#8217;s their customer policy not to give a shit.<\/p>\n<p>Dave eventually, and at his wits end, told some United bigwig that if United didn&#8217;t agree to fix or replace the guitar that he would create a YouTube music video to get even. The bigwig&#8217;s response was, and this is rumor, &#8220;Good luck with that one, pal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The video was released in July. Ten days later it had over 3,000,000 views. That&#8217;s not a rumor.<\/p>\n<p>The rumor part continues that, supposedly, the bigwig called up Dave and offered to (finally) remedy the situation if Dave would pull the YouTube video. Dave&#8217;s response was, naturally, &#8220;Good luck with that one, pal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now that&#8217;s the rumor part. The truth is that the video was made, is on YouTube, and currently has over 6,000,000 views. United stock dropped 10% after the video &#8220;went viral&#8221; and spread around all over. Apparently United Airlines is a popular target for derision amongst the flying public. One can only wonder why.<\/p>\n<p>You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&#038;NR=1\" target=\"youtube\">view the video here<\/a>. It&#8217;s really clever and a catchy tune. You can read the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sons_of_Maxwell#United_Airlines_incident\" target=\"wiki\">Wikipedia article about the incident here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just remember: When all else fails, tell that cigar-chomping, don&#8217;t-give-a-damn, bigwig that you&#8217;re going to do a YouTube video. It might just work in your favor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s power in media. Back in the old days, only the rich and big companies could wield that power. With YouTube, the power is now in your hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}