<videovortex> Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content

[Seth Keen]

http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/31/1/41

Users like you? Theorizing agency in user-generated content
Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 31, No. 1, 41-58 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0163443708098245
José van Dijck

To illustrate the complexity of user agency, the recent development of  
YouTube serves as a case of inquiry. Started as a video-sharing site  
in 2005 and
run by three students from a Silicon Valley garage, the financially  
flailing but hugely popular site was bought up by Google in October of  
2006 for the
unprecedented sum of $1.6 billion. Obviously, Google’s acquisition was  
not about bringing innovative technology into the home, as its own  
GoogleVideo
was already running on superior software; it was about bringing in  
communities of users. In less than a year,YouTube became an  
(independent) subsidiary
of a commercial firm whose core interest is not in content per se, but  
in the vertical integration of search engines with content, social  
networking and advertising.

best
Seth Keen
seth.keen at rmit.edu.au
http://www.sethkeen.net/blog/
http://videodefunct.net/




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