04/24/2007 01:55 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 1 of 9http://adage.com/print?article_id=113249Boom Goes the DynamiteEvolution of Dance YouTube Grows Up -- But What Does It Mean?Bob Garfield Explores the Implications of the Video-Sharing RevolutionBy Bob Garfield Published: November 20, 2006Editor's note: This article is simultaneously being published in the December issue of Wired magazineLook, before you even get to the second paragraph, try this: Click and watch the YouTube.com "boom goesthe dynamite" video below.It's just a little outtake from a Ball State University campus-TV newscast. Itfeatures a courageous but overmatched freshman named Brian Collinspresenting the worst sports-highlight rundown in human history, culminatingin the worst sportscaster catchphrase ever conceived: "Boom goes thedynamite." It is horrifying. It is cruel. It is hilarious. Or play "evolution of dance," which has gotten nearly 35 million views in sixmonths. You wouldn't think "Ohio motivational speaker's grand finale" wouldequal "mesmerizing," but Judson Laipply's seamless sampling of footwork to30 songs, from Elvis to 'NSync, pretty much is. Or try the accurately titled"Noah takes a photo of himself everyday for six years." A time-lapsedocumentary of Noah Kalina over 2,356 days, it's a little thin on plot, but itnonetheless racked up more than 3 million views in six weeks. You'd betteralso see "Numa Numa," which stars a chubby young man in his New Jerseybedroom lip-syncing to an insipid but weirdly fetching Romanian pop song.Or, what the hell, live dangerously. Try "sweet tired cat" and watch a drowsykitten dozing off. The clip, which was viewed nearly 2 million times in twoweeks, is 27 seconds of such concentrated cuteness that you might actually04/24/2007 01:55 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 2 of 9http://adage.com/print?article_id=113249Noah Takes a Photo ofHimself Everyday for SixYearsNuma NumaSweet Tired Cathave a stroke and die. It's that excruciatingly adorable. And, as it turns out, extremely valuable. Google -- as you may have read inevery publication, online and off, in the entire freaking world -- just paid$1.65 billion in stock to be the cute little kitty-cat's home. The price tag for YouTube, just to put the investment in perspective, is whatTarget paid for 257 Mervyns department stores and four distribution centers in13 states, and just a bit more than WPP Group paid for the Grey Global Groupadvertising network with 10,500 employees in 83 countries generating $1.3billion in revenue. Those, of course, are both profitable enterprises with vastfixed assets. YouTube's fixed assets pretty much consist of a video interfaceand a cool retro logo. So why is it worth nearly six times the gross domesticproduct of Micronesia? This story will definitively answer that question. Well, maybe not exactly answer. But explore. OK, guess. The desire to create and shareBut that guesswork begins in a very special, very poignant, and potentiallyvery lucrative place: the hitherto futile aspirations of the everyman to breakout of his lonely anonymous life of quiet desperation, to step in front of thewhole world and be somebody, dude. A recent Accenture study of 1,600Americans found that 38% of respondents wanted to create or share contentonline. Aha! Suddenly the inexplicable "Numa Numa" begins to make sense.He could, so he did. And so have lots like him. It's said that if you put a million monkeys at a milliontypewriters, eventually you will get the works of William Shakespeare. When you put together a millionhumans, a million camcorders, and a million computers, what you get is YouTube.And there they are, in the bedrooms and dorms and cubicles of the world,uploading their asses off, more than 65,000 times a day on YouTube alone. "If you aren't posting, you don't exist," says Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO ofDenuo, a new-media consultancy. "People say, 'I post, therefore I am.'" Constituo, ergo sum. An interesting formulation that may well represent anew rationalism for the digital age. But for the moment, let's not putDescartes before the horse. Let's just get the measure of a phenomenon inprogress -- because Google has recently bet the equivalent of 257 Mervynsstores that the rise of video-sharing is more than just the latest rage. ToYouTube's new owners, "Numa Numa" represents nothing less than cultural,04/24/2007 01:55 PMLoading “Advertising Age”Page 3 of 9http://adage.com/print?article_id=113249This is the third installment ofAd Age Ad Review columnistBob Garfield's "Chronicles ofthe Media Revolution" series inwhich he explores ongoingtechnological upheaval acrossthe media and marketingindustries. His two earlierinstallments are:Inside the New World ofListenomicsHow the Open SourceRevolution Impacts Your BrandsBob Garfield's "Chaos Scenario"A Look at the MarketingIndustry's Coming DisasterGarfield's weekly columns anddaily blog can be found in theBob Garfield section of thisAdAge.com website.ALSO: Comment on thisarticle in the 'Your Opinion'box below.sociological, and economic transformation -- including, but not limited to, areallocation of the $67 billion that advertisers spent on TV in the U.S. lastyear. Don't sell Google shortThat upheaval would require a couple of things to fall into place: (1) abusiness model to convert what is basically an overgrown fan site into anactual advertising medium and (2) a tectonic change in the worldwide mediaeconomy. But don't sell Google short. Not long ago, all it had was a searchalgorithm and a cool logo. Now, after reinventing online advertising, it hasrevenue of $9.3 billion a year and good reason to believe that neither of thosedaunting prerequisites is out of the question. Until about five minutes ago, remember, almost all video-entertainmentcontent was produced and distributed by Hollywood. Period. That time isover. There was a time when advertisers could count on mass audiences forwhat Hollywood thought we should be watching on TV. That time is all butover. There was a time when broadband penetration was too slight andbandwidth costs too prohibitive for video to be watched online. That time issooooo over. "The era of the creepy blue light leaking out of every livingroom window on the block is now officially at an end," says my pal andoccasional colleague Steve Rosenbaum, founder of video-sharing startupMagnify.net and one of the inventors a decade ago of citizen video. "Thesimple, wonderful, delirious fact is that people like you and me can now