Just How Big Will YouTube Get?

Kurt Wilms (0:00)

We're in kind of this golden age of TV. It's never been easier for a creator to pick up a camera and just make something that looks incredible, has an amazing story, and to put it out to the world globally.

Laurie Segall (0:16)

I'm Laurie Segall, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. Before we get into it, I'd love to start, because, I mean, it is incredible to see YouTube and the evolution of YouTube. I mean, and I'm gonna give a little history lesson here that no one asked for, but a simple upload site in 2005, and wasn't the first video clip like a 19 second zoo clip or something like that?

Kurt Wilms (0:41)

Me at the zoo.

Laurie Segall (0:42)

Me at the zoo. And now the most watched screen in your living room, which is pretty extraordinary when you think about it.

What did y'all grow up watching? You guys are kind of like at the forefront of YouTube and its growth and a lot of the people on there. So like when you were young, I mean, we're all young, but like when you were growing up, what did you watch?

Kurt Wilms (1:03)

Such an interesting question. I'm a kid of the 80s, so I watched GI. Joe, He-Man, those kind of things, which is actually kind of fascinating because it's on YouTube now, on TV. And I show my son that type of content on TV. So kind of a traditional upbringing for me. Yeah.

Amjad Hanif (1:21)

I mean, I think I'm a little older than you, but it was Brady Bunch. And then as I got older, it was like Facts of Life and things like that. And I think for me, part of the passion I have about YouTube is also, I love that content, but it never represented the interests I wanted. It was a small set of things. I mean, that was all you had to choose from.

Laurie Segall (1:45)

Yeah.

Amjad Hanif (1:45)

And I think the beauty of YouTube is, is you turn on the TV now, and when we're together with family, there's content that never existed before, made by creators that never showed up on the screen before. In some cases, that looked more like me or matched some of the interests that I have. And I think that's just the...

I'm always in awe of that transformation from when I used to be a kid some years back.

Laurie Segall (2:05)

Yeah. And I think it's been interesting to see the evolution of YouTube go from small screen to big screen.

Can you give us a sense now, like taking a step back, for folks who aren't in the creator world, who are more kind of listening to this and wondering what the state of media and entertainment is and where it's evolving, what are you seeing about how people are watching YouTube, where they're watching it and how that's evolving?

Kurt Wilms (2:31)

One of the beautiful things about YouTube for our creators is, you film once, you upload it to YouTube, and we put it everywhere a viewer is. And so one of the places more and more viewers are watching is on the big screen, on TV. We do every single day, we do a billion hours watch just on the TV screen. And one of the things that's unique about YouTube on TV is it's not a particular type of content. It's one of the things that's kind of fascinating for me is, no matter what our creators are uploading, viewers are watching it on the big screen.

So whether it's sports, news, even short form shorts are being watched on the TV, shows, movies, gaming, podcasts, music, more and more it's just being watched on the big screen.

Laurie Segall (3:14)

Yeah. You know what I think is so interesting, having come from traditional media, my background was creating our start up beat at CNN for 10 years, right, then 60 minutes, and then launching my own media company. And one of the things I love so much is, and it sounds super cliche to say to executives, YouTube, but community, and being able to build out community and not just have this one way experience with folks. I'm curious, I think some of the things that you'll launch today about community and watching together, especially from a big screen, to me, really represent a completely new type of way that we consume media.

I'm curious for your take on the evolution of viewing. It's not just us on our phones anymore on YouTube. It certainly seems like there's something community driven about the way forward. So like, what is underestimated when we think about this?