YouTube and its mobile distributing consumer media venturing

Abstract

On Christmas Day in 2007, Queen Elizabeth II posted her traditional Christmas message on YouTube for the first time through a special royal channel on this popular Peer-to-Peer video-sharing website. This chapter will focus on the emerging Peer-to-Peer video sharing company YouTube. The author will introduce the emergence and development of YouTube as a fast growing consumer media company. The analysis of the company will be made from the perspective of its mobile distributing consumer media venturing - a major business venturing activity inside the company that is aiming at adding more mobility to its Peer-to-Peer video sharing services. The empirical findings presented in this chapter are extracted from a doctoral research project that investigates global media companies' organizational choices on the architecture for new media business venturing. Therefore, implications for YouTube to develop mobile media business will also be discussed in this chapter. © 2008 Springer-Verlag New York.