Vlog

A YouTube vlog title card

Vlogging saw a strong increase in popularity beginning in 2005. The most popular video sharing site, YouTube, was founded in February 2005. The site's co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first YouTube vlog clip Me at the zoo on his channel "jawed" in April 2005.[15] The ordinary "everydayness" and "dry aesthetics" of Me at the zoo set the tone for the type of amateur vlogging content that would become typical of YouTube, especially among YouTubers.[16] By July 2006, YouTube had become the fifth most popular web destination, with 100 million videos viewed daily and 65,000 new uploads per day.[17] The Yahoo! Videoblogging Group also saw its membership increase dramatically by August 2005.[18][19]

Many open source content management systems have enabled the inclusion of video content, allowing bloggers to host and administer their own video blogging sites. In addition, the convergence of mobile phones with digital cameras allows publishing of video content to the Web almost as it is recorded.[20] Radio and television stations may use video blogging as a way to help interact more with listeners and viewers.

YouTube has become a popular platform in order for people to express their emotions to create a giant social community. It has created a place to bring strangers together to reassure each other of their own experiences for any time and place. The emotional exchange and support that Vloggers seek due to a sizeable amount of friendly comments makes making bereavement Vlogs a united and common act.[21]

In May 2019, Charles Trippy was awarded the Guinness World Record for the "Most Consecutive Daily Personal Video Blogs Posted On YouTube", having recorded 3653 consecutive videos to his Charles and Allie YouTube channel over the previous ten years.[22]

Hosted in Los Angeles, California, VidCon is an annual convention that allows YouTube content creators and viewers to come together in order to share content ideas and business contacts.[23] The first VidCon event was held on July 10 and 11, 2010, and has now become the largest in-person gathering of Internet creators, viewers, and representatives.[24] This convention realizes that the ways in which society entertains, educates, shares, and communicates are being revolutionized, and chooses to highlight this fact via panels, meet and greets, and talks given to audiences at the convention.[23]

Vlogs have made it possible to learn about a Vlogger's persona, culture, and impressions using non-verbal hints. Researchers have conducted experiments using crowdsourcing for Amazons Mechanical Turk to determine what kind of personality traits the Vlogger might have.[25] Many Vlogs have been personified by five big personality traits such as Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Along with Mechanical Turk, researchers also looked at the cues that take place within Vlogs. Vlogs can be broken down to their elements considering that there are a lot of factors that play in the creation of one such as placement of camera, lighting, location, amount of time spent looking at the camera, pitch, delivery and amount of the interactions. Using this information and crowdsourcing, results have revealed that the highest rate in personality research was Agreeableness which makes Vlogging a great place to form Agreeable impressions. However, more non-verbal hints are more noticeable in other form traits such as Extraversion. Regardless, Personality impressions have made a more interesting Vlog viewing experience.[25]

Vlogging has been experimented with school systems to determine if it is a reliable platform to deliver higher educational practices to students. Researchers have done an experiment that placed 42 college freshmen into a control and experimental group of 21 each.[26] Oral proficiency exams were given to all students to reflect their current speech skills, after a year of teachings based on each of the groups preference. The control group was instructed to work with their standard writing skills and create their own blogs, while the Experimental group tested their skills with online interaction. Scores for both groups had increased after both tests, however the experimental group had outperformed the control group due to the improvement of speech proficiency that came as a result of a more interactive learning environment between teachers and classmates. The control group claimed that not using video blogs "lowered their confidence" in their speaking proficiency.[26]

Vlogging has been recently used in research to study how the platform can create a helpful community around people who suffer from chronic illnesses in order to inform viewers, and create closure. Researchers conducted experiments for Vloggers suffering from chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that investigated the relationship between Vloggers and their commentators.[3] A sample of 72 Vlogs were taken from 36 youtubers for analysis with 24 for each of the three mental illnesses. The majority of Vloggers have posted Vlogs as a way to reflect on and share their stories in order to inform viewers about the process and the emotional impact. The study has resulted in the creation of many ad hoc small groups that share personal characteristics and create an online community that expands over time to get more and more viewers involved in creating a supportive community that gives Vloggers the support that they need.[3]