Social Media: The Visual/Video Vision

People do love to talk and, of course, use social media to do so (even Facebook has a chat function now).  But, America, besides being culturally bent towards convenience and instant gratification, is also primarily a visual culture.  It would make sense, then, that the top social media site in the world is a video-aggregating website that allows users to post videos of any content they want, whether recorded live, animated, or created on a computer.  Youtube is, according to Vladmir Prelovac (a social media-savvy webmaster with an expertise in, among other things, SEO) the top social media site in the world in terms of popularity.Ranked in the top ten is another video site, metacafe.com.  This site is apparently different enough from Youtube to be almost (but not quite) as popular; though there do not appear to be obvious differences, aside from the automatic repeat loop Metacafe seems to have put on all their videos.  (Can movie trailers and previews be posted on Youtube without copyright infringement?)  Metacafe.com has not (yet) added a charity or nonprofit-oriented feature w - at least not an obvious one - whereas Youtube has a whole "group" (basically an entirely separate page) for such do gooders.  Youtube seems to be more focused on user input, and Metacafe seems to be for those who want to keep up with the latest from Hollywood, but both types of movie clips can be posted on both sites. Metacafe might be slightly more "official" if even in terms of looks, but I, for one don't see why the sites can't conglomerate into one big movie site.

America's culture - at least as is most evident in the economic system it supports - is fueled by and thrives on competition, so maybe that's why the two sites don't join forces.  "Divide and conquer" is the age-long battle cry of capitalists who think that competition encourages innovation, but sometimes all it does is encourage innovation-less repetition.  As if two major video sites (and there are plenty more smaller ones) were not enough, there's actually a third social media site used primarily for videos.  Vimeo.com is, again, exactly like Youtube and Metacafe, though it feels smaller, which may be because its home-page presentation is less overwhelming than Youtube's video-clip hustle and bustle, and more user-friendly than Metacafe's site.  A Vimeo user, for example (since we're all about better business and social change here at JM), can easily and quickly navigate to the "Categories" section which, albeit "ever changing" as they say on Vimeo, clearly and concisely presents obvious categories like "activism" (this would be your social change variety video clips), or "Everyday Life" (this might be where those interested in bettering their businesses can get to know their demographics), and so on.

But, social media innovation requires more than just plagiarism with minor preference-oriented adjustments.  Youtube is the most-used social media site for videos, and it's unlikely that Vimeo is even a household name yet (I'm not sure how to even pronounce it), yet they both do the same thing.  The people - which are what social media is based on and for - have spoken though: an overwhelming majority chooses Youtube, and the more users, the more potential customers and activists.