Initial Research
One of the earliest newspaper articles I was able to find about YouTube talks about some of it’s earlier viral videos: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/arts/03tube.html
As this article points out, something that made YouTube stand out then (as well as now) is that the videos are made at home, and yet draw so many viewers. To be honest, this is one of the reasons that I chose YouTube as a topic that I wanted to research because I find it fascinating just how far some channels have come. It’s also amazing how many opportunities can come their way just from making YouTube videos!
As for an archival collection, I unfortunately am not able to find anything because YouTube is still a very young website, being launched in 2005.
An interesting image I thought I’d include comes from February 2006, when YouTube was still a fairly new website: http://web.archive.org/web/20060214034104/http://www.youtube.com
It’s easy to see how far YouTube has come over the past six years when the above image is compared with the homepage today: http://www.youtube.com
Overall, each of the above sources would be useful to me in my research because they help to give me an image of what youtube was like in it’s early stages. I definitely am excited to go more in depth and figure out exactly what brought YouTube to the point it’s at today!
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