Is YouTube the Next Google?

In Patricia Deuble's article Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 1) in June 2007 issue of T.H.E. Journal, she describes her own process of frustration and discovery in figuring out how Linden Lab's online role-playing game worked. Listing what was helpful, she notes a tutorial on YouTube.

There's a growing list of SL video tutorials, plus the Top 10 Second Life Tutorial Videos on YouTube, which helped to explain inventory and how to make gestures, for example. Inventory is anything you collect in SL that you can put on your avatar, use to build, or give away.

This first made me realize that, until now, I would not have thought to suss around YouTube for a tutorial on anything, despite the fact that I have watched tutorial videos from YouTube when they were placed in the context of a site on a particular topic, including the YouTube tutorials on YouTube.

I guess I'm a slow learner.

So then I thought: as more people (and instituions and companies and schools) pick up camcorders and turn on webcams to create informative and educational content for YouTube (and other competing video websites) I imagine the phrase "YouTube it!" following "Google it!" Of course, Google has a video search section of its own, but not cultural clout that YouTube seems to currently enjoy.

Of course, with this development will need come the apparatus to teach students to evaluate, cite, and document their web video sources. Ah, yeah, that will take the fun out of it.