Is YouTube really worth $1.65b? Maybe

Why would Internet search giant Google Inc. spend $1.65 billion for YouTube , a company less than two years old that puts brief video snippets online?

The reasons behind the landmark deal disclosed last week transcend bits and bytes, or even dollars and cents. It's about an effort to dominate a new medium that's begun to change the culture of America and the world.

It's a medium in which the videotaped musings of a precocious teenager can make her an international celebrity; where a comedian's barbed comments about President Bush are watched by millions of political junkies; and where fanatical Muslim extremists can terrorize their enemies and gain adherents by displaying videos of their latest atrocities.

``We've reached a tipping point in the rise of media literacy," said Mark Tribe, assistant professor of modern culture and media at Brown University. ``For the first time, we have a critical mass of people who know how to shoot video, transfer it to a computer, edit it, and upload it to the Web," said Tribe. ``The tools -- video cameras, computers, fast Internet connections, and sites like YouTube . . . are inexpensive and easy to use."

As a result, media professionals are no longer in sole control of the video images that set our political and cultural agendas.

The power of the camcorder reached an early zenith in 1991, when an Argentine immigrant named George Holliday videotaped four Los Angeles police officers beating suspect Rodney King. The video, broadcast on mainstream TV , led to the prosecution of the four policemen -- and a riot that killed 54 people when the officers were acquitted.

But today a video buff doesn't have to wait for a call from CNN. He can publish it online. And if the video is sufficiently shocking, funny, or embarrassing, it will spread across the Internet like a virus.

Just ask US Senator George Allen of Virginia. Allen was supposed to coast to re-election over his Democratic rival, former Secretary of the Navy James Webb. Then came the rally where Allen saw S.R. Sidarth, an Indian-American representative of the Webb campaign armed with a video camera. A vexed Allen pointed at Sidarth and called him an apparently meaningless name -- ``macaca." It was a weird moment that might have amounted to nothing a couple of years ago.

But thanks to YouTube, the video of Allen's insult was soon being watched by political junkies across the Internet. Curious viewers began researching the word ``macaca." They learned that it's considered an ethnic slur in some parts of Africa. The resultant buzz caused major news organizations to trumpet the story, forcing Allen onto the defensive. Once considered a sure winner, he's now clinging to a narrow lead .

``The notorious `macaca' story would likely have gone nowhere had it not played on YouTube, gotten everybody's attention, and then made its way back to the bigger, traditional media outlets," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Then there's comedian Stephen Colbert. The star of the Comedy Central cable TV channel was invited to crack jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner in May. Colbert's biting criticisms of President Bush were heard only by the people in a banquet hall and a few thousand political junkies tuned into the C-Span cable channel on a Saturday night.

But some of those viewers captured the videos and posted them on YouTube and Google Video. Within a week, the routine had been viewed 2.7 million times at YouTube alone. Newspapers and TV networks that had barely covered the speech now scrambled to catch up.

``The fact that the routine could be watched on the Web . . . has an amplifying effect. You've expanded the set of people you can reach with the discussion," said Jennifer Urban, clinical associate professor of intellectual property law at the University of Southern California.

Apart from capturing events, online video buffs are creating original material capable of attracting vast audiences. That's what happened in June, when a quirky, wide-eyed teenager using the pseudonym Lonelygirl15 began posting a series of videos on YouTube. Lonelygirl's wry commentaries on her life attracted a global audience, with some episodes being viewed over 600,000 times. Fans of the series debated whether Lonelygirl was a real adolescent or an actress. Many of them created videos to lay out their own theories.

Other Lonelygirl buffs went further, scouring the Internet for clues to her identity. Last month, their efforts bore fruit and Lonelygirl15 was outed. She's really Jessica Rose, a 19-year-old actress from New Zealand, and her moody musings were the carefully scripted work of several aspiring filmmakers in Los Angeles. It's unclear whether the news will mean the end of the Lonelygirl15 series, but Rose is unlikely to suffer much. The controversy has already landed her on NBC's Tonight Show and the MTV music channel, and she's been hired to portray Lonelygirl15 in an online antipoverty video to be produced by the United Nations.

Some applications of online video are far less benign. Islamic extremists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other countries routinely videotape suicide bombings, sniper attacks on US troops, and even the beheading of hostages. These videos have often made their way onto YouTube and other public sites. The videos violate YouTube policies, but the company doesn't screen videos before they're posted, so it must wait for viewers to complain. YouTube has also removed videos that include commentary highly critical of Muslims and the religion of Islam, spawning complaints by conservative bloggers that the site is bowing to pressure from Muslim extremists.

Now that it's part of the vast Google empire, YouTube will no doubt be very careful about the videos it shows. But there are plenty of other video-hosting sites out there, presenting limitless opportunities to amuse, to shock, and to tweak a media establishment that is no longer the only source for ``must-see TV."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.