Like, Comment, Subscribe

How YouTube Conquered the World

By: Mark Bergen

Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins

The gripping inside story of YouTube, the company that upended media, culture, industry, and democracy—by a leading tech journalist

Across the world, people watch more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every day. Every minute, more than five hundred additional hours of footage are uploaded to the site, a technical feat unmatched in the history of computing. YouTube invented the attention economy we all live in today, forever changing how people are entertained, informed, and paid online. Everyone knows YouTube. And yet virtually no one knows how it works.

Like, Comment, Subscribe is the first book to reveal the riveting, behind-the-scenes account of YouTube’s technology and business, detailing how it helped Google, its parent company, achieve unimaginable power, a narrative told through the people who run YouTube and the famous stars born on its stage. It’s the story of a revolution in media and an industry run amok, how a devotion to a simple idea—let everyone broadcast online and make money doing so—unleashed an outrage and addiction machine that spun out of the company’s control and forever changed the world.

Mark Bergen, a top technology reporter at Bloomberg, might know Google better than any other reporter in Silicon Valley, having broken numerous stories about its successes and scandals. As compelling as the very platform it investigates, Like, Comment, Subscribe is a thrilling, character-driven story of technological and creative ingenuity and the hubris that undermined it.

©2022 Mark Bergen (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Nothing new

There is very little “inside” knowledge, it is kore of a historical summary of YouTube.

Knowing the social media platforms we use

Hey, we often forget the evolutionarily process of the platforms we use and how they influence us each day I use YouTube for everything from learning to entertainment. The story definitely is worthy of your time to hear well told well laid out. an amazing journey to power and prominence highly recommend it.

Amazingly complicated and fascinating story about a service we take for granted today.

It has been around for such a short period and it has eclipsed the old networks!

Terrifying and enlightening.

I’m a YouTuber. I make a living, and support several people in my company with my youtube content.

This book absolutely terrified me. But also gave me hope? But also terrified me.

So yeah. Worth a listen, if you’re interested in arguably the most powerful media company in the history of the planet.

This helps you better understand youtube’s algorithm

It is a very entertaining book, explains just how influential youtube really is, It sheds light on just how life changing the website really is. I would give it a read if you don’t know much about youtube’s history

Found entertaining, disagree with first review.

So the first review on audible reads "There is very little “inside” knowledge, it is kore of a historical summary of YouTube." Personally I take the illiteracy of the reviewer as an indication it's worth checking out, but that's just me. Kore is an ancient greek statue, of a young woman. Anyway, the history of youtube turns out to be long and sordid if you listen to the book. Unrelated, but did you know the fact that Susan Wojcicki (CEO) participated in the Stanford Marshmallow Experiments as a child and had more patience than all the other kids! I found it fascinating. The researchers therefore would consider it likely she "outperforms" peers. The world certainly gains absolutely nothing from her formidable capabilities except a few kids inheriting a billion dollars and probably becoming parasites to the greater good... but hey, that's the world now. Neat factoids pass the time at least.

The Truth about YouTube

Often, as an outsider, I have a very simple, narrow view of YouTube and Google. This book opened my eyes to the reality of what YouTube was and is. Very Insightful and very realistic. This book was exactly what I need to understand the growth and reality of YouTube.

More of a history

If your curious about the history of YT itself this is for you. If you’re trying to glean leadership insights this probably isn’t for you.

More about politics than YouTube

Very biased viewpoints on political events peppered throughout make this hard to enjoy. More about things that happened on YouTube than how the company functioned or was founded.