Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen collectively introduced a video sharing platform in 2005 in America named as YouTube. After a year of its success, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion USD keeping in view the potential of the company and video-sharing industry. Currently, YouTube is the leading video sharing platform with no near competitor of it. More than 500 hours are uploaded on YouTube every minute and the company has collected a revenue of US 15 billion in 2019. The Ansoff matrix for YouTube is a good tool to understand the growth of the company to this level within 15 years of its operations.
Market Penetration
Shah (2010) mentioned that online video streaming is a platform that is accessible to every but there are many platforms that charge something to upload or share the video content. For the purpose of penetrating massively in the market, the company has enabled the sharing and uploading of the video free of cost. It means that anyone can join, share, and upload the content on YouTube which makes is completely free and convenient for the people to get registered and start sharing. This free feature of YouTube is one of the reasons for its exceptional success over the years. The market penetration strategy of YouTube has been exceptionally successful not only because of this free nature of the platform, but it also provides the opportunities to earn. It is possible for anyone to create a channel and upload the creative content. The owner of the channel has to get the subscribers on the channel for earning through YouTube. Once the number of subscribers goes beyond 50,000, the owner of the channel starts to earn. After 1 million subscribers, the company allots the golden YouTube button to the owner of the channel which takes the owner to the heights of success in terms of fame and money (O’Connor, 2017). These two features of YouTube have worked impressively in favor of the company for successfully implementing the market penetration strategy.
Product Development
YouTube kept on improving the product offerings by bringing improvement in the video-sharing platform to improve the experience of the users. The fortunes of the company were changed in 2009 when the company took a decision in product development by introducing HD quality in the video platform. The company decided to enable the platform to upload and share 1080p videos as well along with 720p videos. This automatically expanded the horizon and scope of the company from the perspective of product development. This has benefited the company and the professionals start to turn towards YouTube. Before 2009, YouTube was considered as a casual platform for the sharing of useless content but the product development in 2009 provided it a professional look (Ace, 2016). This product development took the company into the heights and the company never looked back since then.
Diversification
Diversification is a growth strategy that strengthens the base of the company due to a diversified customer base. YouTube itself is a result of the diversification strategy by Google to create diversification in the customer base. YouTube is the related diversification for Google as Google is already involved in the technology industry. The diversification of Google in the video-sharing platform was not a troublesome experience as Google was already working in the technology field with a high level of innovation, creativity, and competitiveness (Tufekci, 2018). Google has achieved exceptional success over the years through related and unrelated diversification and YouTube is evidence of its success.
Market Development
The online video sharing platform has naturally had an unlimited market as it is possible to be available all over the globe. The company was available to be viewed all over the world as the company has been offering a platform with minimal restrictions for the users. The purpose of the company was to create traffic on the website and maximum uploads so that there will be aware of the company. The company’s market expanded automatically when different experts started their own channels and the viewership started to rise. The market was developed in different aspects of life such as health, cooking, fitness, education, sports, and many other categories.
References
Ace, X. (2016). The History of YouTube. Available at: https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/10/the-history-of-youtube/
O’Connor, C. L. A. R. E. (2017). Earning power: Here’s how much top influencers can make on Instagram and YouTube. Forbes Magazine.
Shah, C. (2010). Supporting research data collection from YouTube with TubeKit. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 7(2-3), 226-240.
Tufekci, Z. (2018). YouTube, the great radicalizer. The New York Times, 10.