Kelefa Sanneh has a piece in the New York Times that’s worth a read. The article describes how a song, from a little known Miami hip-hop group, became, literally, an overnight sensation.

I’ve been using YouTube more and more frequently over the past few weeks and I disagree with Sanneh’s concluding paragraph:

Part of the charm of YouTube is that it just doesn’t make sense. News reports rub elbows with home-video bloopers. Big celebrities like Tom Cruise get shrunken into short, grainy clips. And formerly anonymous exhibitionists … become, for a few days or hours or weeks, a big deal. In this world, regulated only by obscenity censors … and corporate censors …, there’s no way to tell whether “Groundhog Day” is a smash hit, a slick scheme or a bit of both.

The more I use YouTube the more I realize that its charm is that it, simply, just makes sense.

As for “Groundhog Day” being a smash hit, a slick scheme or a bit of both… I’ll let you decide:

[Bonus: Kent discovers what I realized a few months ago: “I hadn’t thought of YouTube as a place to mine for music before, but now I do.”

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « Wisdom of Others - Patience, Positioning, Luck, and Selective Guidance
• » And So Continues My Love Affair With P&G

• BROWSE / IN Media General
• « Wisdom of Others - Patience, Positioning, Luck, and Selective Guidance
• » Wisdom of Others - Getting Lucky