SCREENSHOT
When you become a YouTube member, YouTube assigns a personal channel to you. The channel has divisions designed to display a short personal description, thumbnails of videos you've uploaded, members to whom you've subscribed, videos from other members you've picked as favorites, lists of members who are your friends and subscribers and a section where other people can comment on your channel.
You can visit another member's personal channel by clicking on his or her user name. Here, you can view all of the YouTuber's videos as well as all the videos he or she picked as favorites. You can even see the other members to whom the YouTuber has subscribed. Personal channels let you explore YouTube as a social network rather than as a simple video database -- you can find users who like the same kinds of videos you do and find out what they are watching.
When you first create an account, your personal channel is a digital wasteland -- all the sections are empty. Fortunately, YouTube makes it easy to turn your personal channel into an attractive virtual destination. After filling in your profile information, you can adjust your personal channel's color scheme. You can pick one of YouTube's suggested color schemes or create your own using hexadecimal color values.
Using a simple menu, you can change the layout of your personal channel. You can choose to display or hide sections, and you can choose whether they appear on the left or right side of the Web page. These options let you make your channel unique.
Once you've set up your channel, it's time to fill those empty fields. Explore the site and look for videos you really enjoy. You can watch videos and click on the favorite link to add the video into your personal channel's "favorites" section. You can subscribe to the person who uploaded the video to keep up with his or her uploads -- a screenshot of the member's latest video will appear in your personal channel's "subscriptions" section. When you upload a video of your own, it will appear in the top right section of your channel (unless you've changed the layout options). As you upload more videos, you'll fill the "videos" section in your personal channel, and the latest clip will feature in the upper right side of your profile.
SCREENSHOT
There are many ways YouTube members can interact with one another. You can send private messages or make a comment for everyone to see through a user's personal channel. You can also comment on individual videos unless the video's creator has turned off that feature.
Some YouTubers prefer to turn off the comment feature in an effort to avoid trolls -- members who leave insulting comments. Another annoying comment byproduct is spam. Some YouTube accounts seem to exist only so that the user can leave comments advertising a particular Web site or YouTube video in as many comment sections as possible. Fortunately, YouTube has provided users with an option to block specific accounts from commenting on videos.
Some YouTubers want to keep every comment, even negative ones. That's because each comment on a video contributes to the clip becoming one of YouTube's "most discussed" videos. When a video lands on the most discussed list, it's featured on YouTube's videos section, which can result in a dramatic increase in viewers. On YouTube, it really is true that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
YouTubers can even leave video responses to another video. The member wishing to comment films himself or herself and uploads it to YouTube as a comment. It's possible for two or more members to engage in a video conversation or debate by uploading video replies to one another. YouTube has a Quick Capture tool that allows members to record a video using a Webcam and upload it to the site using a single application, which works great for video responses.
Another way users can interact is to rate one another's videos. Under each video is a rating mechanism that ranges from one to five stars. YouTube members can rate videos (non-members can only watch and enjoy). YouTube automatically tallies user ratings and features the highest rated videos on the videos page.
Many YouTubers use their accounts to express admiration or condemnation for other YouTubers. Behind every prominent YouTuber is a small army of supporters and detractors. There are many passionate and sometimes fiery videos on YouTube focused on other members.
Not all community interaction is between YouTube members -- YouTube also has an official blog where members can read up on new developments on the site. YouTube staff members write the blog entries and use the space to announce new events, contests and interesting YouTube applications.
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