Is YouTube Considered a Social Media Platform?

With so many social features, does YouTube now count as a social media platform similar to the likes of Instagram and TikTok?

YouTube is the most popular video-sharing website in the world. With over a billion monthly active users, it has become an important part of many people’s online experience.

The platform is regarded mainly as a video-sharing site where users can watch and upload videos. However, its other features like comments, polls, and community posts also provide interaction between users. This begs the question: is YouTube a social media platform?

That’s the question we’re answering today. First, let’s go over what a social media platform is.

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Social media is a broad term that encompasses many different types of platforms. Thus, the question “What counts as a social media platform?” may be more difficult to answer than one might think.

In its most basic form, a social media platform can be defined as an online service that allows users to share information or interests with other users in an interactive manner.

There are some generally accepted social media platforms. These range from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to niche networks for sharing photos, like Artfol.

Read more: How to Get Started on Artfol, the Social Network for Artists

The argument over whether or not YouTube is considered a social media platform has been going on for a while. It can be argued that YouTube does not meet the definition of a social media platform because it doesn’t have instant messaging capabilities like other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

But it can also be argued that YouTube qualifies as a social media platform because it provides some degree of interactivity with other users through its community posts, comments, likes, and shares.

To better understand whether YouTube is social media, let’s look at the general classification of social media platforms.

There are five broad categories of social media platforms, they are:

Social networking sites, such as LinkedIn.
Image sharing & messaging sites, such as Facebook and Instagram.
Video-sharing sites like TikTok.
Social blogging, such as Twitter.
Social community and discussion sites, for example, Quora and Reddit.

There are many different aspects of YouTube that make it worthy to be considered a social media platform. Let’s talk about some below.

YouTube channel subscriptions offer a medium of interaction between creators and viewers. This is, in a sense, is similar to how following works on Facebook and Twitter. If you subscribe to a YouTube channel, it means that you are following the updates of the creator and want to stay up-to-date with their content.

Likes and comments also serve as points of interaction between creators and their fans. Some users use the comment section as a way to message people on YouTube.

2. Community Posts

In the early days of YouTube, it was mainly used for viewing videos. But this is no longer the case as there’s now a vast array of content on offer on the platform.

The Community Post feature allows creators with over 1,000 subscribers to publish traditional social media posts like images, text, GIFs, playlists, and polls on YouTube. If nothing else, the addition of this feature shows that the platform considers itself a social media platform.

3. User-Generated Content

YouTube is often categorized with video-streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. However, YouTube is different from the traditional video-streaming services because its content is user-generated.

Registered users can upload videos to the platform. Meanwhile, anyone, registered or not, can view them for free. This ability to share information (in this case, videos) with a wide audience is another reason why YouTube should be regarded as a social media platform.

4. Its Revenue Model

Another reason YouTube is considered a social media platform is its revenue model. Users get a free platform to share and consume content, while the platform sells ads to generate revenue.

Related: How to Make Your YouTube Videos Advertiser-Friendly

This is similar to the way other social media platforms operate. Instagram, for instance, allows users to share photos and short videos for free and generates revenue by selling ads.

The initial version of YouTube may not have been built to be a social media platform, however, with new features that provide opportunities for interaction between users, it now qualifies as one.

YouTube is mainly used for watching videos and interacting with creators, through comments and replies. This puts it more up TikTok’s alley.

Hence, YouTube can be considered as a video-sharing social media platform.