Why do we share? | Olivia Ma | TEDxMarin

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Olivia Ma is YouTube's News Manager. She develops news-related products and programming initiatives and works closely with both news organizations and citizen reporters using the site to share news video from around the world.

Good evening everyone; thank you so much,
I'm very excited to be here.

Tonight I want to talk a little bit
about some reflections that I've had

in my three years at YouTube,
about why people share online.

I want to start by showing
you a short video clip

of the type of video
that I watch every single day.

(Crashing sounds)

We're all here in California;
the Bay area to be specific.

We all know, as much
as we may try and deny it,

the geographic reality
that this particular place on the globe

is prone to earthquakes.

So, quick poll, quick poll; I want to know
how many people think

that their first instinct would be

to whip out their video camera
if there were an earthquake right now?

(Laughter)

Knock on wood, that's not going
to happen; OK, a couple.

Well, in Japan, on March 11th,

hundreds of people shot
video footage just like that.

At the moment of truth, as the floor
was shaking beneath them,

the books were falling off the shelves,

and waters from the tsunamis
were actually rising in their homes,

and in their businesses,

they thought to themselves,
"Let me hit the record button;

I want to document this thing
that is happening,

and share it with the world."

And even within hours, we started
to see videos coming into YouTube.

Before anything else, these people
thought, "I want to share this;

I want other people to see
what it is that we just went through."

My role at YouTube
as News Manager is to sift through

all of this vast amount of content
that comes into the site.

And to really try and find
those raw eye-witness videos

that everyday citizens,
just like you and me,

decided to capture.

They happened to be in the right
place at the right time,

when this thing happened.

Or the wrong place,
depending on how you look at it.

But I have to be honest,

and say that I don't think
I'm one of those people;

I don't think that I would put myself
in danger, at that type of moment,

to capture this experience.

So it makes my job a little bit strange,

because my job relies on people
doing things that I would never do.

Like, for example, running
into a burning building,

with a helmet-cam strapped to my head.

There's a lot of firemen on YouTube
who do this; you would be amazed.

Or putting myself into a war-zone,
this video's from Libya, with a flip-cam,

to document police brutality,
and upload that to YouTube.

Or, run across the street
as bullets are flying,

to film a young woman
dying on the sidewalk.

This is the iconic "Neda" video from Iran.

The question is,
"Why do these people do this?"

This is something that I think
about every single day.

I try to understand,
"What are the motivations?

What is the psychology of somebody
who's willing to risk their life

to share an experience like this?

I always assumed this was
a positive development for media;

you have citizen reporters out there,

covering events that maybe
otherwise wouldn't be covered.

But it wasn't until I had
a personal experience of my own

that I really started to wonder
whether this behavior I was promoting

was actually unveiling

a sort-of darker side
of humanity, potentially,

rather than a brighter side.

I was walking home from work one day,
and I saw a police car and police tape

blocking off Valencia Street
in the Mission,

about half a block from where I live.

Immediately, I have this sense of panic

that there's something
in my apartment building, or something.

I asked somebody standing there,
"What's going on?"

They pointed up.

My eyes gazed up,
along with the rest of the crowd,

and I saw a young man,
standing at the edge

of a ledge of a four-story building
about to jump.

Immediately, I felt sick to my stomach.

And yet I was filled with this adrenaline.

After a couple of seconds of processing
what was going on, I thought to myself,

"This is the moment;

this is when these citizen reporters
that I work with

would capture this on film and share it!"

I thought, "Let me pull out
my mobile phone",

and I hit the "record" button.

And then I uploaded it to Facebook.

He was OK; he didn't jump.

I went home, and I just felt
really unsettled.

I went on Facebook, and I started getting
some comments on the wall post,

and I took it down.

It really made me think,
"What is it about me, and this culture,

and this culture in which I exist,
that inspired me to take that,"

and put it up and share it?"

At the time, I was thinking,

"This is a really amazing moment,
and people are going to comment on it,

and they're going to "like" it, as weird
and inappropriate as that is in this case.

And I'm going to be the center
of their attention for the 30 seconds

that they're focused
on my post in their news-feed.

Then they're going to move on
to one of the hundreds of others

that have come in
in the last two minutes."

I think we now live in a culture
in which publishing is so easy;

the barrier to putting content online
and sharing information is so low,

that oftentimes, the frequency and volume
of sharing content is rewarded,

over the quality, or the intent,
or the utility of that content.

I want to share a couple of quick stats

to show you how ubiquitous
this behavior really is.

Every single minute on YouTube,

35 hours worth of new content
is uploaded to the site.

In that same minute, 150 years worth
of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook.

And in that same minute, more
than 400 tweets include a YouTube link.

Now, in that minute on Facebook,

you have almost 83,000
status updates posted.

You have almost 136,000 photos.

In a day, in 2010,
Foursquare had a million check-ins a day.

And now, Twitter's latest numbers
are 140 million tweets per day.

These numbers are astounding, right?

I quickly want to walk through
three different types of sharing,

but I really want to focus
on the last one.

The first one is the most obvious, right?

This is personal sharing;

this is the information you share
with your family and friends.

Oftentimes it's basic,
it's facts about you;

where you grew up,
where you went to school,

where you live, and where you work.

This is sort of your stake in the ground.

Then, I think, there's
the more self-expressive.

You know, "Here are the types of music
that I like, movies that I enjoy,

the shows that I watch every week."

This is a little more about, "I want
to give you a sense of who I am,

a little bit more
of a global perspective."

The last type of personal sharing
I call "self-locating".

These are the types of posts
that are sort of more subtle,

they give people a sense
of where I fit in to a social network.

It might be a cool restaurant
that I "checked in" to,

with a specific person
that bumps me up in the social circle.

The second type of sharing
is really around content.

This is interesting links, funny YouTube
videos, amazing awe-inspiring photographs.

This type of sharing, I think often
is either about informing your friends

and family of something you think
they might find interesting or useful.

Or, it's about starting a conversation
around a topic that you really care about.

But it's the third type of sharing
that I think is most interesting;

I think it's completely different,
and something we don't talk about as much.

This is, oftentimes, it will start
with some type of personal experience.

It might be a piece of content,
so it's sort of a blend of the first two.

But this type of sharing transcends
the person that initiated it;

it is about something much bigger.

Oftentimes, this type of sharing
requires someone taking a risk,

like the videos we saw at the beginning.

People are putting themselves
outside of their comfort zone,

and documenting some experience

that then will have a broader implication
to the rest of the world.

I think the key thing about this type
of sharing is that it makes people realize

that they're a part of something
bigger than just themselves.

I'm not sure how many people have heard
of the "It Gets Better Project"?

(Applause)

Amazing, amazing stuff;
if you haven't seen it, check it out.

Last fall, after a string of nationally
publicized suicides of gay teens,

who'd been bullied
and ridiculed by their peers,

a man named Dan Savage
and his partner, Terry,

made a video,
in which they told their story.

They talked about
what it was like to be gay,

as a young person in high school.

They talked about how horrible it was

to have to deal with the people
at their school who didn't like them.

They talked about coming out,
they talked about meeting each other,

they talked about falling in love
and starting a family,

and the message underlying
this entire video was:

"As bad as it seems now,
as dark as your life may feel,

there is light at the end of the tunnel,

and it does get better."

This video started to get some traction;
it started getting passed around a lot.

Before too long, other people
started making their own videos,

their own "It Gets Better" videos;

talking about their experiences,
and sharing their stories,

many of which had never seen
the light of day.

People were telling their greatest fears
and their most painful moments

to complete strangers on the Internet.

They were talking about what it was like
to go to sleep at night

and not want to wake up in the morning.

These are really powerful stories.

And in isolation, none of these people
probably would have shared these videos.

But they knew that they were
part of a movement,

and they understood that their act
of sharing this was an act of solidarity.

I want to just play one video

that's one of my favorites
from the "It Gets Better Project".

My name is JD and I've been a sworn law
enforcement officer for the past 15 years.

My names Alan, I'm a staff sergeant
in the United States Marine Corps.

We are here to tell you
it does get better.

When I was in high school
and middle school,

I was picked on continuously
and constantly by cruel people.

But in spite of that, I did persevere,
and you will as well.

We want to let you know that no matter
what you think about yourself right now,

and what other people might be thinking
about you that might be negative;

whether they said you're too feminine,

whether they said
that you're too masculine,

you are perfect and wonderful,
exactly as you are.

We want to let you know that indeed.

It does get better.

(Applause)

I love that video, and I really encourage
you to look at the "It Gets Better" site;

it's just incredibly inspiring.

Why'd these guys make this video, right?

They're not making
this for Facebook friends,

"Hey, FYI, here's our video!"

They understood that telling their story

was something that was going
to help somebody else.

They knew that they were part
of something bigger.

People not only risk
themselves emotionally,

but they risk themselves physically.

I think we've seen this in the last
few months, during the Arab Spring.

This video was actually
from Iran, in 2009,

where we really started
to see this movement grow.

These protesters understood that foreign
media had been kicked out their country,

there were no reporters
to tell their stories,

and that suddenly, the onus was on them,

to document what was happening
on the streets,

and provide a visceral window
into what was happening

in Tehran, in Cairo, in Damascus.

These people understood that it was more
important for them to capture video

than it was to throw stones.

The camera was their weapon,

and information was the single
most threatening thing

to the dictatorship
that they were trying to overthrow.

People also understood
that they needed help

through social networks
to get the word out.

In Iran, we started seeing videos
that were being uploaded

with titles and descriptions
that said things like,

"We are the media, you are the media;

please share this with as many people
as you possibly can."

The onus was then on them,
to get the word out.

And they did; through Twitter and Facebook
and YouTube, and other social platforms.

The word was spread and mainstream
media was covering the story

through the eyes of these protesters.

Obviously, the revolution in Iran
hasn't come to fruition.

But one of the most amazing things
about what has happened

is that the perception
of a nation was entirely changed.

I think before this,

many Americans thought of Iran
as the center of the "axis of evil".

All of a sudden, it was a country filled
with empathy-worthy individuals

that weren't so different from you and me.

More recently in Egypt, these videos
have shown a sense of solidarity.

We heard anecdoteally that many people

felt like they were really unhappy
with the Mubarak government,

but they didn't necessarily know
all their neighbors felt the same way.

When they started to see videos on YouTube

of thousands of people
gathering in Tahrir Square,

and they started to see
activity on Twitter,

they realized that they could go out
and join them, and they were not alone.

My point is, it's not all about
what you had for breakfast.

Although, that type of everyday sharing
is still really important;

it's a part of the human experience,
and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think that this type
of transcendent sharing,

where you are broadening your experience,

and really making it universal
to the rest of the world,

is what is so exciting.

The last anecdote I want to share
really quickly is from Facebook.

There was a woman in Alabama last week,
which was the state that was hardest hit

by the tornadoes that swept
through the south-east.

She woke up and found her lawn
littered with photos and letters,

that had been traveled
through the wind, 200 miles.

She collected all these photos,
and she was so moved

by these individual memories
that were on her front door,

that she felt like
she needed to do something.

So she scanned all of them,
and made a Facebook page.

She put them up on Facebook
and said to herself,

"If all I can do is return
one photo, then I'm happy."

She put her email address up there,
and within a few days,

there were 100, 000 people
who had fanned this page.

And 36,000 photos have been uploaded.

I took this screen shot a few days ago;
I went to the page this morning,

and every five minutes, there's
a new photo that's being posted.

I think that it's stories like this,
that really give me hope.

As much as I may sometimes
wonder about our motivations,

you know, "Are we promoting ourselves?
Are we being sensationalistic?"

Like I was when I posted that photo
from my neighbourhood.

I think that the world is ultimately
becoming a more connected place,

through the ability to share online.

I think connected people
are more empathetic people,

and empathy is ultimately what allows us
to make the foreign seem less foreign.

I think that's what brings us peace.

Thank you.

(Applause)