Top > Webmaster > 2006 > December > 2006-12-25

YouTube to Fight Crime?

Social-networking websites are becoming more and more `social`. The mega popular online content sharing website, YouTube, has been used by the Police force of Southern Ontario Canada to capture a man that they believe committed a murder. Police inspectors used the site`s platform and uploaded a 12-second clip from a surveillance tape onto YouTube, and the clip started to circulate.

YouTube is offering free video content for everyone, and people are able to upload their own clips and videos onto the site as well. People are constantly adding new content and watching other people`s videos. The specific video clip uploaded by the Ontario police is showing suspects arriving at a local nightclub, and was watch more than 30,000 times. George Gallow, one of the suspects, could not handle the sudden publicity and turned himself into the police. Gallow was charged with second degree murder. The police said that using YouTube came to mind, when they realized that the alleged suspects were all around their 20s, and YouTube targets people around that age.

This is the first time that the Ontario police are using video publication sites in a criminal investigation. YouTube has grown in an alarming rate over the past year, and this only shows how powerful YouTube`s platform really is. The company was bought by search company Google just a few months ago, and analysts believe that the sites` popularity will only grow in the future. The web is starting to gather around huge communities, and changing from its` scattered original form.