I was surfing the web trying to figure out the best way to connect my laptop to my TV (in my defence – I had an idea of how to do it in theory… but wanted to find out in practical terms) when I came across an interesting YouTube video.

It was created by a young, talented kid who lives in Japan called Adrian, aka kidguru. With a straightforward, easy to understand video, kidguru very articulately explained how someone looking to connect their laptop to a tv would go about doing it. Going to his YouTube channel I discovered that he’s been doing this for almost a year now and has turned his site Tech-World into a blogging, vlogging, podcasting, twitter site/community. He’s managed to turn a hobby into a paying job, with sponsors and understands the value of creating community around his videos. He does product and app reviews, and tutorials among other educational things.
KidGuru’s YouTube channel now has over 1,500 subscribers and over 47,000 channel views, and he is now an official YouTube partner. The YouTube partner program is an ad revenue sharing program to reward users that frequently post original content and who have a steady following of thousands of viewers.

If you have any tech related questions I suggest checking out Kidguru’s channel or sending him an e-mail!

If you go to the YouTube partner sites you’ll see all the different YouTube partner channels, the vast majority of which are Net Gen (Net Generation – The children of the baby boom; the generation that has grown up with the Internet) using YouTube to express their creativity and build a community around something they love. Some great examples are KevJumba (#6 most subscribed of all time with over 285,000 subscribers and close to 9 million channel views); HappySlip ( #11 most subscribed of all time with over 205,000 subscribers and close to 7million channel views); and VenetianPrincess (# 17 most subscribed of all time with 153,000 subscribers and almost 2.5 million channel views).

These aren’t small numbers, they are reaching a huge number of people and are influential in their own way. The best part is that from what I can tell, they’re not doing it for any particular reason other than to have fun doing something they love and sharing it with the world. Literally. If they can make money at the same time, that’s even better.