I love YouTube. There’s just so much great stuff on it. That’s why I was interested to see that Google are optimistic about it becoming profitable in the future.
In the article linked to above, there’s some really nice vocabulary in the third paragraph used to describe proportion of YouTube videos supported by advertising.
Analysts have raised concerns about the huge costs involved in streaming millions of videos with only a tiny swathe of them being supported by advertising.
The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary has a good definition of ‘swathe’:
2 [S] LITERARY a varied section or range:
These people represent a broad/wide swathe of public opinion.
The next interesting piece of vocabulary is in the sixth paragraph where the Google executives are mentioned as having made ‘bullish remarks’. The word ‘bullish’ here relates to the expression ‘a bull market’ or a market where investors are confident and keen to buy because they think they will make money.
The opposite of a ‘bull’ market is a ‘bear’ market where investors are more likely to sell up to try and avoid future losses and are generally pessimistic about the future. People often use ‘bullish’ as above or ‘bearish’ (the opposite) to talk whether they are confident or doubtful of the future of a company.
The last piece of vocabulary for today was in the penultimate paragraph. Patrick Pichette is quoted as saying:
“We’re really pleased both in terms of (YouTube’s) revenue growth, which is really material to YouTube,”
Material is usually a noun but when used in the situation above, functions as an adjective meaning ‘important’ or ‘an important part of’.
If you like YouTube, leave a link to your favourite video below!