Time magazine takes a look at the groundbreaking, industry-changing, paradigm-smashing Internet killer app that is changing the way we consume media forever:
Legal issues aside, [it] already ranks among the greatest Internet applications ever, up there with e-mail and instant messaging. In terms of users, the ... site is the fastest growing in history, recently passing the 25 million mark in less than a year of operation...
No, not YouTube. And not 2006. That's Time on Napster, September 24, 2000.
As for that other popular copyright flouting, media sharing system, Time says, "the world has changed. In the past 12 months, thousands of ordinary people have become famous. Famous people have been embarrassed. Huge sums of money have changed hands. Lots and lots of Mentos have been dropped into Diet Coke. The rules are different now, and one website changed them: YouTube."
The magazine has named YouTube the Invention of the Year. Previous winners of this honor include the artificial heart (2001), the Roomba (2002), Apple iTunes (2003), SpaceShipOne (2004), and that cloned dog whose "inventor," Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, was later discredited (2005).