YouTube is a video-sharing website, created in February 2005, and purchased by Google in November 2006. The web service lets billions of people find, watch, and share originally-created videos. It displays a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. It also offers a forum for people to communicate with others around the world, and acts as a distribution platform. Mainstream media corporations such as CBS, Vevo, Hulu and the BBC publish some of their catalog via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program.

Although some parents might disagree, YouTube is one of the shining lights of the internet. According to a survey of 1,500 American teenagers commissioned by Variety, the top five most influential celebrities are YouTube stars, with mainstream celebs eclipsed. Moreover, there are many thousands of “YouTube celebs” who have spun a full-time career of creating videos. This wave of young ‘YouTubers’ threaten mainstream entertainment with their direct video blogs and interaction with their millions of mostly teenage devotees.

A common complaint about YouTube is that to watch the material you need to use a web browser. Fortunately, some funky developers have created applications that allow you to bypass the web-only barrier of YouTube. Each application featured is released under an open source license, and offers multi-platform support. The software allows users to access YouTube in a different way, creating a TV-like experience. For completeness, I have also included my pick of the finest YouTube command-line tools.

YouTube Tools youtube-dl Command-line tool to download videos from YouTube and many other sites You-Get Downloader that scrapes the web Tizonia Cloud music player for the Linux terminal SMTube Search, play and download YouTube videos MPS-YouTube Terminal based YouTube player and downloader MellowPlayer Multi-platform cloud music integration Kaku Web technologies-based music player Minitube Application for watching YouTube without using Flash

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.

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