On August 10, you will be able to witness a first of its kind event in Sri Lanka - YouTube Open Mic Night.
Bringing together the country’s leading YouTube celebrities, brand ambassadors, content creators, influencers and YouTube enthusiasts - YouTube Open Mic Night - powered by Google and hosted locally by Google’s Business community in Sri Lanka - Google Business Group (GBG) and local YouTube partners, will take place 6 pm onwards at the Spice Room at Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo.
YouTube is the world’s leading video sharing platform with over 1.57 billion active users each month as of May 2018. It has also become a hub for users, brands, entertainers and businesses to reach out to wider audiences, show what they do, what they offer and to keep audiences engaged across multiple devices and social platforms.
With over 1 billion hours of videos consumed per day, and 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, YouTube is today’s second largest search engine in the world just after Google and has higher daily viewership than both Facebook Videos and Netflix combined (Brandwatch Stats, 2018).
In Sri Lanka, YouTube has over 2.5 million unique daily visitors and approximately 6.5 million monthly unique visitors in 2018 (Youtube stats, June 2018). Local YouTube watch time grew by nearly 60% in 2017 and today almost 30 million videos are watched daily. This amounts to YouTube being one of the largest media facilitators allowing brand personalities, celebrities, businesses and influencers to tap into a wide and active pool of the digitally engaged Sri Lankans.
As of the last 3 years, there has been an overwhelming demand for YouTube as a medium of influence and many organisations and institutions and communities have called on for a proper YouTube Event to bring together the entire YouTube community in Sri Lanka. This is why Google and GBG have sorted to launch the YouTube Open Mic Event to facilitate this type of gathering and let users, enthusiasts and influencers make the most of their YouTube experience and celebrate their successes.
“This is a great opportunity for YouTubers to learn how to earn while doing what they love with YouTube. Participants can also get to know what's new with YouTube and what's trending in 2018,” says Prash Balakrishnan, Google Country Consultant. Sajini Jayawardena, Google Business Community Manager observes, “Not only is this a chance for YouTubers, Startups and YouTube enthusiasts to get to know what’s new, it’s also an open stage for them to bring out their performances while sharing their success stories, mingling and networking with like-minded people.”This event is hosted locally by Google’s Business Community (GBG). GBG is one of Google’s four user communities across the globe. Google Business Groups are Google’s own business communities which aim to help local businesses, startups, IT & business professionals make the most of Google technologies and tools. With a presence in over 45 countries, GBGs have made an impact on over 150,000 entrepreneurs worldwide. The local chapter is GBG Colombo, which has a base community of over 6000 startups and professionals, which run Google programmes like Growth Hacking, Womenwill, GDay X, Google I/O and more. This is a free event and is open to all YouTubers as well as YouTube fans. The Official Event Partner for the YouTube Open Mic Night is Shangri-La Hotel Colombo. Among some of the Partners for this event are the country’s top industry brands including Uber as the Official Mobility Partner and TV Derana as the Official Electronic Media Partner. Sri Lanka’s first official YouTube MCN - IdeaHell is also partnering with the event as a YouTube Partner.