What is a media sharing site?

Media sharing sites allow you to upload your photos, videos and audio to a website that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. You can then share that media with the world or just a select group of friends. Many media sharing sites also allow you to place media on other sites by 'embedding'. This is where you copy and paste a small snippet of HTML code into the web page and it tells your browser where to find the media. This makes the media appear like it's on the new website. Here are the main two forms of media sharing sites.

Video
One of the most popular forms of media sharing sites are video sites, the most popular of which is YouTube.com. YouTube allows members to upload videos for free that can then be viewed by anyone on YouTube.com or embedded on another website or blog. YouTube has such a massive audience that people have actually become world wide stars after having videos posted there! Some of these internet celebrities have weekly shows, often just involving them talking to the camera, which regularly get 500,000 views or more. Many companies are also using YouTube as a way to create 'buzz' about their company by making a viral video that people share with all their friends. Check out Youtube.com here. Other video hosting sites include Revver, Veoh, Vimeo and Google Video (although Google now owns YouTube so doesn't allow new uploads)

Photos
Are you a budding photographer or artist? Do you want to share your work with the world? Or maybe just some close friends? Photo sharing sites allow you to upload your images in high quality, where they can be viewed by other people. Many of these sites also allow you to license out your photos under certain common usage licenses – this means you can let other people use your images, for example in their website, so long as they attribute it back to you and abide by certain content restrictions. Other sites allow you to get prints made at really competitive prices.

Some of the most popular photo sharing sites include flickr, photobucket, imageshack and snapfish (which allows ordering prints).