YouTube.com has been looking quite beautiful these days! User uploaded entertainment videos have always kept the site fresh and thriving; movie trailers, concerts clips, small production short films, personal blogs – all of these have and continue to make YouTube.com an Internet sensation, but there are tons of new trends on the Tube’s horizon. The website is now haven to the conscious consumer and avid learner; reviews and tutorials have become a hot new YouTube genre as people around the globe share tips and tricks from how to buy the best laptop, to how to succeed in the stock market, to how to score a date in a foreign language. Now, beauty-loving bloggers are taking the stage and having fun with color around the world.
Any woman (or man) who’s ever glued an eye shut with clumpy, no good mascara, who’s ever painted skin orange with fluorescent glow foundation, who’s ever worn a most shameful shade of lipstick, can rejoice in the conglomeration of makeup reviews and tutorials flooding YouTube.com. The smelly department store lady who once sent you home with that ‘knock out’ eye shadow which made you look more injured than stunning can now be completely avoided; anything any beauty maven wants to learn about almost any cosmetic product is now at the touch of a button. It’s a trend that’s glamorous and practical, and it all began with gals like Amy Powell.
A computer savvy college student, Amy started using YouTube just like everyone else when the site blew up in the spring of last year. ‘Amy04’ made a place for herself on the web, posting video blogs and chatting about her life amongst hundred of thousands of YouTube users doing exactly the same thing. But one day, Amy, a self-proclaimed makeup addict, decided to apply her cosmetics while chatting on video, and after her viewers raved about her skill and asked for more, a new Internet sensation was born.
Amy began taking her makeup tips to the camera and uploading, what she describes as, ‘makeup application tips and tutorials by a down to earth, average girl,’ to a mass of ever growing fans. To date, Amy’s videos have 5,187 subscribers and she has become the twenty fourth most subscribed to YouTuber of all time. In addition, she’s inspired many other YouTube users with a makeup trick or two to do the same thing; makeup tutorials are now being posted every day from hundreds of people world-wide.
Amy says she’s thrilled that people are enjoying her videos because they are something she’s always wanted to see herself. “It’s a great thing because anyone from around the world can have this information and learn things that are normally not taught. Makeup is something people do before they leave for the day; you don’t see people without their faces on, so makeup isn’t something you learn to do naturally. YouTube is the perfect medium for people to get together and shared what they’ve learned about beauty.”
But Amy isn’t stopping at YouTube. She can now be found at her website, amyopoly.com, where her Internet makeup tutorial empire has expanded and stretched into a blog, a FAQ section, a fan forum, and even a store. She’s created an online community of eclectic fans: men and women of every age who have followed Amy from YouTube to her very own place on the web. And she’s getting notice from some of the biggest names in beauty too; Amy is currently mentioned in the October issue of Marie Claire and she will be featured in the November issue of Self Magazine.
She’s a busy English major at Charleston College, but Amy’s passion for makeup will always be a huge part of her life. Amy says she’s just a regular girl who loves makeup and has a knack for teaching, but her fans would agree she’s a forerunning in the future of beauty. Amy says she’d love to delve further into the makeup industry, and since she’s already dominating the web, she’s off to a beautiful start.
