I love Youtube whoring... granted, my channel isn't a slick or a particularly well thought out entity, more of a video blog and a spot to do video reviews on lots of skate related gear, but it's fun. I started my account a number of years ago just to dump video files so I wouldn't have to host them, but pretty soon got into having Q & A's with groms and older dudes about just about all things skate related.
I actually think it's helped me not so much stay on board, but given me some incentive to kick myself in the ass and go just a little more than if I didn't do it... most of my personal skating is just with homies and stuff, but with reviews I get to indulge in my geek side and then (mostly) self film the gear being used. I am stoked on not having a time limit for videos, cause now my reviews are roughly a half hour long 'cause I talk too damn much. Anyway, backing it. Made a lot of friends on YT- like Slap, if you every visit another city/state, you have a local or a crew there you can hook up with and roll with. Super awesome.
Related mindfuck: a few years ago me and Jim Thiebaud went over to Epic Skatepark in Sacramento and when we walked in the door two little groms were like "hey, you're grimcity!" Then they showed me some impossibles they'd learned in part because of an old video tutorial I made ages ago. I really, really like that we can (if we choose to) engage other skaters just as we would on a local level and try to spread some basic skate philosophy, facts, and tips as opposed to the shit kids get fed by the corpos... I do like some of the Ride Channel stuff, but it's rad to see random people that are both passionate and unpaid making good vids from informative to just really sick skating.
...having said that, skating before the internet meant repairing a shit ton of rerererereplayed VHS tapes. Stoked that you can just open a browser and find shit ya like.