History of YouTube

The Beginning

The amazing video sharing platform, YouTube, was originally created as a dating site, by current PayPal employees - Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, on February 2005. It looked pretty simple when it was first launched. It was purchased by Google on November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, when YouTube was still just another ordinary startup, unknown to the masses. Google’s visionary approach at taking over YouTube just one year after its initial launch, is now considered to be a very profitable decision, especially because now YouTube is the 2nd most visited website in the world, the first being Google. Ineffectively, both the first and second most visited sites belong to Google. Since YouTube is so popular among the global population, it won’t be wrong to state that there are probably very few people left in the world that do not know about or haven’t yet heard of YouTube.

First YouTube Video Ever

The first ever video uploaded to YouTube was titled “Me at the zoo”. It was uploaded by one of the creators, Jawed Karim, on April 23, 2005, under his personal account - “jawed”. Initially, people did not seem to care about “Me at the zoo” being the first ever YouTube video, until the value of this platform gradually increased among people and the general population started looking at the different ways YouTube could be used to their own benefits, for maybe showcasing themselves to the world and/or earning fame and money through it. This phenomenon first began around 2009 when Justin Bieber became famous due to his YouTube covers of popular songs. And it still continues to encourage more and more people to join this platform with the hopes of making it big, due to examples like PewDiePie, IISuperwomanII, NigaHiga and Unbox Therapy etc., who also rose to fame through their indigenous YouTube channels.

Citations:

Blogger. (2005). First Version - Youtube 2005 [Photograph]. Blogger. Retrieved from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-SwxY6Dd5VCkZlzobS4ACGB0p6gcsYw9WO5Q-vinL5VHpMEssFnR846fI0wzbr1fAhvkTsQRSCG6i3JFuiEZ8F6JRFC1D1cYYwppGhS1ok9Uiil8guHT7l4VpqzrvDvrX3IY6wbck75U/s1600/FirstVersions_YouTube-2005-May.png

Karim, J. (2005, April 23). Retrieved March 04, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

Merch, D. (2019, February 19). 37 Mind Blowing YouTube Facts, Figures and Statistics – 2019.
Retrieved from https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/

Press, A. (2006, October 10). Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion.
Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_
business/t/google-buys-youtube-billion/#.XHxV9IhKjIU