In 2023, YouTube will turn 18 and is perhaps one of the most successful 18-year-olds on the planet! It has changed the world for many people in the past few years and has become the number one choice for many when it comes to entertainment, finding free yet useful courses, answering questions they can’t find the answer to, or even paying the bills for some, as it has become a huge source of income for YouTubers. Like many other successful brands, YouTube started with nothing but a simple idea and some young people who were bold enough to pursue their dream and make it happen. If you are curious about how it all started and what lead YouTube to where it is standing right now, the second most popular search engine in the world with billions of people using it daily, here’s the story:
How it all began:
The story of the giant of video-sharing platforms started with a supper party! Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim were three friends and ex-workers of PayPal, the American e-commerce company. One night, Steve invited the other two later-to-be co-founders of YouTube to his house for a supper party and the trio were having a lovely time taking pictures and recording videos of everything around them.
Back then, Flickr, the image hosting website was growing fast and getting lots of attention. It made Chad, Steve, and Jawed think that something was missing in the rapidly-growing world of the internet; a platform for sharing just videos. They thought just like people enjoy posting their pictures online, they could embrace the idea of a website or application where they could show others their home videos and whatever they desired without limitations. It’s worth mentioning that before YouTube other video-sharing platforms existed as well, but they were either expensive or required a devastating process before you could upload something.
YouTube was born in 2005
After the lightbulb went on in their head, the three got down to business. Chen was a dexterous programmer, Jawed was an excellent software engineer and Hurley had great designing skills. They had all the tools they needed to make the website work and to make it look compelling, so they decided to put their idea into action without further ado. The purpose was to develop a website suitable for everyone where videos could be uploaded without any troubles, was easy to use even for people who had minimal computer skills, and unlike many other programs, the users wouldn’t have to register to be able to use it. The three even rented a small office on top of a Japanese restaurant in California to work on their project.
A year later, in 2005, YouTube was born on the most romantic night of the year, on Valentine’s Day. The trademark, logo, and domain of the website were officially registered on February 14th.
How the three former Silicon Valley employees came up with the name YouTube is quite self-explanatory. “You” was supposed to refer to the user, and Tube was an old-fashion word for TV.
The first video on YouTube:
Two months after the website was ready, Jawed uploaded an 18-second video of himself visiting a zoo on YouTube. In the video, he was showing a big elephant and talking about how huge and cool its trunks were. One might think that it was not a glorious start for such a huge platform! But that video has over 263 million views now! It is not comparable to the professional videos we see on the platform today, but it gave YouTube a head start. The website started growing rapidly and soon it was attracting around 30,000 visitors per day.
but it wasn’t until September of the same year that YouTube witnessed its first video with a million views. In this video, which was aimed as an advertisement for Nike, Ronaldinho, the Brazilian football superstar, was collecting his golden boots, an award that was given to the top goal scorer each season. Getting more than a million views was a big jump for the platform as it started attracting the attention it deserved.
The official launch of YouTube:
In December of the same year that YouTube was introduced to the public, a venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital, invested 3.5 million dollars in YouTube and it was officially and publicly launched on the 15th of December. Soon after that, an additional investment of 8 million dollars coming from Artis Capital Management helped the new business get off the ground and gave it a massive boost. It not only helped YouTube to make its bandwidth and servers better and stronger, but it also resulted in impressively fast growth. A few months later, YouTube was able to introduce adverts on the site and got its first offer from Fox Show, advertising the famous TV series “Prison Break”.
Google Took Notice of YouTube:
Not so many businesses out there can claim that they worked so well that could get the attention of Google in just one year. In 2006, Google saw the potential in YouTube and noticed how it could revolutionize the world of the internet, taking it to another level. The biggest search engine in the world had tried the Google Video sharing platform before, but it had failed. Therefore, it saw a great opportunity there and offered to buy YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. After much consultation, the founders agreed to take the offer and let Google take it from there. In hindsight, it was an absolute bargain, right?
Being a part of Google, made things much easier for YouTube from this part on. New features were added to the platform one after another. In 2007, Google started paying individuals for making good popular content on YouTube. It defined a whole new job that didn’t exist before and many people became “YouTubers”. Some of them were making six-figure salaries on this medium. Broadcasting live shows and concerts was another update on YouTube.
YouTube had its first billion views
In 2012, music videos became extremely popular on YouTube and made it even more appealing to people, listening to their favorite music on it. In December 2012, the “Gangnam Style” video with its famous group dance was released and the most unbelievable thing happened. It got 4 billion views! This was the first time that a video was exceeding millions of views on YouTube. Gangnam Style stayed on top of the list as the most-watched video in the history of this platform until 2020. Then, “Despasito” stole the title away from the Korean song when it reached 7 billion views after it was published.
The second decade of YouTube
It comes as no surprise that YouTube kept getting better and better introducing many useful tools and features from 2015 up to now, such as YouTube Kid, 360-degree video, YouTube Red removing ads for you, and YouTube Go which allowed you to watch videos offline.
Just like any other social media, YouTube has had its share of unusual happenings, controversies, and scandals. In 2017, Logan Paul a famous YouTuber with millions of subscribers traveled to Japan and filmed a suicide victim in a place famously known as “Suicide Forest” and published it on his channel. YouTube was heavily criticized for allowing such content that was obviously against its guidelines and was asked to ban the YouTuber from the platform for good. However, Logan removed his video and publicly apologized and YouTube decided to take no action on it.
Also, in 2018, a woman attacked the headquarters of YouTube in San Bruno, firing multiple shots and injuring three people in the action. Discrimination and limiting some of her videos was told to be her motivation for the attack.
YouTube Today
Right now, YouTube is one of the most rapidly growing platforms and is the most popular social network around the world, second only to Facebook. Users watch a billion hours of videos every day on YouTube and it is available in over 100 countries and more than 80 languages. Studies have shown that 95 percent of internet users, use YouTube every now and then, and is used as a strong search engine just like its parent website Google. Its headquarters are still in San Bruno, California, and has more than 2,800 employees. In 2023, YouTube was estimated to be worth up to $160 billion.
