YouTube
YouTube and the internet
WHAT IS YOUTUBE
Launched in May 2005, YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.
YouTube is a Google company.
HOW WAS IT CREATED
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, but Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible".
Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site. Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not
YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months
FACTS ABOUT YOUTUBE
2. YouTube was inspired by Janet Jackson's 'incident' at the 2004 Super Bowl, when her breast became exposed during the half-time performance. Karim could not easily find videos of the event online, which inspired the idea for a video-sharing site.
3. One hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second - that's over 31 million hours of video a year.
4. The first ever video to reach 1 million views was 'Ronaldinho Touch of Gold'. The video is an advert for Nike football boots, filmed to look like handheld footage - but featuring some surprising special effects. The original video has since been removed.
5. The video streaming site now has over one billion regular users, half of which are on mobile devices.