Happy 10th Birthday YouTube!

YouTube turns 10 today.

Ten years ago YouTube was found today in 2005. The video posting site has shared videos of the most prominent moments in history generating billions of views. The first video shared on YouTube was posted by the co-founder Jawed Karim on the 23rd of April 2005 entitled ‘Me at the zoo’ and has received 20 million views already.

The 18 seconds video shows Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo while sharing some insightful information on elephants such as calling the long trunks of elephants really cool. The video is non-consequential but monumental as it launched the YouTube platform, which went on to become the biggest video sharing site in the world. 

The idea of YouTube was conceived by the trio Jared, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, when one of them couldn’t find a video of Janet Jackson’s infamous ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ at the Super Bowl. The trio decided to form sort of archive where people could share their recordings with the rest of the world.   

The site was bought by Google in 2006 for a whopping $1.65 billion, and Google even ended its own video streaming service Google Video in favor of YouTube. Today YouTube has more than 1 billion users and about 300 hours of footage is uploaded every single minute. 

YouTube has even helped in launching many pop culture phenomenon, most notably of PSY whose song Gangnam Style hold the record for the most watched video with 2.3 billion views. The second place is secured by Justin Bieber whose multi-million dollar career was launched when he was found singing on YouTube. 

In celebration of the sites 10th anniversary YouTube has promised the users to improve the quality of content by developing ‘YouTube Spaces’. In ‘YouTube’ spaces the creators of videos will have access to professional resources to even make low budget videos. 

Watch below the very first video that was uploaded to YouTube 10 years ago.