The Evolution of YouTube

By | March 30, 2015
 

The Evolution of YouTube: A Timeline (with pictures)

YouTube has changed enormously since its inception in 2005.

A bold and intrepid dive into the untapped market of video-sharing lead to perhaps the greatest ‘society-altering’ since the mobile phone.

However, much like the mobile phone, YouTube has changed and developed over time. Let’s look at how YouTube has evolved.

 

February 14, 2005:

YouTube is launched by three former PayPal employees; Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.  The service was originally intended to be a ‘video-sharing dating site’!  However, after the three saw the potential and possibilties in an all-encompassing video-sharing service, they scrapped the idea and transformed the site.

And their lives.

And ours.

evolution-of-youtube

April 2005:

YouTube’s first video is uploaded. Jawed Karim, a part owner of the site, provided this milestone;   a 19-second clip titled ‘Me at the zoo’, ironically gaining just over 19 million views!

Despite Karim only uploading one video on this channel, it has 73.8 thousand followers. Buy Instagram Followers: Click here

first-youtube-video-uploaded

 

 

Throughout the next year and a half, YouTube would continue to flourish and soar to astronomical heights. By July 2006, the site’s daily video viewership count had risen to 100,000, and it’s uploads to 65,000.

 

October 2006:

Google purchases YouTube for approximately $1.65 billion, at a time when the company was had issues with several companies over copyright. At the time, this may have seemed a good deal for YouTube because of their legal troubles. However, YouTube would later become the phenomena it is today – worth over $40 billion!

google

 

May 2007:

The ‘Rick Roll’ is born.

For those who don’t know, the Rick Roll was an internet trend that lasted for around 3-4 years.

It involved someone ‘hyperlinking’ a message like this:

CURE TO CANCER FOUND!

…As you can probably tell, it became incredibly annoying.

The ‘Rick’ in the Rick Roll moniker was Rick Astley, a ‘one hit wonder’ musician most famous in the 80s.

This led to somewhat of a resurgence in his career, to no endeavour of his own.

rick-rolled

 

October 2008:

Burgeoning evermore, YouTube had grown to a point where 13 hours of video was being uploaded onto its site every minute.

YouTube was starting to become legitimate competition to Television.

youtube-tv-competition

 

October 2009:

YouTube announced they were gaining 1 billion video views per day, a 10000% from just 3 years earlier!

youtube-1-billion-views-per-day

This figure has since risen to over 5 billion.

 

From 2010 to 2015:

YouTube continued on its trailblazing path to notoriety. Notable events transpired along the way, from the live-streaming of the US Presidential Debate in 2012 to the procuring of 1 billion YouTube views by South Korean sensation PSY.

However, there is just too many to list.

All in all, it is safe to say that YouTube has changed the face of our society.

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